Cause and Effect essay

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Zero-Tolerance Policies Make It Harder for At-Risk Students to Graduate High School Dropouts. 2013. Lexile Measure: 1270L. COPYRIGHT 2013 Greenhaven Press, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning Full Text:

Article Commentary

Beverly Ford, "'Zero Tolerance' Policies Lead to Thousands of Lost School Days for Massachusetts," New England Center for Investigative Reporting, January 29, 2012. Copyright © 2012 by New England Center for Investigative Reporting. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.

Beverly Ford is a reporter for the New England Center for Investigative Reporting.

"Zero tolerance" discipline policies became popular starting in the 1990s in an effort to make schools safer for all students and to stem a rise in school behavioral problems. But data has shown that the zealous application of these policies has led to a considerable increase in expulsions and suspensions at all levels of education . The use of expulsions and suspensions, often as a first course of action, has resulted in many older students dropping out altogether. Students who are expelled or suspended fall behind their peers and may not be able to catch up. At a time when schools are searching for ways to boost graduation rates and keep kids in school , zero tolerance policies seem especially counterproductive to the educational process.

Thousands of Massachusetts public school students were suspended during the 2009-2010 school year for smoking, skipping class, tardiness and other minor infractions under "zero tolerance" discipline policies that are creating what critics call a "cradle to prison" pipeline.

From Boston to the Berkshires, the numbers reflect a troubling trend that appears to have continued into the following school year.

Massachusetts logged more than 75,000 in- school and out-of school suspensions in the 2010-2011 school year, a study of state education data by the New England Center for Investigative Journalism has found. Details on the particulars of those suspensions is not yet available, but they do account for thousands of days of lost classroom time for students, many of whom are in danger of dropping out of school , critics say.

Topping the list was Springfield, with more than 3,000 out-of- school suspensions during the 2010-2011 school year. Boston, Lynn, Worcester and Brockton follow, each with more than 2,000. Holyoke, Fall River, Lawrence, Lowell and New Bedford each marked more than 1,000 out-of- school suspensions during the same time period.

For many observers, the numbers which raise more concern are those which reflect how much class time is lost for students punished for minor infractions.

Lost Class Time Can Drive Students to Drop Out

Statewide, students facing minor offenses lost nearly 54,000 days of classroom time during 2009-2010, the most recent year for which such detailed data about the infractions is available. The number of days lost for minor offenses exceeded the number of days lost by students charged with gun, alcohol, knife and explosive possession, sexual assault, theft and vandalism combined, the data shows.

Minor offenses are classified as "unassigned," a term used by state education officials to cover non-violent and non-criminal misdeeds, such as talking back to a teacher, swearing or truancy.

Once removed from school , many of those youngsters fall behind in their studies, primarily because a majority of students involved in serious discipline cases get no educational services once tossed from the classroom, says Nakisha Lewis, a project manager with the Schott Foundation for Public Education. The Schott Foundation is a Cambridge-based group which advocates for more equitable distribution of educational resources.

Stopping suspensions and expulsions may be difficult, especially since that cradle-to-prison pipeline begins at the earliest of ages.

The state considers school discipline a local matter, but urges school districts "to offer some type of alternative education wherever possible" for suspended or expelled students, according to state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education spokesman J.C. Considine. School districts are under no obligation to do so, however, and few actually do, education advocates say.

That philosophy has some concerned.

"We're creating what many people are calling ' dropout factories,'" noted Lewis, who has helped the Schott Foundation spearhead several studies,

including one which found that students who are suspended or expelled often drop out of school , leading to juvenile delinquency , arrests and, eventually, prison. Taking kids out of class for non-violent offenses, Lewis explained, is akin to creating a cradle-to-prison pipeline.

"It doesn't take a leap of imagination to know that if you take children with problems and throw them onto the street with little or no education, we're going to breed a society of criminals ," said attorney Sam Schoenfeld, of Canton, who has represented a number of expelled and suspended students. "What needs to be done is to stop this chain of events."

Even Young Children Are Not Immune to Suspensions

Yet stopping suspensions and expulsions may be difficult, especially since that cradle-to-prison pipeline begins at the earliest of ages.

According to the state data, children as young as 4 years old were excluded from school for at least one day during the 2009-2010 school year. That same year, students from pre- school to third-grade lost 1,825 classroom days because of suspensions for "unassigned," or minor, infractions....

More than 2,100 students in pre- school through third-grade received suspensions during the 2009-2010 school year, 1,546 of them for violent or drug related offenses, according to Considine. An additional 574 students also received suspensions for "unassigned" misdeeds, he said.

Among those suspended during that school year was an 8-year-old Taunton boy who was tossed out of school in December 2009 and ordered to undergo psychological testing because his stick-figure drawing of a crucified Christ was considered too violent by school administrators. School officials denied that the boy's suspension had anything to do with religion and stood their ground, saying, "The incident was handled appropriately."

