Tardiness, absenteeism or “subjective” offenses like defiance or disrespect, should not result in a suspension, the guidance said. And children with disabilities removed from regular classrooms for more serious offenses, or because they could harm themselves or others, must continue to receive special education services. Officials touted the materials, including a Q&A and examples of how to provide behavior support, as the most detailed guidance on students with disabilities the department has released.

“This work is especially urgent now as our schools and our students and families continue to heal from the pandemic,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. “The disruptions of the last two years have led to a sharp increase in students experiencing mental health challenges.”

Recent that despite the drop in suspensions during remote learning — and recent trends toward restorative practices — students with disabilities have been disciplined more during the pandemic than their peers without disabilities. At the same time, educators said this past school year was marked by an increase in student misconduct. According to , roughly half of schools surveyed blamed the “pandemic and its lingering effects” for increases in classroom disruptions, rowdiness and disrespectful behavior. Many students with disabilities, however, also missed out on services required by their individualized education program, or IEP, during the pandemic — services that could have mitigated behavior problems, . 

The guidance also follows a May announcement that the Office for Civil Rights will update Section 504 — a 45-year-old civil rights law meant to protect students with disabilities from discrimination. 

Students with a 504 plan don’t always qualify for special education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. But in their comments, Cardona and Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights, stressed that both are subject to laws preventing discrimination.

“The department is making a statement that school districts need to provide these protections even if they have not identified students with disabilities,” said Dan Stewart, an attorney with the National Disability Rights Network. 

The documents represent the first of two parts focused on discipline. Later this summer, the department is expected to release guidance focusing on racial disparities in discipline. Some expect it to echo Obama-era guidance that many thought overreached because it threatened schools that ran afoul of the policy with a civil rights investigation. 

Tuesday’s release notes that states, under the law, must measure whether there is significant disproportionality in discipline, based on race and ethnicity, of students with disabilities, and  raises the possibility that districts could be subject to a civil rights investigation “if there is question regarding whether school districts are imposing discipline in discriminatory ways.”

Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a vocal critic of the earlier guidance, said there are students who are identified as having an “emotional disturbance” because of their behavior.

“We shouldn’t be surprised if they continue to misbehave, and get suspended or expelled at higher rates,” he said, adding that any civil rights investigation of a district is a “form of punishment” and that districts might “under-discipline their students with disabilities — especially those with emotional disturbance — in order to make their statistics look better.”

But he acknowledged the new document takes a more balanced approach. “[The Office for Civil Rights] is trying to be clear that it doesn’t want schools to be hamstrung in terms of dealing with safety issues, or kids that are disrupting the learning of others.”

Selene Almazan, legal director for the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, agreed, noting that the guidance doesn’t “undercut” schools’ ability to remove a student with disabilities for disciplinary reasons. 

“Schools have always had at their disposal the ability to discipline students who present an immediate danger,” she said. “I don’t think this ties their hands.”

Daniel Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California Los Angeles, argued that the earlier guidance, which former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded, was not an overreach. Critics, he said, “complained that any disparity would be regarded as discriminatory.”

‘Didn’t have a full understanding’

Katy Neas, deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, noted that over the past year of and holding listening sessions with educators and parents that staff turnover was resulting in an increase in discipline that removed students from school.

“There are so many new people in new roles that didn’t have a full understanding of what the law required,” she said, adding that the guidance should help families and schools work toward appropriate services. “Behavior is often a sign of communication when something’s not right.”

The guidance, for the first time, addresses what are known as “,” such as shortening a student’s school day, even when parents haven’t agreed to a change in the student’s special education services. A normal school day for a student with disabilities shouldn’t be any longer or shorter than it is for those without disabilities, the guidance said.

“Informal removals have been lurking in the shadows for quite some time,” Stewart said, adding that the department’s attention to the issue is a monumental step forward” and “puts districts on notice that the department is going to take these things more seriously.”

