We have several no excuses or paternalistic charter schools in Nashville. They give students demerits for such things as failing to track the teacher with their eyes, failing to place both feet flat on the floor, failing to sit up straight/leaning against the wall in class, spending more than two minutes in the bathroom, closing their eyes in class, and talking to other students in the hallways between classes. Students are expected to accept discipline in total submission. One school implemented a fix it, nod and work policy last year that required students receiving discipline to nod silently and go back to work immediately, even when the child did not understand why he was being disciplined. Several distressed parents came to me last year with what I considered disturbing stories of how their children were treated in a no-excuses school, which opened my eyes to these discipline methods. A large number of demerits (these students rack up hundreds of demerits for minor infractions) leads to out-of-school suspension and eventually being kicked out of school. This is a pretty balanced article about no excuses schools. It raises some key points: 1. These schools are suspending African-American students at much higher rates, despite evidence these children behave any worse than other students. 2. The suspended students are more likely to run into trouble with the criminal justice system. [O]ne statewide study in Texas reported that students suspended or expelled for a discretionary violation—having a bad attitude, for example—were nearly three times as likely to come into contact with the juvenile-justice system the following year. 3. Although these schools claim that their disciplinary tactics increase student achievement, an American Psychological Association report in 2008 . . . found no evidence that high rates of suspension or expulsion improve either student behavior or school safety, much less the educational climate: even controlling for a variety of demographic factors, the research they cited showed declines in academic achievement. 4. Families of students at no-excuses schools have filed civil-rights complaints, asking state, federal, and local authorities to investigate the schools’ disciplinary policies, alleging abuse of students with special needs and overuse of suspensions for trivial matters. Thankfully, some districts, including Baltimore, LA, Chicago and NOLA, are now taking aggressive measures to curb discretionary discipline tactics. Schools have begun banning suspensions, for instance, for vaguely defined offenses like willful defiance, which can contribute to the troubling racial disparities, several experts have concluded. Perhaps we should do the same.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 14:47:42 +0000
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