By the time students reach high school , suspensions and expulsions peak, especially for minority students .

A year later, in 2010, Brockton officials paid out nearly $250,000 in legal fees and settlement costs when the mother of a 6-year-old sued after her son was suspended for the alleged sexual harassment of another first-grader.

"When a child as young as 4 is suspended, something is wrong," said Barbara Best, director of foundation relations and special projects with the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. The suspensions of grade schoolers should be "a wake-up call" to school administrators that zero- tolerance discipline policies just don't work, she said.

"We don't have a child problem; we have an adult problem if we're suspending 4, 5 and 6 year olds," Best added.

Excesssive Discipline Measures Can Derail a Student's Entire Life

By the time students reach high school , suspensions and expulsions peak, especially for minority students, according to John Melia, director of the Children's Law Project at Massachusetts Advocates for Children.

Melia points to the case of a Somali boy who was expelled from high school last year after he poked another student with a pencil. Despite no prior disciplinary record, the 16-year-old was cited for using the pencil as a weapon, a charge which mandated immediate expulsion under the school's code of conduct.

It wasn't until Melia, who served as the boy's lawyer, stepped into the case that the teen was allowed to return to school . He remained on probation for the rest of the school year without further problems.

Still, that incident remains a troubling reflection on what is happening in classrooms throughout the Bay State, where school administrators are tossing misbehaving youngsters out of class in the name of school safety.

Sonia Vivas knows all about that. A good student with no disciplinary record, Vivas was on track to fulfill her dream of becoming a lawyer when an encounter with two other teens sent her life into a tailspin.

Accused of stealing a cell phone and pulling a knife on a student, the 14-year-old eighth-grader was tossed out of school with little more than a cursory hearing after the mother of one of the girls complained her daughter felt threatened. For six months, Vivas, who denies the allegations, languished at home, banished from classes at her Somerville middle school where she was the only Hispanic student in the eighth-grade.

"It was pretty traumatizing," she says now, five years later. "It made me feel pretty horrible. It changed my life."

It took the intervention of a lawyer and a diagnosis of a learning disorder to finally get Vivas back to class, this time at an alternative school . Today, the Somerville high - school honors student is headed for a brighter future but the dream of a legal career she once cherished is now over, crushed by the hours spent in court fighting to get the school district to provide her with an education.

School Violence Led to Overly Punitive Discipline

In an era where the issue of school safety breeds little tolerance for student misbehavior, Vivas' story is not unique.

In fact, of the almost 1 million public school students in Massachusetts during the 2009-2010 school year, 7,075 students from pre- school to 12th- grade got tossed out of school for "unassigned," or minor, offenses alone, Considine said.

Those figures have education and child advocates concerned. "The Massachusetts law is meant to give principals the ability to make the best decisions on the spot," said Joan Meschino, director of Massachusetts Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, which advocates for systemic solutions to social justice issues. "Instead, it opens the door for them to include other offenses rather than what was originally intended. It allows them to broaden the net, sweep up at risk kids and push them out the door."

That philosophy has caused students to lose an inordinate amount of class time to school suspensions. In the 2009-2010 school year alone, Bay State students lost a total of 199,056 days to both in- school and out-of- school suspensions. In 2008-2009, that figure topped 215,000.

Drugs, guns, and other threatened and real school shootings have created an era of "zero-tolerance policies" in many schools.

The reason for so much lost class time is due to strict disciplinary measures that can be traced back to the 1990s when violent street gangs began to emerge on city streets.

It wasn't until April 20, 1999 that school violence became a bloody reality when two high school seniors, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., and massacred 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves. The murders, education advocates said, ushered in a new era of concern over school safety.

"Suspension became the automatic response to misbehavior," said Johanna Wald, who has worked on school discipline issues for the Charles Hamilton Huston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School . Wald said drugs, guns and other threatened and real school shootings have created an era of "zero-tolerance policies" in many schools.

"Now," she added, "we are thankfully recognizing how damaging that highly punitive approach is, especially to teenagers. What they need is to be in school , to have relationships with competent adults who can steer them in the right direction."

Yet the swift suspension or expulsion of students, often for minor infractions, continues unabated even though studies show that tossing a kid out of school encourages a child to drop out altogether. And that leads to a host of other problems ranging from unemployment to criminal behavior, the Schott Foundation's Lewis said.

"Our concern is to change the process and the practices for those kids who don't commit serious offenses," noted Melia.

Path to Success Is Often Missing in Schools

"What is lacking is how to create a pipeline that makes kids successful," added Melissa Pearrow, assistant professor in the Department of Counseling and School Psychology at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. "How do we create classrooms and prepare teachers to make all students successful in school and in life? Teachers can do things to engage kids and be supportive but we need administrators to be supportive too. We need administrators to be on board."

