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Does Suspension Hurt or Help?
Examining Zero - Tolerance in America’s Schools.
A zero - tolerance policy in schools is a strict enforcement of rules and regulations. Suspension and expulsion are used to punish students for misbehavior, truancy, fights, and dress - code violations. Over the years, suspension has become the default punishment for even the most trivial things such as singing in the cafeteria and a 6 year old’s tantrum. Schools have taken a no - nonsense approach and have become tough on crime. Unfortunately, minority students are more likely to suffer the negative consequences of zero - tolerance policies. Suspension rates have more than doubled over the past 3 decades, affecting black students the most. A black student is 3 ½ times more likely to be suspended than a white student.
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Yet one may ask, why did the student act the way they did, and couldn’t there have been an alternative to suspension? Statistics show that a student that is economically disadvantaged or a student that has been exposed to domestic violence is much more likely to be suspended and do poorly in school than other students. Suspension focuses on punishing the student without taking into account why they did it or what caused it. 6 year old Salecia Johnson was arrested and suspended after injuring a principal while throwing a tantrum. A restorative justice approach could have been taken instead of an arrest and suspension. Zero - tolerance policies has negative effects on those affected. Suspension leads to students falling behind in school. Students aren’t learning and have a higher chance of committing crimes while out of school. Class time is lost and eventually the student may fail their classes. This leads to higher dropout rates. A student with multiple suspensions will think they’re a burden and that teachers and administrators don’t want them at school. Eventually, they won’t want to come back to
These kids don’t misbehave in the classroom for no reason. They are probably releasing those emotions that are bottled up from them at home in school. Not coming from a stable background can have quite the effect on trying to learn in a classroom. The problems that need to be fixed are trying to make schools feel more like a “safe haven” rather than a prison. Afterschool programs need to be put into place, to allow kids to stay at school for long so they don’t get involved in street life, or so they can just not have to deal with the outside problems of the world for a little bit longer. Also, school need to change. They need to try and make learning more fun, and more integrated with the children they are teaching. An easy an example of this is teaching these kids about their history, so they have many people to look up to besides just Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks. Only teaching black and Latino kids about people that don’t even look like them or go through anything they have gone through, makes them bored and uneager to learn. Also, more rewards in to be into place to make kids feel more welcomed and wanting to do good in class. Even though it may seem out of the ordinary for some, suspension needs to stop. Allowing these kids to take a break from somewhere they already don’t want to be is ushering them towards a life of hating school. Suspension not only hurt the school district but also hurt the
A new policy is needed and most certainly should start out with holding schools to handle their own discipline situations, rather than relying on school security and police (Wilson, 2014). School administrators must be able to differentiate between what is a true discipline situation and when a student simply made a mistake. The rate of school suspensions have skyrocketed over the last thirty years from 1.7 million nationwide to 3.1 million and growing today (ACLU, n.d.). Each school needs to create policies of when to get school security involved and what the school’s security job involves. Unless there is a true threat to the safety of the school and/or its student’s law enforcement should never be called (Wison, 2014). The instinct to dial 911 at every infraction has to stop. Furthermore the schools must develop a gender and racial fairness; black children should not be receiving harsher punishments for similar infractions of white students (Wilson,
“Principals must be able to balance the school’s interest in maintaining a safe and orderly environment against the rights of individual students to be free from unreasonable discipline” (Hachiya, Shoop, and Dunklee, 2014, p. 145). This is a delicate balance to be sure, but one that is the responsibility of an administrator. Students have constitutional rights to free speech and expression, as well as the right to due process. This is very true with suspension and expulsion. Due process is very important here as well. A hearing must be held, and all parts of the Pupil Fair Dismissal Act must be followed.
Following the Columbine tragedy in 1999, “school systems across the nation introduced the zero-tolerance policies aimed at the curtailment of harmful student behaviors” (Noll, 2014, p. 295). The original focus of the policies was to eliminate the use/carrying of weapons but soon after spread to restricting drugs and medication (2014). By 2006 95% of the U.S. public schools had adopted the zero-tolerance policies and more than half of them reported taking significant action against students, many of which resulted in expulsion (2014). While the zero-tolerance polices were originally welcomed by all members of a community as a means of promoting and keeping a safer environment-- as of late many individuals are questioning the relevance of some actions and some school officials (2014).
The zero tolerance policy has become a national controversy in regards to the solid proven facts that it criminalizes children and seems to catch kids who have no intention of doing harm. Although, there has been substantial evidence to prove that the policies enforced in many schools have gone far beyond the extreme to convict children of their wrongdoing. The punishments for the act of misconduct have reached a devastating high, and have pointed students in the wrong direction. Despite the opinions of administrators and parents, as well as evidence that zero tolerance policies have deterred violence in many public and private schools, the rules of conviction and punishment are unreasonable and should be modified.
