Education Week - September 24, 2014 - 11

Broad Discipline Terms Stoke Debates, Foster Disparities
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on discipline released this year, the
U.S. departments of Education and
Justice recommend that districts
clearly define broad offenses, such
as "acting in a threatening manner,"
to ensure they are applied fairly.
In addition, a consensus report
released in July by the Council of
State Governments, with input
from a variety of organizations,
recommends clarifying "ambiguous
catch-all terms" in discipline codes
as a way of ensuring fairness.
Districts Make Changes
While black students represented
16 percent of overall K-12
enrollment in the 2011-12 school
year, they accounted for 33 percent
of students suspended out of
school that year, according to the
most recent data from the U.S. Department
of Education's office for
civil rights.
Some of the largest districts
that have sought to address that
disparity by reconsidering broad
infractions in their discipline
code are in California, where researchers
at the University of
California Los Angeles Center for
Civil Rights Remedies reported
that 34 percent of out-of-school
suspensions issued in 2012-13
were for defiance or disruption.
Such figures are not available
on a national basis as there is
not a uniform method for reporting
discipline causes across state
lines.
In 2013, the 654,000-student Los
Angeles Unified School District
became the largest school system
in the country to ban suspensions
solely for willful defiance. But two
school board members voted against
the move, saying they didn't want
to give students a "free pass" to
misbehave, the Los Angeles Times
reported.
The 58,000-student San Francisco
district followed in February of this
year, with a resolution noting that
36 percent of all suspensions in the
district in 2012-13 listed willful defiance
as the student's most serious
offense.
Advocates for reworking school discipline
have pushed for other urban
systems to take similar steps. The
Dignity in Schools Campaign, a coalition
of civil rights and student groups,
is seeking revisions to the code of conduct
in New York City schools, including
an end to suspensions for "defying
and disobeying authority."
"While students should be held
accountable for their behavior,
research has shown that suspensions
are ineffective in preventing
future behavior problems and can
actually increase the likelihood that
students get into additional trouble
and fall behind in their classroom
work," Dignity in Schools said in a
recent press release.
City and school leaders in New
York have said they support making
some changes to the code, but the
city's 1.1 million students started
the school year without revisions.
Representatives of the district did
not return multiple calls and emails
seeking comment.
Researchers have found variability
in how defiance infractions are used-
both across racial and ethnic groups
and from classroom to classroom.
Source of Disparities
In a 2002 analysis of the discipline
data from an unnamed large,
urban district in the Midwest, researchers
found that white students
were more likely to be referred for
discipline for the more narrowly
defined offenses of smoking, leaving
without permission, vandalism, and
obscene language. The same analysis
found that African-American
students were more likely to be disciplined
for the broader offenses of
disrespect, excessive noise, threats,
and loitering.
"Those are things that are much
more subjective in terms of interpretation,"
said Russell Skiba, a
psychology professor at Indiana
University in Bloomington who coauthored
the study. "Even 'threat' is
depending on the perception of the
person being threatened."
What's more, inconsistent discipline
from teachers can foster a lack
of trust in students, causing them to
misbehave in sort of a self-sustaining
loop, researchers say.
"We're dealing with something
that's developmentally normal, and
we're dealing with it through exclusion
instead of saying, 'What are
some ways that we could deal with
this issue in a more productive way
that teaches kids something?' " Mr.
Skiba said.
Two teachers may have very different
perceptions of the same behavior
from the same student, said
Anne Gregory, a psychology professor
at Rutgers University in Piscataway,
N.J., who studies discipline
disparities.
"One teacher would say a student
was 'insubordinate, purposely willful,'
" on a discipline form, she said,
"and another teacher would say,
'talkative, joyful.' "
While many educators assume
defiance is a trait that exists within
a child, Ms. Gregory said such behavior
is actually more situational
in nature. In a 2008 study, she and
other researchers reviewed discipline
records of an unnamed Midwestern
high school and found that
67 percent of discipline referrals
were for "defiance of adult authority."
