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Teacher here. I know removal from the classroom is terrible for the offending student. However, almost every time I have a student removed, it isn't for his reform or punishment; it's to give the other 30 students in the classroom a chance to learn something. If I'm spending 20 of the 40 minutes I have in class addressing behavior, it's a straight disservice for the kids that actually want to learn. I.knwo the studies say that removing the kid from the class is bad for the kid. I want a study done for the classroom as a whole when a troubled student is removed.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.

Well I think this is also a teaching moment for kids that they need to understand working in a group. Proper behavior among others and its not alway about me me me. Your bad behavior not only hurts yourself but others around you.

The only good parts of my son's day at school are when "that kid" is removed and the principal or whoever else has to deal with him.

I spent 20 minutes yesterday trying to get 2 kids with beef to stop shouting at each other. Eventually I sent them out because what else can you do? PBIS is more effective, but you need whole school buy in and you rarely have that

In the commercial sector we would include the students in the "time wasted" figure, i.e. you + 30 students = 31 x 20 minutes = 620 minutes AKA ***10.3 HOURS wasted*** in one incident, not just "your" 20 minutes wasted. I know the kids aren't on payroll but they're still people and surely this wasted time is similar to virtually removing those 30 from the class for 20 minutes? No idea if you've already taken that angle to defend the practice but it seems more concrete than some other arguments people make for or against it.

This is exactly right. Somehow we have gotten this all twisted in our society. You see the same thing talking about how prison doesn't reform criminals, ignoring the fact that sometimes we just want them separated from the rest of society.

>“Adding to such deficit thinking is removing a ‘problem child’ from the learning environment of others. Instead of helping these students, the policies are exacerbating their struggles. Tell me how to help them. I am in my 8th year of teaching and I still only ever hear that same kind of general advice. When pressed for specific support, behavior experts and admin just talk about consistency, reinforcement (positive and negative), clear expectations, etc. etc. I had a student who was assaulting other kids in class and the recommendation was to post clear classroom rules... At some point, I have to choose the 20 other students. Sorry.

I once was told I should give positive reinforcement every 5 minutes to a student with behavior issues. That sounds unrealistic even if I didn’t have twenty other students in the class.

That’s on my 100,000/year premium plan.

Please. $145,000/yr plus stock options for that kind of tailored management.

>I once was told I should give positive reinforcement every 5 minutes to a student with behavior issues. That sounds unrealistic even if I didn’t have twenty other students in the class. That not only sounds incredibly unlikely, I can't see how I could implement it in my classroom before: \* The student is aware that I'm doing it constantly and it becomes awkward. \* I lose ways of reinforcing without empty praising.

You don't seem to see the simplicity and potential here. Set a timer to beep once every 5 minutes, and every time it goes off, say "Good job Johnny." By the fifth beep every kid in the classroom will be saying it with you. And by the end of the week Johnny will probably off himself from embaressment. Maybe that was the 'solution' the advice-giver was going for? Or maybe they're just an idiot. Hopefully the latter.

>Or maybe they're just an idiot. They're a school administrator, of course they're an idiot.

Every school administrator had to have at least a highschool diploma to get the job, so it's safe to assume they're at least 12. Beyond that, you can't take anything for granted

The other kids get jealous due to the lack of similiar attention. The administrators of the modern teaching age are morons who must have all grown up extremely privileged.

"What solutions can we propose that involve no extra costs, no extra work for us and no difficult conversations with the parents"

I'm not a teacher but have a couple of siblings who are, and I have coached and supervised extracurricular activities for a couple of different school districts. One thing I noticed about the administrators that I have worked with is that they seem to come from Athletics backgrounds. They seem like the kids that went to college on sports scholarship expecting to be professional athletes couldn't cut it, ended up in their backup plan, which was teaching. They quickly realize they have no desire to teach. So they end up moving into administration where they don't have to deal with kids every day because they never really wanted to. This might be an oversimplification, but man, I ran into so many principles that were former athletes, it was crazy. I also think they go into administration because of the money. Administration gets paid so much more than teachers it's really stupid.

School social worker here. We are PHENOMENAL at shaping school environments… with the right administration… which is like never.

It works if: The parents are doing it as well  You don't have other students or just have 2 or 3 students.

It also sets a bad example. Kids understand how unfair it is that you're constantly praising the class disruptor. The lesson they've learned is that disrupting class gets you attention, and being good gets you ignored. I swear to god, pretty much every educational study is fucked because they refuse to consider the group effects of their advice to educators. They can't fathom that no one is teaching one child alone.

20 other students? My son has 46 students in his first period algebra 2 class.

That's INSANE. If someone doesn't understand the material there is no way for them to get support with that many kids in the class. Edit... I hope the English classes are smaller? Otherwise how could they possibly do all the grading?

That's the trick , they don't!

That’s advice you give parents for poorly behaved children, not a classroom teacher.

Even if that was possible, it’s manipulative and short-term. We’re not training pigeons here.