That may soon happen thanks to two new bills currently under consideration by the state Legislature's Joint Committee on Education.

The bills, aimed at preventing kids from dropping out of school , encourage school districts to reduce their reliance on expulsion and suspension as disciplinary tactics and puts some due process rights in place for students charged with misdemeanors, according to state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, co-chair of the committee. One also mandates that no student be suspended for more than a year and gives teachers and administrators discretion in how they deal with unruly students.

"We need to get students back into the educational process," said Chang-Diaz, "and we need to allow school administrators the flexibility and the authority to make decisions protecting the safety of students and staff."

Paul Andrews, director of professional development and government services for the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, said discipline policies need to be consistent, fair, and progressive so that punishment increases in severity with each new occurrence. School administrators also need to be able to use their own discretion to better resolve issues, he said, adding that parental involvement and support is also key.

"It requires the cooperation of local government, families and schools," he said. "We all have to work together. We all have a responsibility to make this work."

Books

James Bellanca and Ron Brandt 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn . Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree, 2010. Karin Chenoweth How It's Being Done: Urgent Lessons from Unexpected Schools . Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2009. Linda Darling-Hammond The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future . New York: Teachers College Press, 2010. Michelle Fine Framing Dropouts : Notes on the Politics of an Urban High School . New York: State University of New York Press, 1991. Frederick M. Hess The Same Thing Over and Over: How School Reformers Get Stuck in Yesterday's Ideas . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Caroline Hondo Latino Dropouts in Rural America: Realities and Possibilities . New York: State University of New York Press, 2008. Bill Milliken The Last Dropout : Stop the Epidemic! New York: Hay House, 2007. Charles M. Payne So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 2008. Russell W. Rumberger Dropping Out: Why Students Drop Out of High School and What Can Be Done About It . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Bob Wise Raising the Grade: How High School Reform Can Save Our Youth and Our Nation . Hoboken, New Jersey: Jossey-Bass, 2008.

Periodicals and Internet Sources

Caralee J. Adams "Some States Prodding Students to Graduate Early," Education Week , January 24, 2012. Michael Arceneaux "Black High School Dropout Crisis Calls for New Approach," AolNews. , September 3, 2010. www.aolnews.com. Tim Cavanaugh "What's the Problem with Dropping Out?" Reason , March 20, 2012. Center for Labor Market Studies "Left Behind in America: The Nation's Dropout Crisis," Center for Labor Market Studies Publications , May 5, 2009. http://iris.lib.neu.edu. Helen Coster "Millionaire High School Dropouts," Forbes , January 30, 2010. Steve Denning "The Single Best Idea for Reforming K-12 Education," Forbes , September 1, 2011. Jerry Y. Diakiw "It's Time for a New Kind of High School ," Education Week , May 8, 2012. Clay Duda "'Drop Out Factories' Decline, Nation Pushes for Graduation Benchmark," Youth Today , May 21, 2012. Sarah Garland "New York City: Big Gains in the Big Apple," The Hechinger Report , July 6, 2010. Allan Golston "Giving Every Child a Chance to Succeed," Impatient Optimists , June 29, 2012. www.impatientoptimists.org. Betsy Hammond "Portland, Oregon: All the Advantages and Nothing to Show for It," Washington Monthly , July/August 2010. Dale Kildee "Cutting Dropout Rate in Our Schools Starts on Day One," The Hill , May 8, 2012. Henry M. Levin and Cecilia E. Rouse "The True Cost of High School Dropouts," New York Times , January 25, 2012. Jay Mathews "Online Course May Make Graduation Too Easy," Washington Post , April 21, 2012. Amanda Paulson "Why U.S. High School Reform Efforts Aren't Working," Christian Science Monitor , January 15, 2010. Claudio Sanchez "A High School Dropout's Midlife Hardships," NPR , July 28, 2011. www.npr.org. Valerie Strauss "Why Obama's 2020 Graduation Goal Isn't Attainable," Washington Post , February 15, 2011. Greg Toppo "To Fight ' Dropout Factories,' School Program Starts Young," USA Today , May 28, 2010. Patrice Wingert "The (Somewhat) Good and (Mostly) Bad News About High School Dropout Rates," The Daily Beast , June 13, 2010. wwwthedailybeast.com. Fareed Zakaria "When Will We Learn?" TIME , November 14, 2011.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition) Ford, Beverly. "Zero-Tolerance Policies Make It Harder for At-Risk Students to Graduate." High School Dropouts, edited by Judeen Bartos,

Greenhaven Press, 2013. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ3010871204/OVIC?u=yorktech_main&sid=OVIC&xid=8abc8af5. Accessed 3 Apr. 2019. Originally published as "'Zero Tolerance' Policies Lead to Thousands of Lost School Days for Massachusetts,", 29 Jan. 2012.

Gale Document Number: GALE|EJ3010871204