While black students made up
30 percent of the school's enrollment,
they represented 58 percent
of the students disciplined for defiance.
Of the 250 black students
who'd been referred for suspension
for defiance, 185 had been referred
by one or two teachers, suggesting
that other teachers did not detect
the same defiant behavior or were
more capable of handling it in class.
Using surveys, researchers also
found that students perceived
higher levels of trust, care, and expectations
from the teachers they
said they "got along with best" than
from the teachers who'd last referred
them for discipline.
More recently, Ms. Gregory and
fellow researchers used a randomized
trial of an intervention
in which veteran teachers coach
newer teachers, reviewing videos
of their classroom routines to emphasize
positive interactions with
students. At the end of the study,
teachers in the intervention group
had no record of discipline disparities,
while teachers in the control
group disciplined black students at
higher rates than their white peers,
in part because the teachers in the
experimental group were better at
preventing and addressing disruptive
behavior, Ms. Gregory said.
Critics of reworking discipline
plans have said reducing suspensions
is a worthy goal, but limiting
the ability to remove troublesome
students from the classroom has
taken a valuable tool away from
teachers.
Resources Needed
TEACHER PERSPECTIVE
Because of differing cultural perspectives, implicit
bias, or a misunderstanding of certain behaviors,
teachers may be more likely to see some students as
more defiant than their peers, researchers say.
For example, one student may express defiance in
a less noticeable way, such as a quiet sigh, while
another student might be more expressive, rolling
his or her eyes. A sense of feeling threatened or
challenged in the classroom is also subjective and
dependent on issues like the size of the student and
the confidence level of the teacher, researchers say.
Supporters say such concerns
can be addressed through additional
professional development
for teachers and through programs
that rely on new ways of addressing
student behavior, such as peer
mediation, restorative-justice
plans, or sending students to another
classroom to briefly "cool off"
and refocus.
Disputes between advocates for
policy changes and classroom teachers
center on whether those interventions
are effective and whether
schools have the resources to implement
them.
"In taking away a tool from a
teacher in the classroom, you need
to replace it with something, even
if it is just training for how to deal
with the needs of students who do
get out of control," said Erika Hoffman,
a legislative advocate for the
California School Boards Association.
"This isn't something that is
really taught when you get your
credential."
In a previous legislative session in
that state, the association opposed
a bill that would have banned suspensions
for willful defiance. Gov.
Jerry Brown vetoed that bill, saying
he could not "support limiting the
authority of local school leaders, especially
at a time when budget cuts
have greatly increased class sizes
and reduced the number of school
personnel."
"It is important that teachers and
school officials retain broad discretion
to manage and set the tone in
the classroom," Mr. Brown, a Democrat,
said.
The school boards association
lifted its opposition to a similar
bill passed in the most recent session
after it was amended to ban
suspensions for willful defiance in
kindergarten through 5th grades
and expulsions for willful defiance
in older grades.
A spokesman for Gov. Brown
would not say whether the governor
intended to sign that bill.
STUDENT PERSPECTIVE
PERCEPTIONS OF DEFIANCE
Researchers say a lack of trust between a
student and a teacher can build up over
time and contribute to repeated discipline
referrals for broad infractions like "defiance."
Students who've been disciplined for
defiance report that, in classes where
they'd been disciplined, they felt the
teachers had lower standards and
showed less care for their students. And,
if students begin to notice that peers in
their racial or ethnic group are disciplined
more than others, they may act defiantly in
response, researchers say.
Coverage of school climate and student
behavior and engagement is supported
in part by grants from the Atlantic
Philanthropies, the NoVo Foundation,
the Raikes Foundation, and the
California Endowment. Education Week
retains sole editorial control over the
content of this coverage.
The RULES FOR ENGAGEMENT blog
tracks news and trends on this issue.
www.edweek.org/go/rulesforengagement
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