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Ewa 4
Vincent Ewa Topic: What do we know about school discipline reform?
February 11, 2017
Article Review # 1
Bibliography entry:
Steinberg, Matthew P., and Johanna, Lacoe. "What do we know about school discipline reform?." Education Next 17, no. 1 (Winter2017 2017): 44-52. Education Research Complete, EBSCOhost.
Purpose: The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced this spring that the number of suspensions and expulsions in the nation’s public schools had dropped 20 percent between 2012 and 2014.
Author affiliations:
Steinberg – The University Pennsylvanian’s Graduate School of Education
Lacoe - Researcher at Mathematica Policy Research
Summary:
According to the department of Education office for civil rights, there has been a drop of suspensions and expulsions in public schools between 2012 and 2014. There have been moves to abolish the use of suspensions and expulsion by some policy makers. Furthermore, there have also been complains that suspensions and expulsions where used in a way that was not fair and discriminative of other students. Others do also believe that the abolishment of such punishment would result to a better working environment. There has also been a push by politicians including Barak Obamas government, which advocated for an alternative kind of punishment for students found on the wrong line of the school rules. This involved a joint venture by the Department of Education and the Department of Justice who eventually arrived on measures to improve the school climate and the discipline among students. They also send a strict warning of racism when it comes to disciplining of students at school. It is evident also that the move for discipline reforms has gone to the grassroots, which is the state and school district levels. Example is the District of Colombia.
A critical look on the effects of this alternative ways of suspension should be made. Various statistical reports have brought out variety of evidences. Example is the documentation in disparities in school in school discipline and race. In addition is the statistical report by the National Centre for Education show a downward trend in suspensions, student victimization and reports of bullying. It also shows decline in suspensions and expulsions. There has also been more that 30% if teachers reporting of disruption to studies due to behavior and tardiness. Evidence of exposure to extreme harsh conditions such has students exposed to Hurricanes tend to be out of school for a given time while dealing with the disaster. Finally, exposure to disruptive peers tends to affect students later in their studies.
Statistics also show disproportionate rates of suspension with it mainly affecting students of a specific race and also students with disabilities. Most of these being racial especially among the blacks in preschool, primary, middle and high schools. This has also created gaps between blacks and whites in suspension rates with it doubling between 1989 and 2010. Russell Skiba and colleagues carried a study that proved this to be right by far. They found out that blacks and Hispanics received punishment for minor offences more than the white students did. This is further questionable since black students receive far much harsh punishment than the whites for offices made. There has also been suspension targeting the disabled with the rate of suspension in 2011 hitting twice those with no disabilities. However critics have argued that there has been an overuse of suspension instead of using other punishment methods that are less harsh for minor offences. Furthermore, advocates of reform agree that exclusion of punishment can lead to adverse effects with evidence showing insubordination, physical attacks and other offences such as drug and alcohol use, and possession of firearms.
They finally arrive at the alternative measure of exclusionary punishment. One would be program based interventions where target program using the response to intervention model to provide services to specific youth with the aim of preventing problems as they arise. Further adjustments are made when a student does not respond to a given intervention by introducing more intense intervention. In addition, policy based interventions are introduced. Here target policies like early warning tend to improve behavior. Furthermore, school level programs redefine how teachers and school resource officers interact with students while school level policies such as KIPP aim at setting high behavioral expectations from all students.
Critique:
These article brought the under tone of school discipline and the solution to the race and punishment in schools in United States. The best way to punish a student brings a lot of headache to the government, teachers and other education stakeholders. The major challenge being the punishment given to students of different races and those students with disabilities where evidence from statistics show how others are other races gets more punishment that can be rather harsher sometimes. The decision to exclude punishment also brings adverse effects to the learning environment hence resulting to other alternatives that can help keep students behavior in check. These also includes though measures to how institutions should deal with students and at the same time respect all races and punish them equally without showing a lighter hand to another race when it comes to punishment.
