More than 50 Minnesota school districts continue to use so-called seclusion rooms, according to data obtained by the . Districts use seclusion rooms for children with a disability and who are at risk of harming themselves or others.

This practice is banned or extremely limited in 21 states.

The 50 school districts maintain 194 registered seclusion rooms across 100 school buildings across the state, according to the records.

For the first time, the Minnesota Disability Law Center set out to document the state’s seclusion rooms, photographing more than 80 of them and documenting their locations in a report titled “.”

“I think the average person does not know this is happening in their schools. When they see the rooms and they find out how they’re used, the average person is appalled and is very upset and curious as to why this antiquated and traumatizing practice is still allowed in our schools,” said Jessica Heiser of the Minnesota Disability Law Center in an interview with the Reformer.

Multiple school districts in Minnesota do not practice seclusion, including Minneapolis Public Schools and Fridley Public Schools. Neither Spiro Academy nor Intermediate District 287 — which both specialize in serving students with disabilities — use seclusion.

During the 2023-24 school year, show that 553 students with disabilities were subjected to 3,451 instances of seclusion. In the 2024-25 school year, after seclusion was banned for students in third grade and below, 358 students were subjected to 1,867 episodes of seclusion.

The most recent from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights states that repeated use of seclusion for the same student by a school is likely a violation of the student’s rights.

Heiser said she believes one reason Minnesota has been slow to eliminate seclusion is because the policy affects a small number of students, and remains mostly hidden from the general public — and even from educators, school staff and parents of school-age children.

“Nobody wants their kids in one of these rooms. As a parent, I cannot look at this room and say in good grace that there is a single child that deserves to be locked in a cinder block room in a school,” Heiser said.

In 2023, the Minnesota Legislature passed a law that banned seclusion for students with disabilities from birth through third grade. At the time, the Minnesota Department of Education recommended that the state work towards eliminating the practice entirely by the start of the 2026-27 school year.

But progress towards that goal has halted in the Legislature. Sen. Judy Seeburger, DFL-Afton, proposed legislation last year to rollback the 2023 law banning seclusion for the youngest students. Seeburger also led a , which met 11 times between August and January. In the group’s , Seeburger explained how her adult son was subject to seclusion as a student and why she believes the practice was beneficial.

“The seclusion working group, everybody around the table, except Sen. Seeberger, said ‘We don’t want this practice,’” said Jessica Webster, an attorney at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid. “What a bizarre place for us to be standing that all of the voices agree that this is a harmful and traumatic practice that we shouldn’t be using, but we’re still using it.”

Seeberger did not respond to an interview request.

The working group’s meeting materials show a dozen letters that support letting schools continue to use seclusion, with varying degrees of support for rolling back the 2023 ban on using them on younger students. Five of the letters come from a single school district, Intermediate School District 917, which serves as a special education cooperative for nine districts in the south metro. Another five come from other special education cooperatives around the state. Intermediate and cooperative districts typically provide services for students with disabilities who often require services that are provided in separate school buildings.

Black students with disabilities are disproportionately subjected to seclusion, making up just 12% of students with disabilities in Minnesota but subject to 22% of all instances of seclusion.

“It is unquestionable in every state, including our own, that seclusion and restrictive procedures in general, like holds on children and locking children in rooms by themselves, is used against boys of color with disabilities more so than any other demographic,” Heiser said.

Heiser added that multiple federal investigations have led to banning seclusion in particular states or school districts because data show it is disproportionately used on boys of color.

Seclusion is primarily used on students between the ages of 6 and 10. Before the ban was implemented for students in third grade and below, these children with disabilities made up about one-third of students with disabilities in Minnesota, but were subject to more than two-thirds of all episodes of seclusion. In the same year, 16% of students with disabilities were ages 16-21, but they made up just 7% of the students subjected to seclusion.

After the K-3 seclusion ban, in the 2024-25 school year, 6 to 10 year olds still made up about one-third of students with disabilities, but they accounted for only 46% of all episodes of seclusion.

Heiser says that some defenders of seclusion say it is necessary because the children can become violent and could hurt someone if not locked in a room. But she calls this a “red herring.” She said it is “common sense” that an older child would be bigger and stronger, and thus more likely to cause injury to another person. She said there’s a simple explanation for why younger children are more likely to be subjected to seclusion: They’re smaller.

“It really just comes down to how easy is it to grab a kid and put them in the closet? It’s easier when they’re littler,” Heiser said.

Students with autism or whose disabilities are categorized as emotional or behavioral disorder are disproportionately more likely to experience seclusion. Just 10% of students with disabilities are in the emotional or behavioral disability category, while they experience about 2 of every 5 seclusion episodes. Students with autism make up about 16% of students with disabilities but experience more than one-third of all seclusion episodes. This did not change after seclusion was banned for K-3 students.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

Reports of crime and violence in North Carolina public schools decreased during the 2024-25 school year for the second consecutive year, according to an presented to the State Board of Education this week.

The report — which is required by state law and tracks discipline, alternative learning, and dropouts across the state — “shows strong levels of safety” in North Carolina public schools, Nearly 80% of schools had five or fewer acts of reportable criminal offenses last year, the release said, and “only 9,966 students or approximately 0.66%, committed a reportable offense.”

“This data, I think, certainly shows that there’s still work to be done to address certain instances of reportable criminal offenses,” Superintendent Mo Green said during the Board’s Wednesday meeting. “But it is good to know that the vast majority of our schools experience minimal such acts, and that more than 99% of our public school students are not committing these acts.”

“It’s also encouraging to see that we have a downward trend on these offenses and also declines in suspensions, alternative placements, and dropouts,” Green said. “Because we also know how critical it is to be in school to have student success.”

On Wednesday, DPI staff emphasized that context is crucial when discussing the report — particularly its data on school crimes and violence. When a topic is emotionally charged, like school safety, it can be easy to rely on anecdotes rather than data, said Dr. Michael Maher, DPI’s chief accountability officer. While the data shows most North Carolina schools are safe — and getting safer — Maher said, “any act of violence in a school is unacceptable.”

“Student safety is nonnegotiable, and nothing in this data or presentation is intended to minimize harm or dismiss legitimate concerns,” he said. “The purpose of this report is to provide information, analysis, and develop some recommendations for improvement.”

During the 2024-25 school year, there were 11,470 total reported acts of violent and reportable crimes committed by students (11,429) and non-students (41). This reflects a 6.1% decrease in the number of reportable acts compared to the 2023-24 school year (12,212), the presentation says, and a 8.2% decrease in the rate of acts per 1,000 students. Generally, the rate of acts is a more accurate way to make a comparison to prior years, Maher said, as it adjusts for the size of the group.

The report tracks 16 reportable acts, nine of which are considered dangerous and violent:

• Assault involving the use of a weapon
• Assault resulting in serious bodily injury
• Homicide
• Kidnapping
• Rape
• Robbery with a dangerous weapon
• Sexual assault/battery
• Sexual offense
• Taking indecent liberties with a minor

Only 2.6% of reported acts in 2024-25 were violent, the report shows. The vast majority of acts were possession offenses, particularly related to controlled substances (62%), which “includes Marijuana, Heroin, LSD, Methamphetamine, Cocaine, or any other drug listed in Schedules I-VI of the North Carolina Controlled Substances Act” ().

“While every incident matters, the data show that severe violence is rare, and the most common challenges schools are managing are behavioral and substance related, not widespread physical harm,” Maher said. “So any policy or procedure or programmatic recommendation we make should be proportional to that evidence.”

Maher also said that current data should not be compared to data before and during the COVID-19 pandemic without context. The long-term data tables in the report include data from 2019-21, when students were not at school in-person for long stretches of time. Those years “show a significant decline in the number of incidents and resulting actions,” the presentation says.

