Go. and. read. it.  ( why do I have to even say that here?! )

The cited statistic makes a great hook, but it is NOT NOT NOT their primary datapoint, or goal, or standard, or anything else except a something to get your attention.    This program was implemented by the principle at an alternative school *after* he had been there for 1-2 years, so there is before and after data.  They measured improved grades, test performance, graduation rates, specific event instances and outcomes, student attitudes and engagement levels, and a raft of others.  There *IS* data here, and it pretty much all good news.  

I would love for this approach to be shown to be true and beneficial for all parties involved. Unfortunately I’ve worked at places where administrators have decided to show how great the school is by refusing to act on serious behaviour issues (it lowers their exclusion and suspension statistics nicely). I hate zero tolerance attitudes for meaningless crap like uniform infringements, chewing gum or the use of electronic devices. I hate it even more when, as a union rep, I have represented female teachers who were told to “let it ride” and “not take it so personally” after being surrounded by a group of boys in the schoolyard and seriously sexually threatened, and other teachers who were literally hounded out of town by homophobic persecution (after being told by administrators that they should expect those sorts of attitudes in a country town).

Zero tolerance never works when it’s used to justify cracking down on petty offences (the lie of “if you look after the little stuff, the big stuff will sort itself out”). Universal peace love and understanding for the perpetrator and making the victim feel responsible doesn’t work that well when the offences are criminal ones in the real world

Emo Phillips: “You’ll have to catch me and eat me first, ya weirdo!”

Before and after the change in policy, I’d have used student surveys about self-esteem and quality of life, academic test-scores, and frequency of easily definable incidents (like swearing at a teacher). And I’d also interview and do a narrative, qualitative study.

This sounds like an excellent approach to education, it would be a shame if it were judged by this outcome measure (reduced days of suspension/expulsion) which is so prominently displayed in the article’s headline.

As jrosiek comments below, this is a measure of administration/teacher behaviour, not student behaviour. It tells us that the policy was successful in getting administration/teachers to stop issuing so many suspensions/expulsions, but says nothing about the outcomes they were attempting to achieve in their student population.

Jim Sporleder tried treating traumatized, furious kids with compassion and understanding. Their behavior improved dramatically.

I wish this was an Onion article.

I hope more people learn that conservative “tough love” is nothing more than “soft hate” and you’ll end up with blind rebellion or submissive drones with that foolhardy approach.

Give respect if you expect it in return.  It’s pretty simple.

(Well, perhaps within the confines of Whitman College, it is. Don’t cross the street, though.)

I’m contributing nothing to this thread except the great gift of a smile to you all.

http://youtu.be/x9DsUnqL7Hg?t=5m47s

We’ve got overwhelming, reproducible proof that “zero tolerance” policies are harmful to children and fundamentally compromise the educational process – making our kids more ignorant and less capable of controlling themselves – yet there are still people (in this very thread, no less!) who are incapable of putting aside their need to punish in favor of an educational system designed to educate.

My wife is a science teacher and for many years had the odd distinction of collecting troubled kids in her classes.  Intentionally.  She had many tricks and techniques.

Getting them “hooked” early and on her side with fun learning
Sending them postcards praising good work
Putting them in charge
Clean slate
Having fun.  Hands on, almost no homework or assigned reading.
Plus other stuff.

She developed a reputation of getting kids to behave.  So much so that kids that trashed a classroom would be sent to hers to cool off.  Some kids wouldn’t even bother to go to other classes or their assigned classes.  They’d have 2,3,4 hours of science a day.  She gets letters and hugs from these same kids all the time, years later.

She even maneuvered herself into doing class scheduling for the counselors.  She made sure she had the worst performing kids (she has more fun with them, calls the other kids boring).  At one point she had double the number of special ed kids in each of two class periods than any special ed teacher … because they are capped by law.

The result was her kids outperformed all the other kids.  On average, going up more on standardized tests than all the other kids (the equivalent of 2 years).  4 years running.

Because of that, she’s been reassigned to to teach accelerated science to advanced students.  Things are great there too.  She teaches 6th, 7th, 8th graders.  She’s had many students for 3 years.   She spends too much time blowing stuff up to teach to the test, but the average rate of improvement on tests is the equivalent of 3 years per year.  For 3 years.

And, she’s also the mentor to several new science teachers who are using her teaching style in their classrooms.  Ever had a teacher wear a Transformers mask while teaching?  Well, it’s accepted and normal now.

Her philosophy is to never be bored.  And she’s pushing for accelerated science for every kid.

Thanks for letting me brag.

Some things are inherently impossible to capture in statistics, and trying to do so will invariably lead to unintended consequences.

That’s typically the kind of reasoning that makes me think of Freakonomics:  someone here seems to interpret a mere indication as a causality. Although they only mention correlation, the citation seems to imply causality to justify the low-suspension-rate policy…

What is the simplest explanation? That higher suspension rates cause lower achievement scores or that students that receive lots of suspensions are likely to be the one with low achievement scores in the first place, thus the correlation? To me, it seems that the high suspension rate is more an indicator of the low achievement of the suspended children than it is its cause…