DCPS suspending students and not accounting for it, and now the ACLU is getting involved

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a fine line between discipline and parenting. Schools do need to be innovative and creative in in their discipline, to ensure that students don't miss instructional time. But there is a small fraction of kids who don't want to be in school. We must acknowledge that these children bring a myriad of issues to school stemming from their communities and parents. Schools are built around communities but the schools can't be parents and educate. It's why impoverished schools struggle in test scores and these children are under-prepared for college and career readiness. The truth may sting but these schools are trying to be parents and fix the emotional/social issues these kids bring to school before educating them. There is clearly not enough time to fix broken children and educate in ten months.

Actually, in situations where everyone involved acknowledges that student success demands more than just standard academic teaching, student outcomes are much better. Schools can work with other social service interventions to provide better outcomes for students through wraparound services. It's been tried in many places with a lot of success. Conservatives argue that this is not the schools' job and that parents are solely morally responsible for ensuring good outcomes. The way I look at it, no kid chooses to be born into poverty, violence and chaos. If schools and social service agencies can work together to make children's lives better, not doing so is the immoral choice. From a purely practical standpoint, education, food and other services are cheaper than prisons, and I'd prefer to live in safe communities where kids needs are addressed than a police state trying to deal with the consequences of neglecting those needs.

I'm not conservative but practical, while children are not chosen to be born into poverty, its the poor choices that their parents make. You clearly are refusing to place blame on the shoulders of the parents. Parents need to work with social workers, etc but to outright refuse to acknowledge that poor parents are at fault is ridiculous. I also would prefer to live in a safe neighborhood, and in fact I do. But the fact remains, these children are broken BECAUSE OF THEIR PARENTS!! These children then repeat the same cycle by becoming unwed parents and etc. I would prefer to have parenting workshops but I would also prefer to not have to continue to pay for wrap-around services from people's inter-generational problems. How hard is it to not get pregnant before being stable and married? It's far easier than struggling to be a single parent on assistance and welfare.

Why in the world would blame matter? Why are you so obsessed with placing blame? What it really comes down to is that you DO think the kids should be punished for the parents' mistakes.

[Anonymous]

It's about the poverty -- which leads to brain impairment and bad choices all around.

When it's inter-generational, the parents are literally cognitively impaired, as are the children.

https://today.duke.edu/2016/10/how-living-poverty-affects-children%E2%80%99s-brain-development

[Anonymous]

My kid comes from a loving middle class home. He also has documented SNs and an IEP. He did not ask for his learning disabilities and mental health issues. I have seen firsthand how out-of-school suspensions affect kids with SNs. Kids like mine have a right to a public education, just as your neurotypical kids do. I stand with the ACLU and Every Student, Every Day on this one. There are clear violations of procedure going on, and violations of student and parent rights as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid comes from a loving middle class home. He also has documented SNs and an IEP. He did not ask for his learning disabilities and mental health issues. I have seen firsthand how out-of-school suspensions affect kids with SNs. Kids like mine have a right to a public education, just as your neurotypical kids do. I stand with the ACLU and Every Student, Every Day on this one. There are clear violations of procedure going on, and violations of student and parent rights as well.

plus 10000000. We are paying enormous amounts of money to send our child to a private SN school, and I feel so much sympathy for kids whose parents don't have that choice. This is an outrage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCPS and DCPCS both need:

* better (more honest) data on suspensions. Requiring someone to pick their kid up early is a suspension (an issue for all ages: high school and middle schools, PKs that "require" potty training, etc.)

* in-school suspension for kids who are too disruptive for the classroom but not going to get any better if they sit at home.

* better following of IDEA for kids with special needs. More self-contained classrooms. The emotional disturbance classrooms shouldn't all be in schools with low test scores and lots of behavioral problems in the mainstream classrooms, either...how will kids learn to do better if they can't push in with peers who function well?

Dcps self contained teacher here.
Self contained rooms are in under enrolled schools. The 'good' schools do not have space. That being said- there is an effort to branch out. Murch & Lafayette will be hosting self contained rooms next year. It'll be interesting to listen in on the school buzz.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's about the poverty -- which leads to brain impairment and bad choices all around.