“While this data is reliable and valid, it is a unique data set that does not align with pre- or post-pandemic data,” per the presentation. “Individuals should exercise caution when making comparisons between pre-pandemic and post-pandemic data as there have been changes to the school context, including increased remote learning.”

Both reported crimes and suspensions were higher in 2024-25 than before the pandemic.

This year, the report was renamed to “Annual Report: Discipline, Alternative Learning, and Dropout.” Previously, it was called the consolidated data report, “which doesn’t really tell you anything,” Maher said.

In addition to data on school crime and violence, the report also includes data on reassignments for disciplinary reasons, suspensions and expulsions, alternative learning, dropouts, and corporal punishment. In 2024-25, there were zero reported cases of corporal punishment in North Carolina public schools, according to the presentation, marking the seventh consecutive year of zero cases.

You can view DPI’s full presentation , and the 165-page report to the General Assembly . You can also watch DPI’s presentation of the data to the Board , starting at 3:29:00.

Data trends and subgroup data

In addition to aggregated data across the state’s schools, the report also includes subgroup data in each category, including the number count and rate per 1,000 students by gender, race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, disability, and whether or not the student is an English Learner.

Each category also includes data on the rates among elementary, middle, and high school grade levels. At the end of DPI’s presentation, Maher shared overall data trends with the Board regarding such subgroup data.

Students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades have higher rates than most other grade levels in suspensions, Maher said, including in-school, short-, and long-term suspensions. At the same time, he said ninth grade “remains the primary risk point,” with higher rates or numbers of in-school suspension, long-term suspension, dropouts, and acts of crime and violence.

Across the board, Maher said the subgroups with the highest number count and rates included students who are male, Black, two or more races, economically disadvantaged, or have disabilities.

Board member Reginald Kenan said it was important for people to understand this data correctly, rather than to reinforce stereotypes.

“This report, if it’s not understood, will make someone think that certain races, certain students, are problem makers and can’t get educated because certain students are in the classroom,” Kenan said. “The data is great when you understand it.”

Maher noted, particularly when it comes to violent and reportable crime in schools, that “these are descriptive patterns … not causal explanations.”

“The same pattern shows up across multiple education outcomes, including attendance, course and test performance, and dropouts — not just discipline,” Maher said. “So that tells us that discipline is not a standalone issue. Effective solutions need to connect attendance, behavior, academic support, and student services.”

Maher also noted that subgroups with the highest rates of reportable acts also saw rate decreases in the last two years, in many cases in the double digits. This was true for many subgroups across most other categories in the report as well.

“So this is a picture of both persistent disparities, but also meaningful progress,” Maher said.

In addition to decreases in rates among many student subgroups, there were also decreases in total reports of crime, suspensions (in-school and short- and long-term), the high school dropout rate, and alternative learning placements.

Finally, Maher noted that across all reported categories, a relatively small number of students were involved.

“Less than 13% of the preschool through grade 13 student population received any type of reportable disciplinary consequence (in-school suspension, out-of-school suspension, alternative placement for disciplinary reasons, expulsion) for inappropriate behavior,” the presentation says.

In-school suspensions and alternative learning

In the report, reassignments refer to cases of in-school suspension and alternative learning placements for disciplinary reasons.

Less than 8.1% of the student population received one or more in-school suspensions, the report said, with 241,492 in-school suspensions (ISS) of a half-day or more to 124,334 students.

That reflects a 8.7% reduction in the total number of ISS compared to 2023-24, the presentation says, and a 10.8% reduction in the rate per 1,000 students.

Nearly 81% of public school units (which includes school districts, charter, and lab schools) had ISS rates below the state rate, according to Dr. Rob Dietrich, DPI’s senior director of enterprise data and reporting.

Five student subgroups were above the state event rate of 156.53 ISSs per 1,000 students: males, Black students, students who are two or more races, economically disadvantaged students, and students with disabilities. National and state research has long shown that compared to those of white students for the same infractions.

As was the case for reports of crime, rates of ISS decreased over the last two years among student subgroups, Dietrich said.

“You want to see these numbers continue to decrease,” he said.

In the past, DPI staff and Board members have advocated for more culturally responsive training for teachers, along with a need to make less subjective, more data-informed decisions about discipline.

On Wednesday, Kenan said while he is glad to see the decrease in discipline rates among student subgroups, it’s important to know how and why things improved — so that practices that worked can be replicated to continue to reduce discipline inequities.

Vice Chair Alan Duncan added that the report is missing information on the disparity in types of discipline for the same offenses between student groups. Maher and Dietrich said it was “on their list” for future reporting.

“It’s been a long-term issue in schools around the country, and although we are better than some states, we still have it as an issue very much,” Duncan said of school discipline disparities.

There were 2,994 alternative learning placements as a disciplinary action in 2024-25, which reflects a 22.6% decrease in the rate of placements compared to the previous school year.

Nearly 84% of districts and charter schools reported zero alternative learning placements for disciplinary reasons, per the report.

Four out of the five student subgroups above the state average for alternative learning placements saw decreases in the rate of placements over the last two years: Black students, students with disabilities, male students, and economically disadvantaged students.

Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students saw a 130.7% and 40.7% increase in placements over the last two years, respectively.

“You look at that number and you think, ‘That number’s awful big,’” Dietrich said. “But when you have a small population, when you have any movement in either direction, like you do here with Native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders … any number up or down is going to have a pretty big size effect on the rate.”

The report also includes data on alternative learning program enrollment for all students, not just students placed in alternative learning for disciplinary reasons.

There were 8,741 student enrollments in alternative learning programs in 2024-25, which decreased by more than 13% last year.

While the top two reasons for placement were instead of long-term suspension (34%) and for chronic misbehavior (28.5%), 11.4% of placements were because of student or parent choice.

Suspensions and expulsions

Short-term and long-term suspensions also decreased in 2024-25 when compared to the previous two academic years.

There were 233,877 short-term suspensions reported, for a rate of roughly 145 short-term suspensions per 1,000 students. That is a 10.6% decrease in the rate from 2023-24 and a 11.8% decrease in the rate from 2022-23.

Approximately 73% of suspensions were for one to three days in length, with one-day suspensions being the most frequent.

There were 684 long-term suspensions reported, for a rate of roughly 44 long-term suspensions per 1,000 students. That is a a 8.4% decrease in the rate from 2023-24 and a 5.8% decrease in the rate from 2022-23.

According to the presentation, 28,504 days of school were missed due to long-term suspensions.

While student subgroups with the highest rates saw a decrease in the rate of short-term suspensions, some subgroups saw increases in rates of long-term suspensions.

In addition to the 684 long-term suspensions, 2,806 students were enrolled in alternative learning programs instead of long-term suspension. Therefore, long-term removals, including suspensions and alternative learning placements, totaled 3,588 removals — a 10.3% increase from the previous school year.

Finally, there were 34 expulsions in 2024-25, up four from the prior school year.

“Even though there is a slight increase, expulsions are still extremely rare,” the DPI presentation says.

Dropout rates

Dropout rates in North Carolina continue to decline, according to the report.

There were a total of 10,478 students in grades 1-13 who dropped out in 2024-25, with 76.5% of those students dropping out in grades 9-13.

The top three dropout reasons were attendance (36.4%), unknown (31%), and a student’s school status being unknown after moving (12.9%).

Dropouts increased at the elementary and middle grade levels, and decreased at the high school level — though ninth grade remains the grade with the largest percentage of dropouts.

DPI began implementing a new (NCSIS) in 2024-25, Dietrich said. The report includes data from both PowerSchool and NCSIS powered by Infinite Campus.

Dietrich said the new system has helped districts run their dropouts against the entire state to locate students who moved within the state.

