In the wake of school shootings, Las Vegas schools are expelling many more students, reports the Las Vegas Sun. In recent weeks, Clark County principals have recommended up to 100 student expulsions per day. But bad apples are like bad pennies. They turn up somewhere.
The increase is putting pressure on the district to find enough seats at its three continuation schools for expelled students and at its five behavior schools for students given less severe punishments.
. . . Once those students’ time at a continuation school is up, they typically are not allowed to go back to the school from which they are expelled, so they are sent into a different school. Critics say that spreads the problem students throughout the valley, effectively ensuring that no school can remain immune.
Education Gadfly suggests that repeat offenders lose the right to attend any mainstream school.
We think that if reasonable interventions aren’t working, if a student has clearly decided that he doesn’t want to learn and, moreover, is bent on discouraging his peers from learning, then he should exit the system for good.
Gadfly recommends “academic boot camp.” Continuation school only with more yelling?
Update: Give ‘em a few hours a day of home tutoring, writes Robert Pondiscio on Core Knowledge Blog. Don’t let them back in school to disrupt learning for the majority of students. That would let teachers escape the “engagement myth” and focus on teaching.
I don’t think these expulsions are the answer to an underlying problem–kids who have no discipline at home. In time, the school district will get criticized for so many expulsions which will increase the number of dropouts for which schools are taking a lot of heat for now.
No, dkzody, it probably isn’t the answer for the undisciplined kids. But it IS the answer for the good kids. At least, in my opinion, it’s AN answer.
Obviously, concerns about criticism for an unusually high percentage of dropouts isn’t much a consideration for Detroit Public Schools since that district graduates only 25% of its students.
The reason for the expulsions isn’t kids with no discipline but an organization which is insufficiently flexible to accommodate the glorious diversity of the student population.
A mandatory attendance policy ought to be matched by a responsibility to perform on the part of the institution doing the mandating.
But the reasons for the expulsions aren’t the effect unruly or troubled kids have on the education of other kids but the prospect that they might become a great deal of trouble for the administration. In the wake of Columbine simply ignoring the trouble-makers and the troubled kids is no longer the safest course of action for the administration.
I had a chat with my vice-principal the other day relative to me seeking employment somewhere other than where he worked. My gripe was that when I ejected a student from my classroom for disruptive behavior, I expected that the administrators would send him/her back to class in a condition other than smelling like milk and cookies, and certainly not without a behavioral modification.
His condescending response was that his philosophy of correction was to reasonably convince the student that he/she couldn’t continue to stay in my class without consideration for my expectations…”if we can save one child, then it’s all worth it.”
My response was that he should update his resume’, because he wasn’t going to last long in high school unless his mother was on the school board. Reason was tried more than once before the kid was referred to the “office” for attention. The kids are sent to him because reason didn’t work in their case. The philosophy of saving the disruptor pales in comparison to the philosophy of saving the 20 other students in the class who are handicapped by his/her misbehavior.
Like minded administrators, who are afraid to throw someone out into the streets should be held responsible for their actions. If your child is being deprived of an education because he/she is being forced to share a classroom with students that the teacher can’t control, then you need to put a boot in the butt of the administrator who lacks the courage to support the school as a whole instead of looking at saving the world one miscreant at atime.
In an area where there are so many biases, it is prudent to have some facts or research to back up opinions and especially choices. For example, the assumption that “the problem” is kids who have no discipline at home. By even mentioning a challenge to that idea, I fully expect a torrent of anecdotal “evidence” that parents these days aren’t up to scratch (or the ones at your school aren’t, or some kid who was a terror had parents who were also). There is every reason to be very careful in levelling this accusation as it is the rationale for denying a kid access to an education (I know, I know–the adults aren’t denying anything–the kid made the choice).
While I wouldn’t consider my working experience with families to add up to even the level of a decent qualitative study, I have worked with both poor/minority/disadvantaged type families and middle-class/two-parent/well educated type parents. My impression from this work is that there may be some differences in parenting style–but the lack of discipline was by far more common amongst the non-poor group. Yet these are not typically the schools claiming to be falling apart from discipline problems. Now my hunch would be that this looser parenting style has something to do with a broader sphere of safety that can be offered. These are the kids who may get a bit more slack at school, as well. Organic or other learning impairments are more likely to be diagnosed, etc.
There may be differing expectations of teachers and other adults, as well. If an eight year old from my neighborhood (yes, I am on the other side of the tracks) decided that he just didn’t want to learn, it would be widely assumed that that choice did not belong to him, but to the adults around him–including the teacher. A kid in the upper echelons exhibiting the same non-cooperative behaviors might not be seen as not wanting to learn, but rather to be on some other inner track to genius which adults should try to understand.
But I can state with reasonable certainty that geographic cures are generally no cure at all. I would also suggest that when the “need” for such cures is high, then the better place to start looking would be at commonalities among the bad kids that the school (which is the setting in which the problem is occurring) has not been able to address.
Allen: You’ve got to be kidding. “An organization which is insufficiently flexible to accommodate the glorious diversity of the student population”? We’re talking about school shootings. We’re talking about arson. We’re talking about drug dealers. We’re talking about a complete disrespect for human life. We’re talking about gang bangers. The parents bear no responsibility? The community as a whole bears no responsibility? It’s all the schools’ fault, right?
Widebody–I don’t think it is accurate to assume that the overwhelming majority of suspensions/expulsions are for shootings, arson or drug dealing. In fact, each of those acts is a criminal offense likely to move a kid elsewhere anyway.
But I do think it is a major fallacy to assume that schools are somehow isoloated from the “community as a whole,” that you speak of. To the extent that schools set themselves up as fortresses within an alien community they reinforce–if not produce–the “alienation” that feeds some of the phenomena that you are describing.