Retooling our approach to school discipline

Driven by evidence that school suspensions disproportionately affect students of color and are ineffective at deterring inappropriate behavior, Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced new initiatives that will revamp discipline strategies in public schools across New York City. Most notably, for early-grade teachers like me, the proposal will eliminate suspensions for kindergarten, first and second grade students altogether and keep our students in the classroom where they belong.

In a given school year, an average of 40,000 students in New York City are suspended, many from the earliest grades. I understand the impulse to suspend. When a student is fighting, yelling, thwarting school rules or being otherwise disruptive, sending them out of the classroom can seem like a quick way to get the rest of the class back on track. But we know that this isn't best for those students and their development.

Removing a student from the classroom may help to restore order, but compelling research shows that overly punitive discipline on young people is ineffective and has long-term consequences. The U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services assert that suspension in early childhood is a “stressful and negative experience” that should be “prevented, severely limited and eventually eliminated.” Children who face suspension or expulsion are 10 times more likely to drop out of high school, earn lower grades, exhibit negative attitudes towards school and even go to jail, when compared to those who have not.

The data also tells us that specific groups of children are being disproportionately expelled and suspended from their early learning settings; a trend that has remained virtually unchanged in the past decade. Boys, children of color and children with disabilities are more likely to be suspended than their peers.

This discrimination is unacceptable.

Early-grade suspensions do not teach our young students to behave more appropriately. Too often, such punishments derail students’ learning, fail to address the root causes of misbehavior, and set students on an unhealthy path to becoming another statistic.

These figures clearly demonstrate that reducing suspensions is critical. The mayor's plan is vital to moving our city forward to providing supportive learning environments in every school. But these new policies could go even further by addressing this issue more holistically.

To start, we can’t simply remove suspensions from a teacher’s toolkit and expect the classroom experience to improve. Every school needs to have a de-escalation plan in place and teachers need tools to address bad behavior, so we can productively keep students in class when learning is disrupted.

For the mayor’s plan to be effective, teachers need to be supported in learning new approaches, training and classroom management tools. Teachers, counselors and administrators alike will need a core piece of our dedicated professional development hours to be focused on de-escalating strategies and social emotional learning. Teachers also need to receive helpful feedback on their use of these disciplinary strategies from trained evaluators. Without building-level administrative support, the power of any initiative is compromised.

We know that this kind of multi-pronged effort can work, because an array of positive behavior interventions and support programs such as Restorative Justice, Life Space Crisis Intervention and Therapeutic Crisis Intervention are evidenced-based. Positive behavior interventions and supports provide a data-driven, systematic approach to prevent inappropriate behavior without relying on suspensions or removing children from their academic settings altogether. Hiring additional social workers in schools to help children and their families get needed support can also be a game changer in many buildings.

The mayor's proposal to eliminate suspensions for our youngest students will change the course for a generation of students, and improve student outcomes in the long run.

Choosing to support – not just suspend – our youngest students is only the beginning. Ensuring all schools are safe and supportive, where students are empowered to learn, will also take readily available tools for social and emotional learning.

Claudia Whittingham is a SETSS/IEP teacher and special education liaison for the New York City Department of Education.