“What that allowed them to do is get more accurate reporting on where students ended up or did not end up,” he said. “So I think that helps clarify the records for them and account for some of those increases.”

Recommendations

New this year, the report — which is received by the General Assembly — also includes recommendations.

The report includes three recommendations:

• Establish a targeted middle-to-high school transition initiative for grades 6-9. The initiative would prioritize tiered behavioral and academic interventions, the presentation says, and is expected to identify at-risk students earlier and reduce reliance on exclusionary discipline.
• Expand annual reporting to included advanced analyses and continuous monitoring. The presentation says this will provide “stronger alignment between data, prevention strategies, and student support efforts.”
• Continue training for public school units on discipline, alternative learning, and dropout data. Such training will help ensure “discipline decisions are made in a consistent and defensible way, using shared standards so actions are fair, clearly documented, and meaningful for follow-up and intervention,” the presentation says.

Maher said DPI would like to establish a work group that, among other things, would identify “bright spot schools” whose best practices could be replicated at schools with similar demographics.

Importantly, Maher said such best practices should focus on student support, not discipline or remediation. Moving forward, he said schools should make data-informed decisions to continue supporting students and fostering safe learning environments.

“Progress is real, and policy should be proportional to the evidence,” Maher said.

This was originally published on .

First grade was the year “all hell broke loose” for Carter, a South Carolina teenager with multiple disabilities whose school career was marked by suspensions of every kind. In-school. Out-of-school. Forced to sit alone at lunch. Kicked off the school bus. 

In a powerful story and state-by-state data analysis this week, my colleague Amanda Geduld offers disturbing new insight into the degree to which children with disabilities are disproportionately subjected to school suspensions, sometimes for minor infractions. Disciplinary actions against children with disabilities aren’t just a matter of their behaviors, Amanda found. They’re also greatly affected by where the student lives. 

Amanda digs into the repeated school suspensions of Carter, which his mom said could have been avoided had the local schools provided adequate special education services that federal law demands. His case highlights a trend: No state suspends children with disabilities more often than South Carolina. 

“It’s just reflective of the state of public education of South Carolina as a whole,” said Macaulay Morrison, the assistant director of a health and legal advocacy clinic at the University of South Carolina Law School. “Sometimes it’s easier for schools to exclude these students than it is for them to figure out how to support them.”

Read Amanda’s story here, and see how the numbers stack up in your state. 

In the News

New on the First Amendment battlefield: A slim majority of American adults support teacher-led Christian prayers in public schools, according to a new Pew Research Center report released just days after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott authorized Bible readings in schools and required Ten Commandments displays in classrooms. The Texas laws are part of a broader conservative push to bolster religion in schools — with hopes of ultimately finding favor on the Supreme Court. On the same day Texas required the display of the Ten Commandments in schools, a federal appeals court struck down a similar law in Louisiana. | ����Ӱ��

Developments on Trump’s immigration crackdown: Federal immigration agents arrested more than 30 people after conducting a raid at a south Alabama high school construction site. Officials said the operation “sends a strong message to those who exploit illegal labor for profit.” |

• In Florida, agents visited the offices of a state-funded children’s center in a search for their undocumented parents. |
• Detroit teenager Maykol Bogoya-Duarte has been deported to his home country of Colombia after he was detained by immigration officials during a routine traffic stop while driving to a school field trip. |
• In New York, residents confronted masked immigration agents lingering hundreds of feet from an elementary school. Agents got into a car crash as they attempted to flee. |
• The State Department will screen the social media profiles of student visa applicants for “any indications of hostility” toward the U.S. |
• A former federal immigration officer in North Carolina was arrested on allegations he possessed images of child sexual abuse. |
• Student absences have surged by 22% this year in California’s Central Valley amid heightened immigration enforcement activity in the agricultural region, a new study found. |

The Loudoun County, Virginia, school district announced plans to install on its campuses artificial intelligence-powered surveillance cameras designed to identify weapons, fights and medical emergencies. |

A critic’s take on Pride Month: Libraries have become “centers for queer resistance” in the fight against censorship. A new investigation takes aim at LGBTQ+-affirming books which, according to the author, glamorize “medicalized sex changes as brave and heroic.” |

• The Trump administration has gutted a specialized suicide prevention line for LGBTQ+ youth, who are far more likely than their straight peers to die by suicide. |
• In a major civil rights setback, the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors. |
• The Education Department announced the California Interscholastic Federation violated the civil rights of female students by allowing transgender athletes to compete on school sports teams that align with their gender identity. |

The Senate education committee voted Thursday to approve Trump nominees Penny Schwinn as the Education Department’s second in command and Kimberly Richey to lead the agency’s civil rights office. Both were advanced to the full Senate on 12-11 votes along party lines. | ����Ӱ��

A federal judge has awarded more than $900,000 to a former Pennsylvania middle school teacher who was fired for attending the “Stop the Steal” insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. |

The Senate parliamentarian will allow a provision to ban state regulation of artificial intelligence for a decade, including rules around its use in schools, to remain in President Donald Trump’s sweeping spending bill. |

A bulletin from the National Terrorism Advisory System has warned of a “heightened threat environment” for cyberattacks after the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear sites. In an unrelated cybersecurity advisory last year, the federal government cited the potential threat of Iran-based hackers carrying out cyberattacks on U.S. “education, finance, healthcare and defense sectors.” | ,

A massive settlement, behind closed doors: The school board in Los Angeles has quietly agreed to issue $500 million in bonds to settle hundreds of decades-old sexual abuse cases involving former students. |

ICYMI @The74

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Emotional Support

Look. At. This. Chunk. 

No really, this dog’s name is Chunk! This pup is 74 editor Kathy Moore’s 11-week-old Corgi pup nephew, and we get it. He’s unbearably cute. Try not to make a scene.

On a brisk February morning with snow on the ground, children arrived at Tsé Bit A’í Middle School in Shiprock, on the Navajo Nation in northwestern New Mexico. Word in the hallway was something was afoot: Substitute teachers were waiting in each classroom.

The children’s 35 regular teachers were spotted, sitting in a large circle in the library. Students paused at the doorway to watch.

The teachers, along with school counselors, were training in a new disciplinary approach, often referred to as “restorative justice,” which seeks to rebuild relationships, not simply punish the student who caused the harm. It’s a model New Mexico’s state education department has begun testing with a pilot project in a few other school districts.

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Rooted in the belief that everybody has a role to play in addressing harm, restorative justice largely relies on people talking and listening carefully to one another.

“I was raised in circles like this; it’s a traditional practice,” said Principal Pandora Mike, who, like much of the school’s staff and nearly all of its 414 students, is Navajo. “Restorative Justice is about self-regulation, responsible decision making. You really want to help students do a lot of reflection on their own behaviors, their own actions.”

In addition to “circles of sharing,” the program promotes communication through classroom respect agreements to build a greater sense of community among students. When rules are broken, it focuses on mediation. And it seeks to help students understand the root of their misbehavior and how they might do better.

Proponents say it’s a more effective and less harmful disciplinary approach than removing kids from school through long-term suspensions or expulsions, which are tied to lower graduation rates and a higher risk of incarceration.

That’s particularly important for Indigenous students. In New Mexico, Native American students are expelled far more often than any other group and at least four times as often as white students, according to an by .

One school district 90 miles to the south of Tsé Bit A’í, Gallup-McKinley County Schools, is responsible for most of that disparity. Gallup-McKinley has a quarter of New Mexico’s Native students but accounted for at least three-quarters of Native student expulsions in the state during the four school years ending in 2020.

The school district’s expulsion rate was far higher than the rest of the state, according to New Mexico education department records. The district contested that finding, saying some long-term suspensions were mistakenly classified as expulsions. But Gallup-McKinley’s rate of removals from school for 90 days or more, regardless of what they were called, remained far higher than other districts across the state, an analysis by the news outlets confirmed.

