For many years, school suspension has been used as a disciplinary measure in high schools, middle schools, and even elementary schools. Simply put, suspension isn’t new.
However, most recently, there have been more and more reports that throughout the country an alarming number of students, sometimes as young as four years old, are being suspended from school. Newly released data from the Office for Civil Rights reports that during the 2011-2012 academic year an estimated 750,000 preschool students were suspended n the united states.
Student discipline in schools is always a contentious topic – tactics have morphed through the past decades along with what is culturally acceptable. Technically there are no “national rules” when it comes to what kinds of behavior can result in suspension – it is more on a case-by-case basis, and changes from school to school, or district to district. Here in Texas, a spokeswoman from the Texas Education Agency reported that the main reason students would be suspended is for violating local codes of conduct. However, because they vary from district to district, it’s hard to get a good picture of student’s behavior.
The data suggests that as many as 30% pre-school children being suspended are students here in Texas. That is at least 2,000 suspensions in the state of Texas! Although there are some questions about the accuracy of the data (it has been recommended that state comparisons may not be the best way to look at the data) it is clear that Texas is definitely contributing to preschool suspension. Some critics wondered if the size of pre-school classes affected the number of suspensions. Here in Texas, there are no limits on how many students there could be in a pre-school class. None the less, others pointed out that larger classes with more pre-K students would not necessarily result in more bad behavior. Most likely it would point to the difficulty of managing a classroom of 30 or more preschool students.
Regardless of the size of a pre-school class, civil rights activists are concerned that the data revealed by the report indicate that discrimination could play a role in how schools implement their punishment practices. According to the numbers, black students are three times more likely to be suspended than white students. Furthermore, whether or not a student is disabled may have an effect on whether or not he or she is suspended: one in four minority boys with a disability reportedly were suspended, while one in five minority girls with a disability were suspended. Here in Houston, Reginald Lillie, president of the NAACP Houston’s branch said that when students of such a young age are suspended, they are essentially “labeled or flagged,” suggesting that they develop a reputation within their districts of being trouble makers. Once the kids pick up troublemaker labels, they can be hard to shake, and their reputation could follow them throughout the rest of the time they are in school. Other have suggested that school’s have essentially “given up” on these young students.
But whether or not schools are literally giving up on their students is hard to say. For example, Texas officials reported that some of the suspended Pre-K students had been suspended for fighting or bringing weapons to school. It’s a little easier to understand why a school may feel that suspension is an appropriate punishment for actions that have the potential to be violent. But we know that being subjected to harsh discipline at such a young age, especially for behavioral, rather than safety issues, probably doesn’t do much give kids a friendly introduction to their education and does not help to set them up for success in years to come.
In the past, the Obama administration has worked to try and increase the principal’s participation in determining a student’s punishment. There have been reports that suspension can frequently lead to students being expelled, or maybe even arrested. The administration has also provided schools with information as to how they can recognize and avoid discrimination, and increase teacher training for classroom management. So while some of these efforts pre-dated the report, there continues to be people, organizations, and even the schools themselves at work to improve approaches to school discipline.