When it's inter-generational, the parents are literally cognitively impaired, as are the children.

https://today.duke.edu/2016/10/how-living-poverty-affects-children%E2%80%99s-brain-development

It's hard to separate the effects of poverty on intelligence with low intelligence causing poverty. I'd put my money on the latter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course, if DCPS suspends students it needs to own it and report it as such. That said, I'm all for suspending students that deserve it (there is a pretty detailed handbook that outlines infractions that warrant suspension). DCPS wants to play it both ways...they want the troublemakers who make it awful for everyone out of the school (frankly, so do I) but they want to be able to point to nice data points that seem to show they are "reaching" more kids and figuring out ways to avoid suspensions and keep students in school.

No one ever wants to state the uncomfortable truth in DC that some teens are so out of control that they don't deserve to be in the regular school population. I'm a reasonable and educated person...I can understand that suspension is not a great solution because it further isolates and sends a "you're bad" message. I don't want these kids treated like losts causes...I just want there to be different solutions for them. So they are unable to cut it in the regular high school setting? OK. Let's create some sort of vocation program where they can learn a skill that they can take pride in? Create alternative school options for these hard discipline cases.

DCPS HAS SEVERAL VOCATIONAL PROGRAMS!! We don't need to 'create' anything.

I think you mean alternative schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't want these kids treated like losts causes...I just want there to be different solutions for them.

They are lost causes. And dancing around it does nobody any good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's about the poverty -- which leads to brain impairment and bad choices all around.

When it's inter-generational, the parents are literally cognitively impaired, as are the children.

https://today.duke.edu/2016/10/how-living-poverty-affects-children%E2%80%99s-brain-development

It's hard to separate the effects of poverty on intelligence with low intelligence causing poverty. I'd put my money on the latter.

Mic drop

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid comes from a loving middle class home. He also has documented SNs and an IEP. He did not ask for his learning disabilities and mental health issues. I have seen firsthand how out-of-school suspensions affect kids with SNs. Kids like mine have a right to a public education, just as your neurotypical kids do. I stand with the ACLU and Every Student, Every Day on this one. There are clear violations of procedure going on, and violations of student and parent rights as well.

If your kid hurls a chair at a teacher, there should be a consequence. Other kids shouldn't have to be scared in the classroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid comes from a loving middle class home. He also has documented SNs and an IEP. He did not ask for his learning disabilities and mental health issues. I have seen firsthand how out-of-school suspensions affect kids with SNs. Kids like mine have a right to a public education, just as your neurotypical kids do. I stand with the ACLU and Every Student, Every Day on this one. There are clear violations of procedure going on, and violations of student and parent rights as well.

If your kid hurls a chair at a teacher, there should be a consequence. Other kids shouldn't have to be scared in the classroom.

Yea, but why they got to suspend? They supposed to be teaching them, but they aint want do there job. Smh.

[Anonymous]

I'm the PP who wrote about having a SN kid who was suspended, multiple times. MY KID NEVER HURLED A CHAIR AT A TEACHER, EVER. MY KID NEVER THREATENED OTHER STUDENTS, EVER. The offenses that prompted the disciplinary responses were behaviors that could and should have been addressed by the school at the school.

[Anonymous]

I don't get the posters who are pouring cold water over the Ron Brown idea, saying it won't fix anything for these children until we fix their parents. They appear to come from both the liberal side and the conservative side.

We don't have an answer for fixing the parents, but Ron Brown is a promising idea for making life better for the kids and the kids they may some day have. I am all for giving it a good chance and remaining open to possible success.

Not particularly relevant, but am the mother of a student who pretty much treated her DCPS high school as optional as soon as she turned 18. The principal told her she had the worst attendance record of anyone in the school. I had no idea.

Turned out she had a debilitating illness that took a while to figure out. DCPS was not our friend in trying to make alternative arrangements for a degree in a way that would accommodate her illness, so she ended up with a GED instead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ron Brown high school forbids almost all suspensions and has a much better approach. Perhaps this is a strategy that should be adopted...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/07/05/dc-all-boys-high-school/102898672/

I'm skeptical of ANY school that says that they don't suspend students. Especially, if they have some "new" better approach. Schools need consistency and follow through. BTW, principals are afraid to perpetuate the school-to-prison pipeline so they ignore disruptive students who need discipline and effective socio-emotional supports. How about investing in more school counselors? How about giving students more recess time? How about more field trips?

Good grief- READ THE ARTICLE-- counseling is essentially what they do instead of suspensions.

I guess, I'll through in my two cents, I am a former DCPS school counselor. When an administrator or I suggested counseling, parents often fell into two categories: Absolutely refusing to acknowledging they have issues because it is seen as uncool or a "white people thing" to speak to a counselor about your problems and try to resolve them OR the second issue was that families has inter-generational issues and several layers of issues that could not be resolved by the school. Those families often needed a referral for a professional that had the time and exprience to del with that many layers. People need to realize that counseling professionals are expensive and the families DCPS often serves are poor and its likely their gov't sponsored insurance may not cover counseling services.