While Gallup-McKinley has not embraced restorative justice as an alternative to exclusionary punishments, more than a dozen New Mexico schools have, including some serving Navajo children. Twelve statewide are participating in a new state pilot program, but Tsé Bit A’í and Cuba Independent Schools, both of which serve large Indigenous student populations, initiated the change on their own.

In 2020, leaders from all 23 of New Mexico’s federally recognized tribes , including a shift from harsh discipline and “criminalization of Native children” to restorative justice and peacemaking approaches.

The stakes are high. Expelling and suspending students frequently doesn’t address the underlying problems and can even backfire, making misbehavior more likely, said Daniel Losen. Losen is the director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and senior director of education at the Washington, D.C.-based National Center for Youth Law. He studies racial disparities in school discipline. Pushing children out of classrooms increases the risk of a child dropping out of school or winding up in the criminal justice system, he said.

Students – particularly students of color – are often punished harshly and at higher rates for vaguely defined, catchall minor infractions like disorderly conduct, Losen noted. “That’s where the largest racial disparities are usually found.”

At Gallup-McKinley, for example, disorderly conduct was one of the most frequent reasons for expulsions between the school years 2016-17 to 2019-20, but the term wasn’t even defined in the district’s discipline policy until the 2022-23 school year, after the news organizations asked district officials about this and other facets of student discipline policy. Statewide, Native students were expelled for disorderly conduct at least 76 times and law enforcement was involved in 193 such incidents. About 90% of these incidents occurred in Gallup-McKinley schools.

Overuse of punitive discipline just pushes kids into an adversarial relationship and discourages them, said Tsé Bit A’í Assistant Principal Dannell Yazzie, who is Navajo. Her school is using classroom circles focused on relationship building, Yazzie said, then disciplinary reconciliation circles in the coming school year. She’s put together a team of teachers.

But there are critics.

“Restorative justice means no consequences,” said state Rep. Rod Montoya, a Republican who represents the neighboring town of Farmington, adding that talking circles can disrupt teachers’ instruction time in the classroom. “Teachers are not psychologists.” Montoya said he’s written to school superintendents asking that they not adopt restorative justice practices.

A decade ago, the New Mexico Center for Law and Poverty spotlighted two school districts next to the Navajo Nation for harsh disciplinary practices in a scathing report: Gallup-McKinley County Schools and Cuba Independent Schools district, on the eastern edge of the Navajo Nation.

In the years after, the Cuba school district adopted talking circles as the first response to most student misbehavior but Gallup-McKinley has not. Cuba’s expulsion and out-of-school suspensions have all but disappeared, according to the district’s reports to the state.

Victoria Dominguez, a counselor in Cuba schools, said just holding a talking circle between students or cliques after an altercation can reveal how the school’s rumor mill can cause students to react to falsehoods or misunderstandings without checking to see if they’re true.

The size of circles depends on who is involved and is willing to participate. It might gather a counselor and two students who fought, for example, or larger groups populated by students, family members and teachers.

If students are at odds, Dominguez and their principal will bring them in to talk things out. Problems often stem from misunderstandings, and social media cell phone apps like Snapchat have made things worse, fueling the rumor mill, she said. If a problem persists, they’ll sign non-contact agreements to avoid one another as a cool-down mechanism, or bring in the students’ family members for a talking circle.

“[T]he number of fights has declined significantly with talking circles,” Dominguez said. “It’s been a huge turnaround for the district.”

She doesn’t always wait for an infraction to get kids together to talk. “I’ve pulled kids together to say there’s a rumor circulating that you are going to fight at lunch. We’re doing a mediation circle.”

Cuba has a high population of students who lack secure housing, and who suffer from sleep deprivation and hunger, Dominguez noted. Fostering a culture of communication can help. Sometimes, by asking questions and listening closely, problems at home can be identified and addressed by the district, she said.

“If a teacher’s explaining a really cool math concept but a kid hasn’t eaten in three days or is wearing the same clothes for four or five days, [they are] not going to be able to pick it up,” she said. “In high poverty communities, a lot of times, students are told their truths – they are not given an opportunity to speak their truth, to tell their story from their point of view, uninterrupted. To be heard.”

Cuba district has seen attendance improve since adopting talking circles, she said, with fewer out-of-school suspensions and fewer missed days.

But until recently, just a handful of New Mexico schools in the state used talking circles. So last year, the state Public Education Department announced a $237,500 federally funded pilot program to expand restorative justice in schools, with the goal of reducing suspension and expulsion rates – and ultimately, improve graduation rates.

A dozen schools across the state agreed to have some of their teachers trained and then train their colleagues through the PED pilot program.

Monte del Sol, a public charter school in Santa Fe, sent two 10th-grade students, a counselor and administrators to the state’s training. The 10th-graders facilitated the school’s first disciplinary remediation circle, with two groups of 8th grade girls.

It didn’t bring an immediate breakthrough, but Amy Garcia, one of the student facilitators, said it was a good start. “Not everybody is super comfortable with talking about how they feel,” Garcia said. “We did come to an agreement where they would at least give each other their space.”

Restorative justice proponents like Emma Green, who runs the state’s pilot program, see student misbehavior as a red flag that something’s wrong in a child’s life, and an opportunity for constructive intervention – to discover the underlying problem, mediate and help the child take responsibility for how they’ve affected others, and to connect the child to needed support.

But student support services are in very short supply in much of the state, skeptics point out. They question whether restorative justice will work across the state.

Making a student who has been victimized sit down with the student who bullied or victimized them can retraumatize that child, Montoya said.

When he asked the state public education department whether talking circles would be used even in cases of bullying or physical violence, he was told that is up to individual school districts, which have wide latitude in setting discipline policies.

Restorative justice facilitator Randy Compton, from Boulder, Colorado, said talking circles won’t resolve every problem. With a case of mild bullying, a talking circle might be appropriate, he said, “but at the extreme end, a child who bullies others will often just manipulate the process. In those cases, you would not necessarily want to put the child and the student who bullied them in a talking circle.”

In addition to trainings at Tsé Bit A’í Middle and Shiprock High School, Compton also has trained staff at Albuquerque Public Schools and the Aztec, N.M. school district, and schools across the U.S.At Tsé Bit A’í, assault, drug and tobacco offenses still will automatically involve out-of-school suspensions, Yazzie said. Upon their return to school, students will attend counseling interventions to discuss their behavior and how it impacted others.“People think we just sit in a circle and sing Kumbaya, but it’s not like that,” she said. “It’s not without consequences. And we will discuss why children behave in a certain way. It needs to be both. We’re providing them with an opportunity to learn and think about their behavior.”Tsé Bit A’í is adopting restorative justice practices in stages, Yazzie said.

From initial training sessions to successful implementation, programs typically require three to five years to become a smoothly operating part of a school’s discipline culture, Compton said.

But that can be a challenge in New Mexico, where schools struggle with staff turnover. Teachers and administrators come and go frequently. Just as a school begins to make progress, trained staff and organizers will move away, and their replacements must then be convinced to invest their time and energy into learning an unfamiliar approach to student discipline.

Ultimately, university teacher training programs will have to make restorative justice part of their regular curriculum so that newly arriving teachers already understand the concepts and practices involved, Yazzie said.

“The [college] textbooks definitely do not teach this,” Dominguez agreed.

For now, it’s up to schools and districts.

Green echoed Yazzie’s point that restorative justice is not about abandoning consequences for student misbehavior.

“Letting people off the hook is absolutely not restorative,” she said. “The foundation and the heartbeat of restorative justice is accountability.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Shaun Griswold for questions: info@sourcenm.com. Follow Source New Mexico on and .

