Printed: Zero Tolerance Consequences

"The U.S. has experienced dramatic increases in the number of students suspended, expelled, and referred to law enforcement...  These practices are paving the way for higher dropout rates and involvement in the criminal justice system, a pathway often referred to as the 'school-to-prison pipeline.' (From Teaching Tolerance)

Some examples:  In Florida, a five-year-old girl was arrested and forcibly removed from her elementary school by local police for having a temper tantrum in class. 

A ten-year-od boy was dealing with sever emotional and behavioral disturbances.  Over a two-month period, other students harassed him multiple times.  James reported the harassment to school officials, to no avail.  A week after being choked by a student, James was knocked to the group by the same student while others watched and laughed.  Frustrated, angry, and frightened, James jumped to his feet shouting 'I could kill you.' When school officials called the police, James was removed from the school in handcuffs, placed alone in the back of a police van, and charged with making 'terroristic threats."


A ten-year-old girl found a small knife in her lunchbox, placed there by her mother, for cutting an apple.  She immediately gave the knife to her teacher, but was expelled from school for possessing a weapon.  

A teen in Georgia was expelled for violating school rules by talking to his mother (with whom he had not spoken in 30 days).  His mother was on deployment as a soldier in Iraq.

This is disturbing enough as it is (why is it so hard to treat students as PEOPLE?) but it gets worse when you consider that

• "nationwide, African American students are expelled at 3.5 times the rate of white students... and Latino students are almost twice as likely to be expelled as their white peers,"
• "children with mental and emotional disabilites are much more likely to be suspended, expelled, and arrested at school," 
• and that "students who are repeatedly suspended, or who are expelled, are likely to fall behind their peers academically, paving the way to eventual dropout." 

So now of course I think about my school.  I can think of students of mine that have been suspended, expelled, and arrested on school grounds in the past couple of weeks.  The article lists "after-school detention" as an effective alternative strategy for discipline, and it's so ridiculous that it's almost funny that our school has stopped holding detentions because our Dean of Students is also the Athletic Director and is now busy with basketball season (which is clearly the priority here, right?).  Students' behavior has gotten worse since they know there's no detention and teachers are frustrated by the lack of any middle-ground consequences available.  I have definitely seen students get suspended for infractions that merited only a detention.  And pretty much when students are suspended for 10 days or more, their grade is shot.

I still have mixed feelings on the automatic suspension policy for anything gang-related... how effective is it to send kids out onto the streets, aka further into the gang, when they're at their most vulnerable?  In my opinion, consequences for gang-related incidents should be paired with mandatory counseling or peer support groups that give students a space to actually discuss and explore with adult guidance the implications of joining or rejecting a gang.  The message currently given is something like "well now we know you're in a gang or considering joining one, so we're not going to let you come to school for the next 2 weeks.  Good luck completing your work by yourself.  You're really going to need luck on the tests you'll likely have when you return on material that you weren't around to learn.  You know, the top reasons for joining a gang are for a sense of belonging and for a sense of actually being successful at something... I don't see how you don't feel like you belong or can succeed at school.  But I'm not going to talk about it with you, since I don't talk about gangs." 

A friend at another west side high school shared that recently she gave her teacher a heads up that a particular student was having a rough day - rather than thinking "what can I do to check in with him or support him," his response was "well then maybe he shouldn't come to class today."  As teachers and educators, shouldn't it be our job to show students that school is a place of caring and understanding, not try to get them out of school at every slightest chance? 


Update: There is now a petition on change.org for a 6 year old girl in Georgia who was arrested at school for 'a temper tantrum.'  Her parents say Salecia has been traumatized by this experience. She's afraid to return to school and recently woke up in the middle of the night saying 'they are coming to get me.'