Education Week Reports on Common Good Forum, Public Agenda Poll from "Report Notes Impact of Student Behavior"
Darcia Harris Bowman
Education Week, May 19, 2004 Common Good's May 2004 Forum, "Is Fairness in Public Schools Unfair?", and Public Agenda's new report, "Teaching Interrupted: Do Discipline Policies in Today's Public Schools Foster the Common Good?", were the focus of national press coverage in the May 19, 2004, edition of Education Week.
"The threat of lawsuits and the behavior of small numbers of persistent troublemakers are interfering with classroom learning and driving teachers from the profession," Education Week reported, summarizing Public Agenda's findings.
The Public Agenda survey, which was commissioned by Common Good, found that:
Nearly 8 in 10 teachers (78%) said students are quick to remind them that they have rights or that their parents can sue.
Nearly half of teachers surveyed (49%) reported they have been accused of unfairly disciplining a student.
More than half of teachers (55%) said that districts backing down from assertive parents causes discipline problems in the nation's schools.
Education Week notes:
"The findings didn't surprise teachers' union officials. 'When we train teachers in discipline issues, we have to discuss whether you touch a student in any way,' because of the possibility of lawsuits, said John O. Mitchell, the deputy director of educational issues for the American Federation of Teachers. 'You hate for teachers to have to think about that, because to be effective in discipline, you have to be sure and confident in what you're doing.'"
Most teachers (85%) agreed that "the experience of most students suffers at the expense of a few chronic troublemakers," and 70 percent of teachers and 68 percent of parents "agreed that zero-tolerance policies that suspend students from school for serious infractions would be a 'very effective solution.'"
Common Good opposes zero tolerance policies, which operate through inflexible rules that undermine teachers' and principals' freedom to make reasonable decisions on school discipline.
Richard Arum, a New York University Professor and the author of Judging School Discipline, cautioned at the Common Good forum that zero-tolerance policies "only add to schools' litigation woes."
"What we have is schools reacting in inflexible ways to minor problems, and these incidents get a lot of attention from the media and undermine the perception that school discipline is good for everyone," Mr. Arum said. "We need to empower teachers and administrators to make reasonable decisions about minor, day-to-day discipline."
The forum featured a wide-ranging exploration of possible solutions to the "culture of challenge and second-guessing" that undermines teachers' ability to maintain order in their classrooms. Education Week reports:
"Due process for students 'has created an arms race that educators will never win-- it becomes a sword for miscreants,' said David C. Bloomfield, the head of the educational leadership program at City University of New York's Brooklyn College and a speaker at the conference.
Instead of trying to throw students out of school--a lengthy process that typically requires hearings, offers avenues for appeals, and sometimes invites litigation--Mr. Bloomfield suggested a shift toward moving students with discipline problems into alternative settings where they can continue their education and receive specialized attention.
Other suggestions for avoiding litigation that emerged at the conference included adoption of school charters in which parents, teachers, and students agree to a code of behavior and consequences for violating those rules, and formation of parent-teacher committees that can override discipline decisions when parents contend their children were wrongly accused."
Click here to read the full Education Week article. (Registration required).
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