New Mexico lawmakers are debating  that would curtail expulsions and out-of-school suspensions for the state’s youngest students.

National studies show that children in child care and preschool programs are at least three times more likely than older children to be expelled. The bill would bar out-of-school suspensions for children younger than 8 years old, except in cases where the child threatened, attempted or caused bodily injury to another individual that was not in self-defense. And none of those suspensions would be allowed to exceed three days. It would bar expulsions except for instances where a child carried a   to school. It would also require detailed discipline data reporting that could help identify racial and other disparities in how these students are punished. 

“We’ll have data that can explain what’s happening, but also the impacts to the young child,” said the legislation’s sponsor, Sen. Harold Pope, D-Albuquerque, adding that Senate Bill 283 would help spot children who are “falling through the cracks or being harmed.”

The proposed law would apply to all public schools and licensed childcare facilities that receive funding from the state, although children whose parents pay the full cost of childcare would not be covered, according to an analysis by the Legislative Education Study Committee.  

The legislation is supported by the state Public Education Department and Early Childhood Education and Care Department, as well as a dozen children’s advocacy organizations and the American Federation of Teachers. And the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Education has issued a  urging states to “severely limit” expulsions and suspensions in early education settings. But the bill is facing pushback from New Mexico’s public school districts and some in the child care industry.

More than 900 children in kindergarten through second grade were suspended across New Mexico last school year, Early Childhood Education Cabinet Secretary Elizabeth Groginsky told the Senate Education Committee at a Feb. 13 hearing.  

Federally funded Head Start programs, which enrolled almost 9,000 children last year, already prohibit suspensions and expulsions. But last school year, a  than 32,000 children were enrolled in other pre-K programs or in childcare facilities funded by the state. 

Data isn’t available for how many children enrolled in those childcare facilities have been suspended or expelled over the past decade. The proposed law would require that data be reported.

School districts are required to report discipline data for students in kindergarten through second grade. New Mexico In Depth obtained that data from the New Mexico Public Education Department (PED) for a story about school discipline . 

An analysis of that data showed that statewide, these children were suspended from school more than 7,400 times and expelled at least 17 times between the 2010-11 and 2020-21 school years. Of those suspensions, 5,481 involved violence, threats or weapons possession, but the data does not reveal how many of those incidents involved attempts to harm another student. 

The number of out-of-school suspensions overall trended upward during those years.  

More than a third of all K-2nd grade out-of-school suspensions and expulsions during 2010-11 to 2020-21 involved special education students, PED data showed. Eighty-seven percent involved boys.

Nationally, Native American, Hispanic, and African American preschoolers are more likely than white children to be kicked out of preschool, Groginsky said. Special education students are also more likely to be suspended, she noted.

“We see that it’s disproportionately boys, boys of color that are being suspended and expelled,” she said. “We see it in our own data. We see it in national data.”

Suspending young children from preschool or early grades leaves them more likely to drop out later in life, or to become incarcerated, Groginsky said.

The proposed law would require detailed reporting about how childcare and preschool facilities use in-school and out-of-school suspension to discipline children. Licensed preschool and childcare facilities receiving state funds would have to report details about the grade, race, ethnicity, English learner status and disabilities of students, children’s total numbers of in-school and out-of-school suspensions, and the misbehavior leading to suspension. They would also be required to report the total number of days a child was excluded from class, and if the child was sent to an “alternative education setting” such as a detention room during in- or out-of-school suspensions.

“There’s an opportunity here for us to truly understand what’s happening in our early childhood classrooms all the way through early elementary, and to use that data to drive better decision making, better supports, and help for our classroom educators,” Groginsky said.

Detailed early childhood suspension data would also help the state with outreach to train teachers and administrators about implicit (unconscious) teacher and administrator bias, Groginsky said. 

“We need to prioritize for all of our early elementary educators research-based, trauma-informed professional development,” Groginsky told New Mexico In Depth. It is “essential” that young children learn how to solve problems and resolve conflict, and that means training early-childhood educators how to help children develop those skills, she added. 

The legislation specifies no penalties for facilities that fail to comply, and the bill would not impose any significant costs on state government other than the cost of receiving discipline reports. But critics said the bill could prove costly for preschools and childcare facilities to implement, and could open up childcare centers to lawsuits if they are unable to remove children from classrooms for longer periods of time. 

The New Mexico School Superintendents Association and New Mexico School Boards Association asked that lawmakers exclude kindergarten through second grade from the bill, leaving only preschools, but a motion failed in the Senate Education Committee that would have amended the bill to do so. 

Sen. Bill Soules, a Democrat from Las Cruces and himself an educator, voiced concern about the state’s “incredible shortage” of behavioral health providers – experts who would be needed to help preschool facilities address problematic behavior and avoid out-of-school suspensions. But Groginsky said her department stands ready to provide clinical experts to help preschool facilities, and to coach teachers and administrators.

“They would be contractors,” Groginsky said. “We have 15 right now going through using our federal relief money, going through a certification program. So our goal is to have 15 full-time … infant and early childhood Mental Health consultants. And our goal is to grow that to about 60 over the next three to five years.”

The bill now awaits its second hearing, by the Senate Judiciary Committee, with just a little more than three weeks left in the legislative session.

his article was originally published by . 

Early on in his administrative career, longtime Missouri educator Chris Belcher had what he called the worst experience of his life.

“The kid screamed, and I felt awful,” he said.

He didn’t want to do it, but he had to.

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It was the 1980s, and Belcher was told to paddle a student who was enrolled in the school district’s special education program. The administrator who typically oversaw discipline for that particular student was out that day, leaving Belcher to handle the punishment.

As upsetting as the situation was to both the student and Belcher, it also reaffirmed his strong belief in cognitive and nonpunitive strategies.

School corporal punishment, which gained traction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is a physical disciplinary method to correct student misbehavior. In most instances where the practice is used, students are paddled by a district superintendent or school principal.

Missouri’s Cassville R-IV School District made headlines last August when it chose to reinstate its corporal punishment policy. That move — which ignited a national conversation on swatting’s place in schools — came shortly after a state law regarding student discipline took effect. The statute, , required districts to get written parent permission to administer swats before doing so. Districts that implement corporal punishment are expected to send out permission forms at the start of the school year.

Amid the media frenzy surrounding Cassville’s decision came public debate on the practice. Although some argue corporal punishment traumatizes students and damages childhood development, others call the tactic time-tested and effective. Apparently caught in the middle are districts with policies that allow corporal punishment but instead opt for conversation-based strategies.

So at a time when alternative behavior management practices have become mainstream, why do some Missouri districts hold on to corporal punishment?

Carla London, chief equity officer of Columbia Public Schools, identified a core reason:

“People go to — good or bad — they go back to what they know, what was used on them.”

Columbia Public Schools does not use corporal punishment, but London has about 30 years of experience in monitoring childhood development. She spent most of her career in education but also worked at Texas Child Protective Services and was a medical social worker at Children’s Medical Center Dallas. She has a background in psychology.

‘Building strong character’

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .

This essay originally appeared

Each school year,  from school. But there are huge disparities in who those students are. According to a study published in American Psychologist Journal, . For example, the Indiana Department of Education data shows, “Black students in Indiana  to get an out-of-school suspension than their white peers, and twice as likely to receive an in-school suspension…”

While those numbers should be unsettling for every parent, they’re especially worrisome to Black and Hispanic families – who see that pattern of disproportionate discipline repeated in state after state – and have to live with the too-common view that their kids are just more disruptive than other kids.