The guidance also notes that students who have been removed from school while awaiting a threat or risk assessment — a practice that schools are increasingly using to prevent violence — are still protected under IDEA. 

“Sometimes districts say, ‘You can’t come back until you get a letter from a doctor or a psychologist that says you’re OK to return,’ ” Stewart said. “That places the burden on the parent. That’s a removal. That’s an expulsion.”

Advocates also praised the guidance for making a strong statement against restraint and seclusion of students, saying that the department is “not aware of any evidence-based support for the view that the use of restraint or seclusion is an effective strategy in modifying a child’s behaviors that are related to their disability.”

“We’re asking you to take a pledge today,” he said during the May 20 Zoom session, providing a link for participants to sign. Other elements of Thurmond’s agenda include for 100,000 children, free access for families to ebooks and a campaign to deliver to children’s homes.

The event followed the work of a literacy task force Thurmond created last fall. But the superintendent, who is running for reelection, was clear that as long as he’s in charge, California won’t follow the lead of other states — adopting a statewide literacy policy that prioritizes phonics, the connections between letter sounds and written words.

“We are not promoting a one-size-fits-all approach in California,” he said. “That’s been tried before. Our state is too large, is too diverse.” 

Critics dismissed Thurmond’s plan to combat what they describe as a literacy crisis in the nation’s most populous state. 

District leaders, advocates and some lawmakers want all schools to screen for dyslexia, a learning disability, and adopt phonics-based instruction. While Mayor Eric Adams has mandated a phonics-based curriculum and Michigan lawmakers are that would require dyslexia screening, California, some argue, passed up an opportunity to address long-standing achievement gaps in children’s reading.

Overall, 37 percent of the state’s fourth-graders score below the basic level on . The average score for Hispanic students is 27 points below that of white students, and the gap between Black and white students is even larger.

“We keep applying patchwork solutions to a system that never worked,” said Todd Collins, a school board member of the Palo Alto Unified School District in Silicon Valley. He’s also an organizer of the , which last year issued a “report card” ranking districts on the percentage of high-need Hispanic students proficient in reading by third grade. “Library cards and e-books are not going to fix a system that doesn’t teach kids right in the first place.”

Some members of Thurmond’s literacy agree. Kareem Weaver, part of the Oakland NAACP’s education committee and leader of a nonprofit focusing on literacy, said the group produced “a grab bag” of solutions. 

But they “didn’t get to the root cause of why kids aren’t reading,” he said. “We’re not explicitly teaching them how to read and crack the code.”

Thurmond isn’t opposed to districts adopting phonics-based instruction but instead emphasized that because of relief funds and a budget surplus “California has more resources than we’ve ever seen” to provide teacher training and increase the number of reading specialists in schools. passed last year requires new teachers entering the field to know how to teach “foundational reading skills,” but the state isn’t pushing districts to adopt a specific curriculum.

During Thurmond’s online event, only Tyrone Howard, an education professor at the University of California Los Angeles and president-elect of the American Educational Research Association, emphasized phonics. 

“I’m old school,” he said. “The data shows that phonics instruction can go a long way in helping kids to develop the fundamentals around reading.”

Roughly 20 states have adopted so-called based on decades of that emphasize phonics, fluency and vocabulary development as the foundations of learning how to read. Some experts who previously embraced strategies that encouraged children to depend on pictures and familiar words to read ones they don’t know have since changed their views. Once an exemplar of this approach, Lucy Calkins updated her curriculum based on the research, according to a recent article that generated a . 

The question in California is whether a commitment is enough.

“We’ve been committing since ‘A Nation at Risk’ and we haven’t gotten there yet,” said Barbara Nemko, superintendent of the Napa County Office of Education, referring to the landmark 1983 report that inspired education reform efforts. One of Thurmond’s task force co-chairs, she added that if the label has become divisive, “then call it something else.”

Policymakers and education groups in the state are also divided over dyslexia screening, even though over 30 states already have such laws in place. 

