Discipline takes a tiered approach
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on December 28, 2016 10:04 AM
Wayne County Public Schools takes a more nuanced approach to discipline than the community might realize, according to its administrators.
Most people today are familiar with the term "zero-tolerance" as it is applied to the education system. Another common phrase -- the school-to-prison pipeline -- also does not fit the Wayne County model.
So says WCPS Superintendent Dr. Michael Dunsmore, although he admits inflexibility is becoming a problem in the education profession as a whole.
"From what I have seen, we've gotten less flexible as class sizes increase and societal pressures bleed into the classroom," he said.
"If I'm a teacher with a class of 30 students and two of them are disrupting that whole class, I'm going to be upset because my job is to teach."
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Originally conceived as part of the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994, zero-tolerance began as a federal requirement that schools impose a minimum one-year expulsion of any student who brings a weapon on campus.
Since then, however, zero-tolerance policies have expanded to cover a broad range of situations, creating what critics and researchers say are overly harsh punishments for lesser disciplinary problems.
The discipline rules used by WCPS, on the other hand, work on a tiered system where offenses fall on one of five levels, according to school board policy.
Each level corresponds to a range of disciplinary actions, though those actions are recommendations and not necessarily hard mandates that cannot be deviated from. And each level covers offenses of an increasingly-serious nature.
Level One begins with relatively minor misconduct -- such as a student's use of inappropriate language -- for which discipline should be handled without suspension.
Level Two includes cheating and fighting, and Level Three covers drug offenses, gang activity and non-firearm weapons.
Things escalate at Level Four. That is where state-mandated suspensions kick in. The level includes only one category -- bringing a firearm or destructive device such as a bomb to school -- for which any student in any grade is given an automatic 365-day suspension.
Finally, if a student 14 or older repeatedly violates the code of conduct to the point that the school board determines they are a threat to other students or employees, they may be upgraded to Level Five, which is grounds for expulsion.
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While the juvenile crime rate nationwide peaked in 1994 and then steadily declined, according to FBI statistics, the 1999 Columbine massacre stirred fears of a new shooting somewhere else, adding momentum to the push for tighter security and stricter discipline in schools.
From 1996 to 2008, the number of public high schools with full-time law enforcement and security guards tripled, according to the CYJ study.
This pattern is not reflected in Wayne County, however, where law enforcement does not have an overwhelming presence in schools.
Each of the six Wayne County high schools has one school resource officer, while four officers rotate between the elementary schools and three more cover middle schools throughout the county.
Wayne County Sheriff's Office Maj. Tom Effler said that, in previous years, sheriff's deputies would work as SRO's on their days off.
During the 2014-2015 school year, for every 100 students, less than one criminal act was reported across elementary, middle and high school populations. That is nearly half the statewide average in elementary and high school, and still below average in middle school.
Effler said that SRO's in Wayne County have dealt with school trespassers in the past, but that they are generally suspended students who are not supposed to return to campus during their suspension.
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Zero-tolerance policies have grown increasingly vague in the years following the 1994 legislation that spawned them.
In the years since, certain instances of the policy's application have gained national attention, leaving many upset about harsh punishments being used in situations that under public scrutiny do not seem to reasonably constitute possession of a weapon.
In 2000, a Georgia sixth-grader was arrested and suspended because of a chain on her Tweety Bird wallet. In 2001, a 10-year-old girl was expelled after her mother included a small knife in her lunch to cut her sandwich with, even though she immediately brought the knife to her teacher.
Dunsmore said that, while firearms do constitute a mandatory 365-day suspension under WCPS policy, situations like the 2001 expulsion are what he wants to avoid.
"If a five-year-old sees his dad's pocket knife and grabs it for show-and-tell, that's a different situation than when a high schooler brings a weapon he knows he shouldn't."
In the 2015-2016 school year, an average of 11 elementary school students per 100 received short-term suspensions. For middle schoolers, the ratio nearly tripled, as 32.35 students per 100 were suspended short-term, compared to 29 out of every 100 high school students, according to the Wayne County District report card.
More severe punishments were nearly non-existent. For every 100 elementary school students, only 0.01 were suspended more than 10 days, compared to 0.04 and 0.08 for middle and high school students, respectively. And not a single student in any grade was expelled during the 2015-2016 school year.
While some assume that getting disruptive students out of the classroom may aid learning, there is actually a negative relationship between school suspensions and academic achievement - as suspensions go up, achievement goes down.
This could be due to any number of factors, including the fact that time spent on suspension is time not spent learning in the classroom. A single suspension or expulsion doubles the likelihood a student will have to repeat a grade - a strong predictor of students dropping out of school.
Dunsmore said that suspensions run the risk of being a stop-gap solution to more persistent underlying problems. Because schools are so focused on test scores, they cannot afford to spend time on teaching students how to be good citizens, he added.
Schools must find a balance between keeping students safe and treating those who break rules fairly
"It's real easy to suspend, to say 'you're out' instead of really looking at the causes of that behavior and trying to help," Dunsmore said. "We have to educate our kids, and that's where we as educators need help from our policy makers."
While students need to be held accountable for their actions, Dunsmore believes that overly strict discipline is not the answer.
"I'm not going to say there aren't students who do bad things, because there are, but we have gotten away from that empathetic way of teaching."