Bad behavior happens with all groups of students, of course. And schools need to take measures to protect students and staff or preserve order in the classroom. (According to the U.S. Dept. of Education School Discipline Laws and Regulations, there are  at the 133,090 U.S. public schools: in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, law enforcement referrals, school-related arrests; and expulsion). But when those measures are shaped by the teacher or administrator’s bias, an unclear or unfair disciplinary code, or the reluctance of schools to try to resolve the underlying conflicts that started a problem, it’s the Black and Hispanic students who too often pay the heaviest price.

There are ways, however, that parents of color can be on guard against excessive discipline and see to it that when their kids misbehave, the response is no different than it would be for a white child. Here are three important factors to consider and five things to do to help your child navigate disciplinary issues.

3 discipline issues to consider

1. Zero-tolerance discipline policies can be damaging

The imposition of  discipline policies in many schools, which include strict mandates for punishment and no consideration of any underlying circumstances of the offense or offender, has affected all students, especially Black and Hispanic students. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), zero-tolerance school policies continue to face criticism for inflexibility. Nevertheless, a zero-tolerance policy still exists in 87 percent of all public schools and is .

But stiff mandated punishments don’t always fit the crime. Two years ago at  outside Boston, 15-year-old Marcus Leitch, who had no previous disciplinary issues, garnered local news attention when he was suspended for 90 days after a fight with a student he said bullied him. The school ultimately reduced the punishment to less than a month – but only after his mother enlisted the help of a .

The school’s discipline policy hasn’t changed because the punishment was consistent with their . It states, “Administration reserves the right to increase the length of a suspension to any number of days up to and including ten (10) for a short-term suspension and ninety (90) for a long-term suspension. This would be done in situations that are considered to be severe or for repeated disciplinary transgressions and/or in situations where corrective measures have not been heeded by the student.”

Even though the suspension was reduced, Marcus still struggled at home, not understanding the severe punishment for what he called “self-defense.” “I don’t know what to do for him,” said his mother, Kerry Sullivan. “He’s not the same child, and it infuriates me.”

2. Educator bias can mean more severe discipline

Bias on the part of teachers and administrators can be a real roadblock to fair discipline for Black and Hispanic students. In 2019, an extensive  found evidence of a racial disparity in school discipline, noting that while bias was not always present, it certainly was there sometimes. Interestingly, they suggested that the association between racial bias and disciplinary disparities was strongest in counties with a larger white population. In addition, the absence of positive portrayals of African-Americans in the media, they found, could lead to greater community bias and make teachers quicker to discipline Black students. “It is possible,” they wrote, “that living in a region in which Black students are disciplined to a greater extent than white students exacerbates and/or reinforces the explicit racial biases of the community.”

3. Restorative justice promises fairer discipline in schools

The presence of bias and the inflexibility of zero-tolerance policies highlights the need for greater nuance in dealing with students of color.

Disciplinary initiatives like  are a popular alternative since they aim to build a healthy classroom community to deter volatile situations. These programs enable offenders to own their actions, mediate their problems, and propose solutions within a school community or classroom. It is intended as a first disciplinary response, before harsher penalties later, if needed.

Restorative Justice programs have been supported by 21 states (and the District of Columbia) since 2011. According to the Center for Poverty and Inequality, “ and connectedness, promotes student health and well-being, lowers discipline rates, and reduces racial disparities in school discipline.” It also has the big added benefit of keeping students learning in school instead of out on the streets.

Shavonne Gibson, former assistant superintendent for teaching and learning for the Washington, DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education, has . She believes this alternative is valuable, as opposed to a zero-tolerance policy, since the program holds students accountable without out-of-school suspensions. “If we continue to exclude students from their learning environment due to discipline, we continue to put the students often who need us most, further and further behind.”

But there has been some criticism of this relatively new discipline practice. Dr. Mikhail Lyubansky, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor, published a Psychology Today article describing “Nine Criticisms of School Restorative Justice.” For example, one practice involves students meeting in a classroom circle to hash it out. This, Dr. Lyubansky writes, “.” Furthermore, he argues, the goal of restorative justice should not be contingent on , and because the program’s goals are often framed around “mutual understanding,” there will inevitably be premature reconciliations with “unmet needs” for all parties involved.

So caught between zero-tolerance policies, implicit and explicit bias in schools and communities, and the uncertainties of a new way of discipline, what’s a parent to do?

5 ways parents can navigate discipline issues

1. Ask for the school discipline policy when your child first enrolls. Know before trouble arises what the school’s discipline code is, and ask for a printed copy of it. (). Find out if your child’s school has zero-tolerance discipline policies. And remember that in a handful of states,  can still be used on younger children – and is used most often in . So be sure to ask about school discipline up front.
2. Find out if the punishment fits the misconduct. Ask the school for a detailed account of your child’s alleged misconduct and why the specific consequence was enforced. Then ask about the history of similar misconduct at the school and how those incidents were handled. This should help you understand if the discipline is fair or misplaced.
3. Find out if the school has a restorative justice program. Since fewer than 25 states’ legislation supports restorative justice programs, there’s a chance your child’s school does not. Be sure to call and find out. If they do, ask about the specific practices of the program and look for online information about it. Lastly, talk with your child about the program, and ask if the experience with restorative justice is working. To find out about establishing such a program in your school, go to George Lucas Educational Foundation’s website to find . The main goal is to engage the school community: “Seek school broad support and generate interest and commitment through education and trust building.”
4. Push for your child’s school to hire Black and Hispanic teachers. Do not hesitate to inquire about the diversity amongst the school’s faculty.
   
   Studies have found that when both the student and teacher are Black, there are fewer suspensions and expulsions. Moreover, research has also found that Black students’ academic and behavioral success typically improves when they’re represented amongst faculty, .
5. Don’t be afraid of asking for help beyond the school. Sometimes, despite a school’s repeated denials, bias is clearly involved in deciding on discipline. If you haven’t resolved the problem at the school to your satisfaction, you may have to reach out to someone at the district level, or even contact the NAACP, as Kerry Sullivan did in Massachusetts, the , or another group that can help you redress unfair punishment.

Every disciplinary scenario is not the same. So take your child’s case step-by-step. Listen to your child’s account of the incident that caused the problem and write it down (what happened, who was involved, how it started, and the date and time). Then start by talking with the teacher or school official who was first involved with the incident. If you’re not satisfied, document that exchange too, and proceed to the next higher level – which could be a department head, dean, assistant principal, or principal – before making an appeal at the district level. While it’s always best for parents to know the rules of the school beforehand, remember that none of those rules ever say that Black and Hispanic students should be treated worse than everyone else.

Even when suspensions significantly declined through the pandemic, racial disparities in school discipline persisted. COVID-19 only magnified how that created and those inequities .

While federal guidance and policy recommendations can help shape the conversation, they too often miss the point on practical solutions — particularly the fact that these solutions begin with supporting the .

For six years as a classroom teacher, I focused on improving school culture and discipline, realizing early on that if I didn’t, the very inclusive classroom spaces I sought to create for my predominantly Black students would be negated by traditional teaching approaches that punish them for culturally and age-appropriate behaviors. It became clear over time that discipline was actually less about practices that excluded students, and more about those that included them.

Here are five ways teachers can be supported to address school discipline this year. They are based on the , families and school community in South Los Angeles, in addition to my work as a consultant at the and research for the .

Understand the spectrum of school discipline. Although the past decade has yielded major efforts to reduce punitive discipline practices like suspensions and expulsions, it should be clear that discipline isn’t simply a response to behavior, but instead reflects a school’s .

In “,” my team of researchers and I found that there are varying approaches to school discipline that can be thought of as a continuum. Visualized on a chart divided into quadrants, a vertical axis defines the purpose of school discipline as running from domination to liberation and a horizontal axis defines a range of approaches for achieving it from exclusionary to educative. The latter is generally described as discipline that teaches students to develop self-discipline.