Thurmond promised to make a currently in development at the University of California San Francisco available to schools once it’s ready, possibly by the 2023-24 school year. But the California Teachers Association opposes that was introduced last year and never received a hearing. They said mandated screening “lessens the instructional time available for learning the required curriculum.” The California School Boards Association also opposes it.

Reading Recovery and Mississippi

Thurmond isn’t the only state leader whose response to what some have called a has come under fire. Some question the support of researcher and state board Chair Linda Darling-Hammond for Reading Recovery, a long-running tutoring program for first graders offered in about . In a , on pandemic recovery and a recent literacy task force , Darling-Hammond linked the program to successful schools. 

A , presented at a research conference, found that children who participated in the program scored lower on state tests in third and fourth grade than those who didn’t participate. Her comments, said Collins from Palo Alto, show “we have a dated and misguided understanding of what works.”

But Darling-Hammond, who also led President Joe Biden’s education transition team and recommended Miguel Cardona to be U.S. education secretary, told ����Ӱ�� that her statements about the program have never been in the “context of an endorsement” and noted that Reading Recovery is listed in the U.S. Department of Education’s “clearinghouse” of . 

She underscored the limitations of the study, including the fact that the researchers collected follow-up results from just a quarter of the third graders and 16% of fourth graders who were part of the original sample. She noted that a on Reading Recovery, presented at the same conference, found positive results for students in England through age 16.

“I think different interventions work well for different students,” Darling-Hammond said “I hope we won’t get wrapped up in a silver bullet idea about any intervention.” 

She said California fourth graders’ reading scores have inched closer to the since 2013 and highlighted the state’s plan this year to spend $500 billion on literacy initiatives, including reading coaches and specialists. Those positions are necessary, she said, because the state hires too many teachers without full credentials.

“In the schools with the greatest needs, you might have half or more of the teachers without any training to teach reading,” she said.

She also pointed to gains in , which in 2019, made more progress in reading than any other state. But she said people often “simplify” the state’s approach by only highlighting teacher training in phonics-based instruction.

“It’s a very robust program,” she said. “Phonics is very important. Phonemic awareness is very important, but that is not all they do.” 

‘An equity issue’

With the state taking what Darling-Hammond called a more “decentralized” direction than Mississippi, some school and district leaders have moved on their own to revamp the way they teach children to read. 

In 2019, when Lilia Espinoza took over as principal of Hardin Elementary in Hollister, California, she found staff members who worked hard on student reading with little to show for it.

“Historically, this school has struggled to really pump out students who are on grade level,” she said. With a high English learner population — as is the case in many California schools — she said teachers thought if children couldn’t read a word, they just didn’t understand the vocabulary instead of not being able to sound it out.

She reached out to , a private school in Seaside, California, that offered training in structured literacy and using practices that have worked with struggling readers. 

Hardin teachers and reading specialists now devote 45 minutes to an hour each day to explicit phonics lessons as part of a larger English language arts curriculum. Children can get “antsy” during that time, Espinoza said. But despite remote learning, the number of students referred to special education has dropped from 21 in 2017-19 to three this year. She thinks the gains would have been stronger if it hadn’t been for the pandemic.

Now, she worries that other “budget issues” will lead the district to cut funding for reading intervention teachers. She started with four, is now down to two, and might only have one next year. She wrote a letter to state leaders asking for more specialists.

“It’s an equity issue,” she said. “Not being able to secure support for early literacy for all students is not OK.”

The researchers who surveyed almost 15,000 school staff members on student behavior and toxic school environments plan to find out. 

This week, the American Psychological Association  a follow-up survey to keep tracking the extent of violence against school staff and its effect on educators’ decisions to stay in their jobs. 

“This will give us strong comparisons across time,” said Susan McMahon, chair of the task force behind the survey and an associate dean in the College of Science and Health at DePaul University. 

The current study showed 37 percent of administrators have been harassed or threatened with violence from a student, 42 percent have experienced similar treatment from a parent and 15 percent have been the victim of a violent incident involving a student. 