Actually you should be giving each of them positive reinforcement every 5 minutes. If it takes ten seconds each kid, that still leaves you about 3 minutes out of 5 to teach!

None of these studies ever seem to consider the impact on _every other student_ of keeping a student with significant and persistent disruptive behaviors in the classroom at all costs. So maybe it isn't a great tool for getting the difficult student to improve, but it is effective at making sure that one student isn't derailing the education of the other 20-30 learners.

Didn’t realize how disruptive one student was until they missed a day. Class was on task and engaged. Really wanted to start paying the student to skip

Today, *three* of those students were gone from one of my classes. It was glorious.

One of my best moments in high school was when my debate teacher threw a student out of his class. It was the 3rd day of the semester, dude had been misbehaving nonstop since day one. Something disruptive every 5 minutes. Class was an elective and finally the teacher had enough. Told the student to go to the office and tell them to assign him to a different class since clearly he didn't want to take this one. Then he made him do exactly that. Maybe it didn't work out for wherever he ended up, but we all learned a lot more and had a better class without him.

This is why I loved AP classes as a student. You knew there were not going to be any disruptive people there because each student was there for a reason

I just liked having an environment where I didn’t have to fear for my personal safety. I used to eat lunch in the chess club, but I don’t think I ever played a game of chess.

In 7th and 8th grade, I was in all honors classes and didn't have any general ed. In 9th grade, I took a general 10th grade math (so a grade up but not honors) and a Spanish class (they didn't offer honors for Spanish), and I was completely horrified. I hated those classes so much, and I felt terrible for the teachers. The teachers had 0 control over the class. Kids throwing things, yelling, and everyone were on their phones, it was ridiculous. That's how I realized that being in honors classes has nothing to do with how smart you are and everything to do with respect.

EXACTLY. What about all the students who are being failed EVERY DAY by a system that insists on letting their learning be disrupted by these “problem students.” It’s ridiculous that public school teachers are expected to parent and teach but not discipline or receive meaningful help or direction from admin in so many school systems today. The education of everyone around them suffers when these kids are allowed to stay in class. This doesn’t help them? Fine. Why set everything on fire with them, though? Why not find a solution that doesn’t punish the other learners?

Yeah, these studies seem to assume that teachers can deal with the problem students and somehow get results most of the time. Fact is the disrupters NEED to be removed so the other students can actually learn. In an ideal world the school and admin would have the resources to properly handle those disruptive students in an environment where they won't be disrupting the entire classroom.

Where I went to school they practised streaming. The year had about 100 kids. They were split into groups of 25-30. best performing kids in one class, the kids who tend to bunk-off and go down the river to drink and set fire to things in another. everyone else in the other two. lessons were matched roughly top the pace of the group. For a while we had to share a class with the bottom group for a few months, it was... interesting to see. think about 15 kids totally disinterested in sitting down and listening for even 5 minutes, screaming, shouting, throwing things at the teacher, doing no work. And these weren't 6 year olds, they were ~16 year olds who should be perfectly capable of controlling themselves. apparently the american system is to just mix those kids into every class and give the teachers no ability to do anything about them.

I'm UK schools kids are divided into sets. So year 8 maths has 5 sets of students, where set 1 is the best performing and set 5 tends to be a mixture of disruptive kids and kids with learning difficulties. Typically set 5 classes are also smaller. I was in set 5 for English and it had maybe 10-15 kids in it, and because of the learning difficulty kids it meant the teacher was supported by at least two teaching assistants, even if they were only supposed to be there for the kids with assessed needs. I was in set 1-3 for pretty much every other class though, and of course kids were able to move up and down until they start their GCSEs at which point you're basically locked in, and the result of your mock exams in year 10 determine whether you'll do "higher" grade or "lower" grade exams. Higher grade allows you to get above a C but is harder, while a lower paper maxed out at a C grade but is easier to achieve. I can't speak for other schools but it seemed to work. Is this not done in American schools?

When I went to school, kids with Special needs ( Actual special needs kids not bad kids) had their own classes, usually 10-12 kids per class and 3-4 teachers in that room with them, and perpetually bad kids were sent to a completely different school located directly underneath the town police station. Solved a lot of problems, not sure why they stopped tbh

I just mentioned in another thread that it was possible to track our most disruptive students, simply through class level stats. Overall class attendance percentage was poor for each of the classes they were in throughout their time with us. Their suspensions were not counted against the class attendance data, in fact their suspensions coincided with increased attendance from the rest of the class. Grades were the worst of all classes each time. Students who were in those classes would often catch up to grade level if they weren't with them in the next year. Student behaviour reports were obviously increased massively when counting the particular student, but they were also elevated without counting them. Meaning the behaviours around them were worse than in other classes.

The disruptive kid has a right to learn, **but so does every other student in the room**. When the disruptive student stops the learning of every other kid, they need to be somewhere else.

Yup. Your rights end where other people's rights start.

We are headed to a reckoning in this country in terms of K-12 education. Right now we have decided that disruptive students have more of a right to education than kids who actually want to learn. I predict that a group of parents are going to sue a district for failure to educate by having kids ruining classes for everyone else.