Teachers and administrators engage in different actions based on their beliefs about the purpose of and approaches to discipline. Beginning with this spectrum helps educators map not just where they’re at in their discipline practices, but where they want to be and how they can get there.

Invest in ongoing relationships with students, families and community. While the conversation around school discipline tends to focus on the exclusion of students from the classroom or school after an incident already occurred, the need for discipline is greatly reduced when teachers , families and surrounding community. These relationships help teachers learn more about their students, which not only develops deeper levels of trust but provides reference points for how to create a more inclusive environment that aligns academic and behavioral expectations in school and at home.

Ask the question of relevance. When behavior issues arise and discipline is needed, an often overlooked question is how relevant is what students are learning. Decades of research has found that effective teachers with the real, material conditions of their lives. As a way to measure relevance, whether every assignment they give students has some immediate, applicable lesson or deepens and widens their connection and understanding of their world. This level of purpose in including and engaging students in their learning can .

Sharpen culturally responsive teaching skills. Thinking critically about how to teach can help educators gain a deeper understanding of their students’ learning needs. Culturally responsive teaching — which stems from — considers students’ cultural backgrounds as strengths in the classroom and as a focal point for how to approach instruction. These students’ gender, age, socioeconomic status and where they live — is it in the suburbs or a rural area?

For example, in some cultures, interrupting shows engagement in the conversation, not disrespect. Culturally responsive teachers incorporate that in the lesson instead of disciplining students for it. Teachers wield significant power in shaping classrooms to include and validate culturally appropriate behaviors that are often otherwise targeted for exclusionary discipline.

When possible, smile. My students always used to tell me, “Mr. Pham, you should smile more.” I didn’t know it at the time, but their advice is that suggests greeting students “at the door sets a positive tone and can increase engagement and reduce disruptive behavior.” Although smiling in school is not always the easiest task, it might be that one small thing teachers can do to have a big impact on what already is proving to be a difficult year for students.

is an assistant professor at the College of Social Work at the University of Tennessee. Her research examines disproportional school suspensions and, in particular, the ways in which inequity impacts the experiences of students of color. Below are highlights from an interview with The Conversation. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

about the disproportionate suspension of Black girls in the U.S. Why is equity so hard in our schools?

Most recently my work has focused on understanding and addressing racially disproportional school suspensions and the ways in which those are also gender disproportionate. For example, we know nationally that in the , over 2.5 million children received one or more out-of-school suspensions. While these numbers are going down compared to years prior, students of color and students with disabilities are receiving of suspensions and expulsions.

It’s also important to disaggregate the data to understand trends at the intersection of race, gender, class and other student characteristics. For example, in 2017-2018, Black girls times the risk of receiving an out-of-school suspension compared to white girls. Nationally, they are the only group of girls in relation to their enrollment.

To address high and disproportional suspensions, schools have implemented multitiered interventions, such as restorative justice practices, and positive behavior interventions, which create positive, predictable, equitable and safe learning environments. While some studies show a reduction in high and disproportional suspensions from these efforts, discipline disparities .

However, some schools are seeking to change these disproportional rates for Black girls and other girls of color by partnering with community organizations such as , and , among others, to provide gender and culturally responsive interventions.

Yet, a major barrier to intervention is the perception adults hold about Black girls. Instead of receiving developmentally appropriate and socioemotional support, – a concept coined to describe how Black girls are disproportionately perceived as less innocent, needing less nurturing, less protection, less support, knowing more about sex and adult topics, and are more adultlike than their peers.

While some may generally assume that students only receive school discipline for breaking school rules, social scientists have used data to show how race, gender, disability and class bias at the intersection of punitive discipline policies and systematic inequities lead to disproportional suspensions.

For example, we know that in school for wearing their natural hair in afros or having braids, both of which are styles that allow Black girls to embrace their beauty and have cultural pride in the face of Eurocentric beauty ideals that suggest that straight hair is more professional and neat.

In other cases, Black girls are more likely to receive school discipline outcomes for subjective infractions such as tone of voice, clothing and disrespect . And that’s part of the way racial and gender discrimination intersect to create disproportional suspensions for Black girls. In my research, I build on these ideas and also explore how adverse childhood experiences, including neglect, abuse, neighborhood violence and parent incarceration and/or death, become another layer by which Black girls are misunderstood.

how race, gender and adultification bias are shaping the way adults perceive the behaviors of Black girls and how this might impact how their trauma-response behaviors are perceived. Will it be met with punishment or support? Increasingly, schools are and policies to decrease the punishment of childhood adversities in school.

But I wonder if they account for the way that race, gender and class bias and inequities both inform adverse childhood experiences and inform adult perceptions about children’s behaviors. While school-based trauma-informed practices are a step in the right direction, the next question I also ask is, how are school districts defining what an adverse childhood experience (ACE) is? Are they using the normed on a predominantly white middle-class population, or are they using the [expanded measure] that surveyed a diverse population and such as racial discrimination, foster care involvement, neighborhood violence and bullying?

Without using the expanded definition, it is possible that schools are continuing to overlook students’ needs and instead punish their trauma. My colleagues and I suggest that practitioners need at the intersection of race and gender at minimum to begin to provide robust support for students of color experiencing adversity.

Does the race of the teacher play a role in all this?

I would say yes, but I don’t think it’s a simple answer. I think there is a movement that says, hey, we still need more teachers of color to foster a more equitable environment. While there is research to suggest that Black teachers are less likely to suspended Black students, this is not always a consistent finding for boys and girls, and across school demographics, because having a diverse workforce does not .

Therefore, having more teachers of color is not the sole solution to addressing disproportional suspensions. It can help in terms of seeing students’ behaviors in context, particularly when an educator of color comes from a similar cultural context, gender context and class as that young person. However, despite these benefits and their training, it is an uphill battle for any educator to teach in a school system that has not addressed past and present funding, practice and policy inequities.

So when we think about change, it’s really systemic change that we need. We need whole school change to begin to address some of these inequities. Meanwhile, as I continue to co-advocate with my community partners for Black girls, we’ll continue to ask, “Is your intervention intersectional”? – meaning does it take into account the the interconnected nature of social categorizations and discrimination.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license.

Despite a dramatic decline in suspensions as students moved to remote learning during the pandemic, Black children and those in special education were disciplined far more often than white students and those in general education, according to a recent New York University .

The report also indicates students’ this past academic year, echoing news accounts of as a result of and of 850 school leaders where roughly 1 in 3 reported an increase in student fights or physical attacks.

And, it notes, some schools have turned away from restorative justice programs that grew out of the Obama era to more punitive tactics, including out-of-school suspensions, which are particularly damaging to students: shows they and can foreshadow .

The Department of Education is in the process of revising its own disciplinary recommendations with a focus on these same student groups. 

“This is perhaps one of the most urgent civil rights and social justice issues in education,” said Richard O. Welsh, assistant professor at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and the study’s author. “It is incredibly important in our effort to create a more equal and just society that we look at the school system and consider opportunities to learn and grow.”

Welsh cites two sources in his June 10 report: a 13,000-student district in the Atlanta metro area that allowed him to scrutinize its disciplinary records from 2014 to 2022 and news reports on student discipline culled from around the country. 

He found that while suspensions plummeted at the Georgia district during the pandemic, Black students were still more likely to face punishment as compared to white and Hispanic students. from .

Welsh learned that while the Georgia district’s office discipline referrals — such as a teacher sending a child to the principal’s office during in-person learning — declined in the 2020-21 school year, 82% of those referrals involved Black children, who made up only 48% of the student body.

Special education students accounted for 15% of the district’s overall population, but were 42% of the referrals that year. That number was not only disproportionate, it marked a significant spike from pre-pandemic years, when special needs students represented 29% of discipline referrals. Welsh found, too, Black children continued to be singled out in this category: Between 2015 and 2019, 23% of students referred for office discipline were Black students enrolled in special education. The figure jumped to 37% in 2020-21. 

