Editorial: Stay in school: Disciplinary suspensions fail students

What do you do with a violent or tumultuous student who is clearly disrupting his or her peers’ learning environment? All too many schools have the wrong solution — out-of-school suspension.

A report released this week by the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA redflags Pittsburgh’s suspension rates in elementary schools. The findings hit close to home — Woodland Hills School District ranked in the top ten school districts nationwide for high rates of out-of-school suspension.

The report reveals that in the 2011-2012 school year, 23.8 percent of elementary students were suspended from school once or more in Woodland Hills. This trend is alarming on a national level, too, even though the national elementary school suspension average is only 2.6 percent. When tallying all of the out-of-school suspensions for all grade levels, nationwide, UCLA researchers found that U.S. students had lost about 18 million days of school instruction in one year.

Proper supervision and guidance can benefit a student more than being sent home to fool around on a mini-vacation, perpetuating the “bad kid” pipeline. 

Punishing students by allowing them to sit at home and watch “The Price is Right” while depriving them of their education is not an appropriate solution. Some students from low-income school districts, like Woodland Hills, might not have parents at home to supervise their time out of school. If parents do take the time to supervise their children, they may have to miss work, further accruing financial costs that perpetuate a low-income school district. These suspensions open the door for more troublemaking.

To end the vicious cycle of stigmatizing “bad kids” and creating a loop wherein troubled children don’t feel cared for, we need to hone in on more beneficial systems of reprimanding students than out-of-school suspension.

In the short term, in-school suspension and detentions are plausible solutions already in place at schools. However, these discplinary actions need reform if they are to help students to their fullest extent.

If a panel of three or four teachers, along with a guidance counselor, supervised these in-school suspensions and detentions, there is a greater chance that a student could talk to an adult with whom they feel safe. Rather than instituting one in-school supervisor, then, a group of teachers should take turns running shifts, which would prevent the need to hire another employee to fill the position. 

This proper supervision and guidance can positively shape a student more than granting the child a mini-vacation to do homework at a leisurely pace and watch daytime television. 

While in these suspensions and detentions, faculty members need to open a dialogue with the student rather than have them sit in silence, dwelling on their anger and negativity. Integrating a system of aggression training in health class or discplinary programs could better prepare instructors to deal with unruly students and teach students what is inappropriate conduct within the classroom. 

Student discipline needs to be a continuation of the learning that goes on in the classroom. By depriving students of days in school, we are contributing to the problem. By taking an interest in the student, rather than booting them out for a few days, educators would show that they care. If students are senselessly removed from the learning environment, the self-fulfilling prophecy of a “bad kid” will only continue.