I'll make it easier:
"Key to Ron Brown’s success, staffers say, is an unusual approach to discipline and team-building, introduced to students before classes began last August, that all but prohibits out-of-school suspensions. So-called “restorative justice” offers victims the opportunity to confront classroom tormentors face-to-face.

If students get into a fight, for instance, they're not suspended, as in other D.C. schools. They must come together with others in their class, in a circle, and talk openly about how the conflict affected them. Even bystanders are expected to take part. Students name names and don’t hold back.

The school’s psychologist and one of its founders, Dr. Charles Curtis, said last August that the confrontational approach is actually protective: “We want to say their names now, while they are alive.”

He said the circle also allows students to confide in others about family difficulties — at least four students lost parents over the school year, and several lost other family members.

Ten months later, Curtis is more devoted to the technique than ever, saying the identity development of young black men is “marred with expectations of criminality, expectations of pathology, expectations of aggression and hyper-sexuality — and all kinds of other stuff that people impose on them.”

The school’s approach: smother students in affection and, if you ask the students, sometimes overwhelming attention.

Teachers and staff inquire about their families. They talk almost non-stop about the future, about planning and risk-taking and second chances. After school, they offer rides home and walk students to nearby bus and subway stops.

“You can see that they actually do care for you,” said Matthews, “they don’t just leave you out in the wind.” (He recalled that at his middle school, uniformed guards, not teachers, patrolled the bus stop.)

The restorative approach actually requires a bigger commitment to discipline than simply sending misbehaving students home to their parents for a few days, said founding principal Benjamin Williams. For one thing, there may be nobody home.

Most of the students, he said, “have really bought in to the idea that suspension is not a consequence for behavior, that they’re going to have to take ownership at some point.”

So, it's a good alternative to suspension because someone wrote about it? A lot of these schools know how to put a positive spin mediocre ideas. People see buzzwords like restorative and get excited. I'll believe it when I see it and candidly talk to the students who attend the school.

It may or may not be a good idea to export, but it's working for this school.

The school just started last fall.
I'll believe its working when there is hard data in 5 years. As another poster noted above, people use buzz words like restorative justice. It is not the school's job to restore anyone, their parents are responsible for restorative justice for putting their children in impoverished crime ridden neighborhoods and no prospects of a future.

What a charming attitude! Sounds like you have everything figured out. Glad to know there shouldn't be any kind of attempts made to address discipline in a different way. Thanks for clarifying that for us.

You must not be a teacher. There is truth to PP statement. Many schools adopt shiny new programs and call it success after a few months. When it isn't successful, then they drop it for the next shiny new program. 5 years, is a reasonable amount of time for hard data points..

I'm not suggesting 5 years isn't a good time for data points. But pp was already discounting any possibility that it might work simply because it is new, and therefore useless.

To me, the program seems to have the potential to teach kids some good social-emotional skills while addressing discipline. That's not something any suspension does.

At home and un-monitored suspension doesn't help the suspended child learn, but I'm willing to weigh that against the fact that now everyone else in the classroom can do their jobs: the teacher can teach, and the other students can now learn. I guess I value the success of the many of that of the incorrigible one. Having said that, there's a better solution and that is IN SCHOOL SUSPENSION. Put the student in a monitored classroom and still make him learn. Don't reward him for his bad behavior (he probably misbehaved to be sent home anyway). Keep in on track, but provide him with the disciple and structure he needs to stay on task. And still keep him away from the rest of the population.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid comes from a loving middle class home. He also has documented SNs and an IEP. He did not ask for his learning disabilities and mental health issues. I have seen firsthand how out-of-school suspensions affect kids with SNs. Kids like mine have a right to a public education, just as your neurotypical kids do. I stand with the ACLU and Every Student, Every Day on this one. There are clear violations of procedure going on, and violations of student and parent rights as well.

If your kid hurls a chair at a teacher, there should be a consequence. Other kids shouldn't have to be scared in the classroom.

Yea, but why they got to suspend? They supposed to be teaching them, but they aint want do there job. Smh.

Are you serious? What consequence do you suggest? Would you want to be in a classroom with a chair thrower? Would you want your child in the classroom of a chair thrower?

Suspend them IN SCHOOL WITH SUPERVISION. But keep them away from everyone else.