Disproportionality is a longstanding problem when it comes to school discipline. 

American children lost of instruction in the 2017-18 academic year because of out-of-school suspensions, according to the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Education. 

While Black students made up , they accounted for nearly 42% of the suspensions: were 13.75% of and more than 24% of suspensions.

Too much punishment, or too little

Many school systems around the country have not yet compiled their disciplinary data for this past school year. But Welsh said interviews with staff at the Georgia district plus information gleaned from local news reports “points to an uptick in disciplinary infractions and consequences” in 2021-22. 

In step with his findings, Rohini Singh, assistant director at the School Justice Project for Advocates for Children of New York, said some schools are ratcheting up the punishments for incidents that would have been handled differently prior to the pandemic. 

This is particularly true of on-campus fights, she said: A scuffle between two children that drew a crowd of onlookers might not have resulted in an out-of-school suspension in the past, but has stark consequences today — and not only for the students at the heart of the tussle. Onlookers are also being targeted, she said, charged with an infraction called “group violence,” a punishment previously doled out only to those who planned an attack in advance.

“The school is seeking a [lengthy] suspension for all of these students instead of looking at the individual circumstances, understanding what happened, the context,” Singh said. 

New York City Department of Education Press Secretary Nathaniel Styer said he could not comment on specific discipline cases without knowing the names of the students involved. In 2019, the DOE moved to to 20 days, restrict student arrests and train educators in alternative disciplinary practices.

At least reports some NYC teachers and parents believe children are not being punished enough and that serious student misbehavior is often ignored. DOE data does show, from 14,502 for the first four months of the 2017-18 school year to 8,369 for the same time period four years later.

The city school system has committed millions to restorative justice programs that focus on reconciliation over punishment to address long-standing racial disparities. are mixed but a 2021 showed children with the highest levels of exposure to restorative practices experienced Black–white discipline disparities five times smaller than those with the lowest levels of exposure.

Dana Ashley oversees a joint program between the United Federation of Teachers and the DOE aimed at changing the culture and climate in dozens of schools, moving them away from after-the-fact disciplinary tactics. She said teachers who have had continuous training on how to handle student meltdowns feel less discontented than those who have not. 

“Teachers are frustrated when they are told they are supposed to know something, but are not given the resources to know it and do it well,” she said.

Elsewhere in the country, Chicago Public Schools saw a 16% increase in out-of-school suspensions for high school students in the first semester of the 2021-22 school year compared to the same time period two years earlier. 

But, said Jadine Chou, head of safety and security at the 341,000-student district, it could have been far worse: CPS saw a 38% reduction in police notifications and a 50% drop in expulsions at its high schools during this same time period, which Chou attributes to the district’s long-standing commitment to restorative justice. 

“We are very grateful to our school staff that they have signed on to this mindset,” she said, calling it, “the right thing to do.”

Pandemic-related trauma

In the current climate, Andrew R. Hairston, director of the Education Justice Project at Texas Appleseed, said schools must factor in pandemic-related trauma when evaluating student behavior: Educators must remember many of these children lost loved ones, survived food and housing insecurity and endured unprecedented levels of isolation — and, in some cases, abuse — prior to returning to the classroom. 

Their re-entry was botched, he said: Children needed greater flexibility and compassion. 

“There is some lip service to social-emotional learning, but the investments don’t meet the needs,” he said. 

Anell Eccleston, director of care and sustainability at the Student Advocacy Center of Michigan, said his organization’s helpline received nearly 300 calls this past school year from families concerned with disciplinary issues — up from roughly 150 prior to the pandemic. 

“The majority of calls are from students who qualify for free or reduced lunch and single-parent homes, where their parent or guardian has also been impacted harshly by the pandemic,” he said. “Some schools are reimplementing zero tolerance practices and pushing out students at high rates.”

Out West, Paradise Valley Schools, which serves some 30,000 students in Phoenix and Scottsdale, also saw a jump in out-of-school suspensions, from 1,223 in 2018-19 to 1,356 last school year. In-school-suspensions dropped from 1,135 to 1,091 in that same time period. 

School should have given younger students more time to play and older kids a greater opportunity to manage their emotions, perhaps allowing them to leave the classroom to cool off, said Meenal McNary, a co-collaborator with the Round Rock Black Parents Association in Texas. But a “return-to-normal” mindset won out, she said.

McNary pulled her three children, ages 5, 10 and 12, from her local public school district last year in favor of a small charter with a far higher percentage of Black and Hispanic children. 

But even that didn’t spare them from what she believes is outsized punishment for minor infractions, like their failure to sit still and listen: When one of her kids was talking to another student in class while his teacher was delivering a lesson, the educator took away his Chromebook for a week as punishment, she said.

“They use that to learn,” she said. “How does that make any sense? Why can’t we do something different? OK, he’s bored, so what else can we do?”

Add high-stakes tests, pandemic-related stress for all and the constant threat of gun violence and both teachers and students are flailing, she said.

The roughest year of my life 

Some states, recognizing the long-term damage of strict punishment, have tried to dramatically curb heavy-handed measures: Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2015 signed legislation aimed at making suspensions a last resort in an attempt to disrupt the . , including Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Louisiana and Nevada, have limited the grade levels in which out-of-school suspensions and expulsions can be used. 

Denver Public Schools, which served 86,600 students last school year, started implementing restorative justice practices in 2005. A 2017 grant grew the program exponentially, prompting a 64% decrease in out-of-school suspensions overall, with a 77% decline for Black students and a 79% drop for children with disabilities, said Jay Grimm, the district’s director of student equity and opportunity. 

But this past school year brought new challenges. The district saw a marked increase in what the state of Colorado dubs “detrimental behavior,” including student fights and bullying. In 2018-19, such behavior resulted in 1,155 out-of-school suspensions. Last year, the figure jumped to 1,754. 

The district shrunk by roughly 4,000 students in that same time period.

Grimm said the school system remains committed to alternative forms of managing student misbehavior. There was a 41.5% reduction in expulsions this past school year compared to 2018-19, partly because the district changed the way teachers report classroom insubordination, which, he said, “could be subjective or have some bias.”

Nearly everyone who returned to the classroom last school year was at a disadvantage, administrators said. Teachers started the year burned out and those who were new to the profession, who joined the field when school was remote, had trouble managing their students. 

Melissa Laurel, an educator for 21 years, said her South Texas charter school saw a four-fold increase in disciplinary referrals this past academic year. While fights remained relatively uncommon at her 6th- through 12th-grade campus, vandalism skyrocketed as children answered TikTok challenges that left her school’s bathrooms damaged. 

Worse yet, she said, parents, who used to be allies in helping teachers manage their children at school, were suddenly unsupportive. A high-ranking administrator on the road to becoming principal, Laurel left the post to work at the charter’s regional office in part because of poor student behavior.

“It was the roughest year of my life,” said Laurel, who starts her new position in July. “The kids were just more aggressive.” 

David Combs, former assistant principal at a Knoxville, Tennessee high school, said staff observed an increase in racial slurs among students and more vandalism than he had ever seen in his 23 years in education — combined.

Combs, who will start a new position at a different district in the fall, attributes the change to too much time at home and on the internet. 

“It was as if they missed a stage in development and maturity,” he said. “But, toward the end of the year, that was starting to decline.” 

McNary, the Round Rock parent leader, is empathetic to teachers, saying they had to manage an entirely new, fraught landscape: Not only did they have unruly students but they also had to abide by new Texas state laws restricting discussions of systemic racism and LGBTQ issues.

“Teachers not only have to make sure their kids are OK, but also to not say anything wrong,” she said. “When are they supposed to get to know the children?”