Those findings reflect responses collected during the 2020-21 school year, when many schools remained closed. Recent reports from and professional organizations suggest schools are now seeing even more defiant and aggressive acts from students and that teachers aren’t waiting until the year is over to walk away. 

“The fact that many schools were hybrid or online during the time of the survey makes these rates even more concerning,” McMahon said. “Not only are schools operating in person, the effects of the pandemic are extensive in terms of lost loved ones, lost learning, health issues and the stresses related to COVID-19.”

The results come weeks after President Joe Biden drew attention to student mental health as part of his State of the Union address and followed up by signing a federal budget that includes $111 million to increase the supply of school counselors, social workers and psychologists. The researchers point to that would further increase both staff training in mental health and positions for those professionals. But they also say school climate has deteriorated and adding more staff alone won’t fix the problem. The researchers analyzed over 7,000 written responses, in which staff expressed the need for more security personnel and said they’ve faced “belittling” comments from parents and the community. 

“We’re asking for more than just mental health money,” said Ron Astor, a public affairs and education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a member of the task force. “This is a pressure cooker. We need clear guidelines around issues of civility.”

A from the National Association of Secondary School Principals also pointed to rising concerns over harassment, with 34 percent of principals reporting online threats from parents and 29 percent reporting in-person threats from parents.

Elliot Duchon, a former superintendent in the Jurupa Unified School District, near Los Angeles, said political strife and escalating fights and curriculum have contributed to a breakdown in school climate. In some districts, parents encouraged their children to go to school before districts dropped mandates.

“Parents are literally teaching their kids to disobey school rules,” said Duchon, now a consultant with F3Law, a California firm specializing in education.  

A look that ‘meant trouble’

Tracy Cooper, a veteran school bus driver in the Orange County Public Schools in Florida, who testified during a Thursday on the survey findings, said a parent threatened to have her fired because she enforced the district’s mask policy.

“Luckily for me, I’ve only had one student threaten to physically attack me,” she said. A boy “had this look on his face that meant trouble” and then tried to push her down as she walked through the aisle, she said..

Maggie Maples, a recreational therapist in the Mustang Public Schools, near Tulsa, said she’s arrived at schools this year to work with students only to find they’ve been suspended.

“Eighth-grade boys can get a little violent,” said Maples. “There are a couple kiddos who are really defiant when it comes to agreeing with teachers. They cuss them out or make threatening comments.”

The data shows some educators have had enough. Researchers found between 23 percent and 43 percent of respondents wanted or planned to quit the profession. The rates across regions were fairly similar, ranging from 35 percent in the Midwest and West to 38 percent in the South. State-level surveys, including those in and , point to similar results.

Now a year later, local reports show some followed through on those intentions. In the , 169 teachers left between December and mid-February, and the lost more than 50 teachers shortly after the school year began. Experts, however, say it’s too soon to conclude that teachers are quitting at higher rates than in a typical year. A number of factors, including more open positions fueled by federal relief funds, could contribute to staff vacancies.

“We really are in the middle of a crisis right now,” said Autumn Rivera, a sixth grade science teacher from Colorado and one of four current finalists for national Teacher of the Year. “It’s very rare for teachers to leave in the middle of the school year.”

Not all schools are experiencing the same uptick in violent outbursts. Michael Brown, principal of Winters Mill High School in Carroll County, Maryland, north of Baltimore, said he braced himself for a rash of discipline issues last fall.

While there were a few “rough patches” around the holidays, that’s no different than a typical year, he said, adding that students seem to be grateful for school experiences that they missed while schools were closed. When the school held an outdoor homecoming dance, students stayed until the end despite occasional rain. 

“It’s almost like a reintroduction to everything,” Brown said. “Just having the normal things that they had taken for granted has really helped to reduce some of those behaviors.” 

Disclosure: Linda Jacobson co-authored several books with Ron Astor on and students facing .