About half of all 9th graders are suspended at least once a year in the Milwaukee Public Schools, which may have the highest suspension rates in the country. Superintendent William Andrekopoulos tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “We’re doing a lousy job of sending kids out of the classroom.” Actually, it sounds like they’re doing an excellent job of sending kids out of the classroom. Keeping them inside seems to be the problem. But is it a problem?
When I began teaching in New York City, I was caught off guard by the outrageous, over-the-top student discipline problems in many classrooms, especially my own. But what really shocked me was the unwillingness of principals to suspend kids, regardless of the infraction. It didn’t take long to figure out the reason for the reluctance. At the time, principals were being judged by two criteria: test scores and suspension rates. You could have low test scores as long as your suspension rate was also low; it was believed to be indicative of running a tight ship. If you didn’t suspend kids, it meant you had few discipline problems. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that the best way to achieve a low suspension rate is by not suspending students.
In my first year of teaching, I was in a collaborative team teaching classroom. One afternoon, I sought out the AP to complain about a seriously disruptive student. “Well, Mr. Pondiscio,” she replied in her most condescending tone, “imagine how much harder it would be if you were the only adult in the room!” She flashed me a Professor Umbridge smile, indicating the conversation was over. The very next morning my plan book was collected for review. It was returned with a note reminding me to have all of my plans for the week in writing, in advance, with instructional aims and state learning standards clearly written out.
Message received. Control your class and don’t bug me with this nonsense. We will not be suspending this, or any child. My school was not necessarily indicative of all schools, or even all inner city schools. Still, it is an article of faith in the era of high expectations and every-child-can-learn-at-a-high-level that if a child is disruptive, the fault is the teacher’s for bad classroom management, poor lesson planning, or both. It’s a lovely, idealistic notion that gets in the way of student achievement.
It is a testament to how deeply ingrained is the notion of teacher accountability for student misbehavior, that my palms are sweating as I type this. Even now, I feel like I am admitting to something dark and shameful. But it’s the truth: I had students that I couldn’t consistently and effectively control. And if I’m brutally honest with myself, the fear of disruption learned in my first days as a teacher probably led me to be much more authoritarian than I would otherwise have been as a teacher. That, in turn, is part of the reason why I’m writing this post right now, instead of a lesson plan. Disruption in many struggling schools is endemic. It sucks the life out of classrooms and gets in the way of teaching and learning to a degree that few people outside of the classroom appreciate. Suspending disruptive students is not a particularly elegant solution to the problem, but not doing so sends a powerful message to other students that their education doesn’t matter very much.
A few years ago the AFT did a poll in which 17 percent of teachers reported losing four or more hours of teaching time per week because of disruptive student behavior; another 19 percent said they lost two or three hours. In urban areas, the figure rose to 21 percent losing four or more hours per week; 24 percent in urban secondary schools. “It’s hard to see how academic achievement can rise significantly in the face of so much lost teaching time, not to mention the anxiety that is produced by the constant disruption (and by the implied safety threat), which must also take a toll on learning,” reported the American Educator. Just so.
Let’s go back to that disruptive student whose instructional time is being lost when he or she is suspended. In a class of 21, for every three minutes the disruptive student is in the room, 60 minutes of student on-task time is lost (3 mins x 20 other students). Take a seriously disruptive student out of class for three days, and he’s lost three days. Keep him in, and the class has lost 60 instructional days cumulatively.
Remove a disruptive student from the class and that child does not learn. Leave him inside, however, and neither does anyone else.
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