Contra Costa Times
By Stephen Baxter
SANTA CRUZ -- Recent national research on kindergarten to 12th-grade students suggests that suspensions and expulsions from school can drag down student achievement and even increase the chances of trouble with the law.
A better disciplinary strategy for teachers and school administrators, said juvenile justice expert James Bell, is to intervene and engage with students to find the root of their problems.
“If we go on with the status quo, we will miss the opportunity to improve,” Bell said Friday at a training event at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz for educators and school administrators.
Bell is executive director of the Oakland-based W. Haywood Burns Institute, which aims to reduce the over representation of youth of color in the juvenile justice system.
Before a panel discussion that included police from Santa Cruz and Watsonville, school leaders from Santa Cruz and Pajaro Valley and nonprofit group leaders, Bell presented summaries of several studies on school discipline. One theme that emerged was that many students with behavioral problems have had traumatic experiences in their lives.
School leaders might be simply piling on to that trauma with traditional disciplinary measures such as detentions and suspensions, Bell said.
Teachers with disruptive students typically send them out of the classroom to the principal’s office, but a new school of thought is that the student needs to questioned then and there by the teacher.
“Teaching is also teaching appropriate behavior, said Kenya Edison, director of student services at Pajaro Valley Unified School District, who also spoke at Friday’s event.
Leaders from Pajaro Valley Unified and Santa Cruz City Schools said they are trying new things when it comes to discipline.
In the past three years in Pajaro Valley Unified, school expulsions decreased 60 percent and suspensions decreased 39 percent, said Edison. When a student is suspended from school, he or she is not allowed on campus for a number of days. An expulsion means the student may not return to school at all.
“I’m glad that my colleagues are being brave enough to break the status quo,” Edison said.
Eileen Brown, Santa Cruz City Schools director of student services, also said during a panel discussion that sending a student to the principal’s office is not necessarily productive for the student’s behavior or academic achievement.
“Every minute they’re out of the classroom, they’re missing instruction, Brown said.
In a coordinated effort, referrals to the principal’s office in Santa Cruz City Schools dropped from about 1,000 a few years ago to 39 in the last school year, said Brown.
“We really have seen a dramatic discipline shift,’ Brown said. “We still have plenty of challenges, and I feel we’re just getting started.”
At Friday’s event, Bell also highlighted the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, at http://tinyurl.com/krhake6, also known as ACES, which reported that about 90 percent of youths in the juvenile justice system in the U.S. had a traumatic event or several traumatic events in their lives. The research was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente’s Health Appraisal Clinic in San Diego.
The traumatic event could be sexual abuse, drug abuse, an incarcerated household member, witnessing domestic violence or another trauma. Rather than add to that trauma with suspension or expulsion, school leaders have gathered from the study that teacher intervention in the classroom and better relationships with students can lead to better behavior.
Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, for instance, did away with suspensions and expulsions and its students’ Academic Performance Index scores rose, Bell said.
“Have ‘Get to know you time,’ have students write their autobiographies, have relationships with your students,” Bell said.
Staci LaCagnin, a program specialist at Santa Cruz City Schools, attended Friday’s event.
“What struck me was what he (Bell) said about trauma,” said LaCagnin.
“We’ve done some training, but I think there’s work to do. I think as a community we’re coming to a better place.”