Reports by Porter (2007) highlighted two suspensions from school, once for reacting to a racial slur on a school bus, and a second for slipping out of school to buy candy. Both suspensions were efficiently dealt with by Mr. and Mrs. Jordan (Jordan & L...
Another major reason why juveniles are ending up in the juvenile justice system is because many schools have incorporate the zero tolerance policy and other extreme school disciplinary rules. In response to violent incidents in schools, such as the Columbine High School massacre, school disciplinary policies have become increasingly grave. These policies have been enacted at the school, district and state levels with the hopes of ensuring the safety of students and educators. These policies all rely on the zero tolerance policy. While it is understandable that protecting children and teachers is a priority, it is not clear that these strict policies are succeeding in improving the safety in schools.
If the zero tolerance program is installed in the educational system, schools must decide when and how it should be enforced. This is a very complex issue and when open to debate you see three approaches to it. First, advocates of zero tolerance policies concentrate on positive changes in school security, ways of punishment, and change in student behavior. Those who oppose the policies argue that zero tolerance should be eliminated due to its lack of rationale and logic. Finally, the opposing viewpoint criticizes the zero tolerance policy for being too extreme and inappropriate for schools.
Schools inevitably must deal with disciplinary action when it comes to misconduct in students. However, at what point should the courts and law enforcement intervene? “Zero tolerance” policies started as a trend in the school setting during the 1990s in “response to the widespread perception that juvenile violence was increasing and school officials needed to take desperate measures to address the problem” (Aull 2012:182-183). However, national statistics indicated a decrease in juvenile’s share of crime during the influx of zero tolerance policies in schools (National Crime Justice Reference Service 2005).
Martinez, S. (2009). A system gone berserk: How are zero-tolerance policies really …..affecting schools? Preventing School Failure, 53(3), 153-157. Retrieved from …..http://search.proquest.com.ezproxylocal.library.nova.edu/docview/228530113?acco…..untid=6579
Several students today receive in-school suspension and out-of-school suspensions that remove them from the classroom environment. While some teachers argue that this helps maintain the equilibrium of a learning environment, the academics of those students must also be taken into consideration when discussing the effectiveness of these methods. A study done by the Minnesota Department of Education shows that, “suspension is associated with a host of negative student outcomes, including diminished academic achievement and dropout. Suspension diminishes academic achievement in part because of missed instructional time” (5). When I missed three weeks of school during my sophomore year due to the flu, I struggled to catch up with all my subjects and to raise my grades. I was not under disciplinary actions, but because I was removed from the academic scene, my academic achievements diminished and I struggled to catch up to my peers. If students who are under disciplinary actions are unable to class, then how will they learn? It is all too easy to remove a student causing a disturbance and forget about them, but that student also deserves an education. In that light, the current disciplinary actions in place are not at all beneficial. Rather, students taken out of the academic environment are put at a
Is dropout rates affected by suspension? Why do students not learn from suspension? How does this benefit the school? The act of suspending students has ben used for a long ongoing time now to try to “help” students after they they have done something wrong or that is against the rules. Although suspending students sometimes does work, schools should use alternative methods because students are less likely to drop out, you can better teach students how to act, and because suspension doesn't help the school.
By definition, in school suspension is “a program to which a student is assigned because of disruptive behavior for a specific amount of time.” (Effective Program, 156) Many schools that have in school suspension programs have a zero-tolerance policy. This deters bad behavior by having swift and serious consequences for breaking school rules.
The suspension have been around for decades, is this well known punishment effective? There are many suspensions throughout the school year, yet the same kids seem to be suspended. This may be an easy punishment, but its not doing anything to benefit the kid, Schools should not suspend kids because kids can't do their assignments, it just takes them away from the situation, and studies have shown that it can cut down the dropout rates.
Students that get suspended are more likely to drop out of school than kids that don’t get suspended. According to the article, Why Do We Suspend Misbehaving Students, “ In recent years, while Baltimore city schools have dramatically reduced suspensions, the dropout rate has been cut nearly in half.” When students from school drop out it isn’t good for them because it will lower the chance of them getting a good job to help support their family. Yes, people might say the reason they dropped out could isn’t because the student was suspended so much, but it is true in many cases for students that do drop out of school. Just because the student drops out of school doesn’t mean it’s because the student doesn’t like school; it is most likely because they got suspended while they were in