Here's my testimony to the Louisiana House Committee on Education in support of House Bill 646, a bill to increase the use of positive behavior supports and interventions and restorative practices in schools.
Good
morning. My name is Jolon McNeil and I
am the Managing Director and Schools First Project Director at the Juvenile
Justice Project of Louisiana. The
Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana is a non-profit reform and advocacy
organization whose mission is to transform the state’s juvenile justice system
into one that builds on the strengths of young people, families, and
communities to ensure that children are given the greatest opportunities to
grow and thrive. While JJPL has
traditionally worked to reform the juvenile justice system from the back-end,
we have expanded to address the policies and practices of our educational
systems that funnel children into the juvenile justice system. Our work in the intersection of juvenile
justice and education seeks to reduce the number of students suspended,
expelled and pushed out of schools and derail the “school-to-prison pipeline.”
One of the
strengths of our young people, families and communities is their belief and
investment in education as the most promising tool to create life
opportunities. For decades, school
discipline policies and practices, most specifically exclusionary discipline
policies such as zero tolerance have pushed children out of school, instead of
helping to keep them in school. Research
shows that these policies and practices to not improve student behavior, they
exclude students from educational opportunities and increase students’ chances
of involvement in the juvenile or criminal justice systems. House Bill 646 can decrease the number of
students pushed out of schools and increase the number of safe successful
students.
In response to intensifying discourse about school safety
and climate, many school districts have adopted zero tolerance policies. These policies have become part of the
language of the education sector as a response to student misbehavior and to
create positive learning environments that impact student achievement. Though there is still much variation in the
definitions and practice of zero tolerance policies, most zero tolerance
policies have broadened beyond its the origins to fighting, threats or
swearing. Zero tolerance policies applied to school discipline results in
draconian punishments for even the smallest infractions and things that
couldn’t rationally be considered a disruption.
Zero tolerance policies in schools generally result in suspensions,
which are most often used to punish non-violent, minor disruptions such as
tardiness, disrespect or willful disobedience; in contrast to the original
intent of such policies, suspensions for the most serious cases, including
drugs, weapons, assaults, happen infrequently.
The state average for out-of-school suspensions is 30% higher than the
national average.
However, these
policies yield little evidence of their contributions to safe schools of
improving student behavior, or in creating a better learning environment, but
often is a predictor of further exclusion from school. Daniel Losen, a
prominent researcher on exclusionary school discipline policies sums up the
problem perfectly in “Discipline Policies, Successful School, and Racial
Justice” (2011):
If suspending large numbers of disruptive
students helped improve instruction and the learning environment, better
academic results should be expected. But
this does not seem to happen. Instead,
research on the frequent use of school suspension had indicated that, after
race and poverty are controlled for, higher rates of out-of school suspension
correlate with lower achievement scores.
Students who
fall victim to exclusionary discipline practices lose instructional time, which
affects academic achievement; not only do these students miss time due to the period
of exclusion, but they can lose time due to the wait time associated with discipline
hearings and also through delays in readmission. Consequently, students who are not in school,
particularly because of exclusionary discipline practices, experience a
“suspended education.” Again, House Bill 646 challenges schools and school
districts to think critically about the correlation between out-of-school
suspension and academic achievement and pushes them to exercise other options
to create safe successful students.
Instead of improving
student outcomes, zero tolerance policies, specifically out-of-school
suspensions increase the likelihood of involvement in the justice system. Juvenile and adult corrections facilities are
filled with people who have experienced these policies and practices:
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Two
thirds of the “typical ninth graders” who went to prison had been suspended at
least once in eighth grade (Losen and Skiba, 2010)
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For girls, experiencing a suspension or
expulsion during middle school is the strongest predictor of later arrest in
adolescence (Wallace et al, 2008)
It is crucial to address the reliance on exclusionary
discipline practices that push students out of schools and House Bill 646
offers options for school and school districts where the use of those practices
serves as the only option for discipline infractions. House Bill 646 can have a significant impact
on student success in school.
In this era of heightened
accountability for school improvement and student achievement with the latest
federal programs and incentives, school climate, including school and
classroom-level discipline are important to ensure a positive learning
environment. School culture and climate
are among the top influences in affecting improved student achievement as it
sets the foundation for the learning environment. Schools with positive discipline practices
have effective behavioral interventions that don’t push students out of school
and into a greater likelihood of involvement in the justice system. These schools are healthy learning
environments that promote student learning and social growth and students in
these environments earn higher scores on standardized tests. In contrast, schools with higher rates of
school suspension and expulsion have poorer outcomes on standardized tests. For
example in the New Orleans system of schools, 52% of the schools that earned an
F school performance letter grade have suspension rates at or above the state
average. House Bill 646 promotes positive student environments and student
learning through the increase of alternatives to suspension and expulsion and
the increase use of positive behavior interventions in schools.
A positive school
climate with positive asset-based discipline lends itself to more engaged students,
more engaged parents, better student performance and thus better schools. An educated citizenry is important to our
state and to our country and practices that push our youth out of schools to
not serve us. The focus of education reform
has been on the academic intervention of our young people and it has
constricted the narrative of the work of educators. The duty to care for the social development
of students is crucial. HB 646 offers much needed guidance to schools and
school districts relative to school discipline to enhance the social
development of our youth, particularly our most vulnerable students.
Given our country’s values and in our deep abiding belief in the
transformational power of education, how do we maintain the status quo of
policies when we know that they don’t work for our young people? That in fact
they do more harm by pushing them out of school and excluding them from
educational opportunities. Our country,
our state, our economy and our democracy benefits when we consider all the
options to keep young people in school.
HB 646 gives reason to be optimistic about better student performance,
better schools, safe successful students and ultimately a better Louisiana.
