1 week Ago
I saw a report on how many kids in public preschools are getting suspended. Suspending kids that young (or at any age) really leads them straight to prison, especially if they're suspended disproportionately. When are we going to fix this? Not until we stop getting distracted by suspensions and start focusing on the behavior that causes them.
The report comes from University of South Carolina researchers. In their presentation to a panel of lawmakers, they echo the U.S.
Dept. of Education's spurious allegations that exclusionary discipline (suspensions, expulsions, in-school detentions or even timeout) increases kids’ likelihood of incarceration later in life. I’m not pro-exclusionary discipline — but I am anti-nonsense.
If you learned that people who take insulin are more likely to suffer kidney failure than those who don’t, would you conclude that insulin causes kidney failure? Of course not. Correlation does not mean causality, especially when the connection is without a shred of reason. Suspensions don't cause prison sentences any more than insulin causes kidney failure.
Rather, insulin treats diabetes, a disease that can have catastrophic outcomes, including kidney failure. Suspensions are similar. They address misconduct that can eventually escalate to criminal behavior.
It’s the misconduct that causes all the trouble, not the suspension. If exclusion from class resulted in illegal behavior, any kid who misses school would be at risk — sick kids, kids with braces, kids on trips — yet there’s no evidence of this. Suspensions may not have a strong impact on the most continually disobedient students — but they certainly help the rest of the school population by removing negative influences.
For kids of any age, bad behavior is as communicable as the flu, and schools have to protect students from its influence. Negative peer pressure is real and deadly. One bad apple spoils a bushel, and just a few can ravage a school’s entire climate.
As schools have moved toward reducing exclusionary discipline, achievement has fallen, apathy has risen and misbehavior has escalated. Discipline is a top reason cited for teachers quitting the profession, and conduct is so bad that high school students have staged walkouts to plead for their personal protection. There simply aren’t enough non-exclusionary tools to protect kids and teachers from the dire consequences of continual misconduct.
“Yes,” you might say, “but we’re talking about preschoolers, not high schoolers.” True, and we’re talking about preschoolers because that’s where the behavior problems begin. That 3 and 4-year-olds have to be removed from class is powerful evidence that exclusionary discipline isn’t the issue.
The problems start before kids even step foot into school, a fact that should give us a clue as to where to look for real answers. While we’re waiting for educational leaders to catch on, however, teachers absorb the blame. The most common accusation is based on exclusionary discipline’s disproportionality.
According to the USC report, in SC, 77 percent of preschool kids removed from class were boys. Social Services Director Michael Leach suggests an insidious reason: “What if the behavior isn’t really that bad, but it’s the bias of the teacher? I hate to say it, but it exists.” Deputy Solicitor Bronwyn McElveen recommends training to teach educators how to avoid bias in their decisions.
They’re entitled to their venomous opinions, but a more critical observer might reason differently. These male students are practically babies, and if you’ve ever met one, you’ve undoubtedly been cowed by their cuteness. Certified preschool teachers generally love toddlers, period, regardless of size, shape, color or sex.
A 3-year-old classroom would be the last place I would expect to find biased caregivers tossing little boys out because they dislike boys. If such inequalities exist even in preschool, it isn’t proof of a prejudice problem; it’s an indication that the problem originates elsewhere. Continuing to blame teachers and schools only carries us further from a solution.
State Senator Mike Reichenbach asks: “How do we get [students] better instead of just suspending them, and they do it again?” That is the real question. But until we move past the conspiracy theory that suspensions themselves are the problem, we’ll never find the answer. Jody Stallings has been an award-winning teacher in Charleston since 1992 and is director of the Charleston Teacher Alliance.
To submit a question, order his books or follow him on social media, please visit JodyStallings.com ..