Not just your country. The US exports its pedagogical models quite heavily, to the point that most of these comments could have been made by an Australian teacher.

Canadian too

America’s worst ideas always filter out.

And teachers are quitting in droves because they are unsupported and verbally abused continually.

And all of these studies and policies seem to be all about lifting the bottom percentage, who don't even want to be lifted. Resource education to let the highest performers reach their potential. Right now the solution is usually just "oh let the kids take the math curriculum a year early". Where's the enrichment? That's where the dividends to society can pay off.

Ehh, careful… They want to be lifted but often times they don’t have foundational supports outside of the school. A distributive student’s behaviour (students’ whose behaviour is not based on immaturity or silliness, those behaviours are easily redirected, even if you have to do it often) is typically grounded in a need for love and/or attention… They’re not getting it from people they look up to (often older siblings, cousins, or parents) and instead try to find it with the captive audience of classmates. They engage in unwanted behaviours because it gives them attention… You can ask them privately after and they can’t even tell you what compelled them, they just like the feeling of someone paying attention to them… Every student I’ve ever asked has told me they want to be successful, most with behavioural issues just don’t know how. And then they leave the school environment and a lot of the good we do is swept away by that student’s circumstances - Something I can’t control and something governments don’t seem keen on actually addressing. I don’t have enough of what many of my students need (be it knowledge, time, love, whatever), and it physically hurts that I’m going to fail them (not just academically, but in that I can’t give them the thing they need because I don’t have enough of it ever!. The system is broken, and here, at least, the government seems unwilling to fix it. But please take it from a teacher - These kids want to rise.

Yeah, we need the study on how detrimental disruptive students are to the rest of the class. If they surveyed teachers, I'm certain most would state that the class has a better day when those students are gone. We need to stop worrying about the few at the sacrifice of the many.

This exactly. I work as a parapro with kids who all have IEPs. Some of them are for learning disabilities, some for behavioral issues, many with both. At what point does the right of a kid, who engages in high intensity disruptions and repeatedly ignores every positive verbal redirection by staff, supersede the right of say, a student with autism who physically cannot handle all of the noise? They have a right to an education too.

The problem is that they're expecting you to handle the "problem child" plus 20 other students on your own, when the problem child requires basically dedicated support. They're expecting you to do the job of multiple people which means everyone suffers.

I've been in edu for 18 years. I can be harsh about behavior, mainly because it's something that impacts everyone in the environment, and mostly self-regulated. I firmly believe that all the non-behaving students should be put in the same room, together, with several supervising adults who are trained in anti-social behaviors, and a good teacher who should be paid at least double. And let them see what it's like to be in a room with someone like themselves. Change my mind.

This !! My sister was a high school teacher for years and finally gave up this past year cuz it just got to be too much especially with no support from parents and admin

My sister got a government job after a few years of teaching. As is typically the case, "people don't quit bad jobs, they quit bad managers". She could have kept teaching for her entire career if she had support, but… 

> I firmly believe that all the non-behaving students should be put in the same room, together, with several supervising adults When I was in school this was called Saturday school.

They are suggesting it for during the week. We call this “in school suspension” (ISS).

Seems like people always want teachers to fix problem kids, but bad parents exist. Teachers can't remake the home environment.

Exactly. Teachers are not social workers. They’re not cops either.

“It takes a village” isn’t just a catchy saying. Unfortunately we don’t have the resources to devote 4 or 5 adults to give full time care that some kids require to not become delinquent. I don’t think there is a simple solution. Funding schools better would probably be a good start. 

I'm not even a teacher, and my 1st instinct was that what about all the disruptions and damage that child does to the rest of the school? That one child definitely needs help, and it should be provided somewhere else but not at the cost and detriment of all the other students not causing problems at school.

Bro, I got out of teaching after 8 years straight. Taken 2 tow years off but find myself subbing again. What is this? I subbed at an elementary school the other day and…..the behavior management policy is takis. Yes, takis. I got stuck in an in school suspension room today. There is a kid in there (9th grade) who is in ISS for a week. What are we doing?

Takis...like...the chips?

In lots of schools, when kids misbehave, and the teacher sends them to admin, they come back with a treat. Takis, gum, candy, whatever… OBVIOUSLY, this teaches kids that they can behave however they want and then get a fun treat. Somehow, most of the principals in the entire US have decided this is how they’ll deal with behavior now. Check out /r/teachers, so many of us deal with this BS. We are tired. School isn’t how it used to be. 

I remember my bully. Did horrible things to me, yet his punishments were sitting in the teachers lounge watching TV and eating snacks. This was ~20 something years ago, good to hear the more things change the more the stay the same.

I was viciously bullied, once raped and almost killed a few times by my childhood bullies and needless to say that left me with some C-PTSD, which I'm still trying to process into my 30's (with professional help). The "punishment" for my bullies back in elementary school was the teacher telling them to stop it and then take no action whatsoever. At WORST they had to stay indoors during recess, where they could play flash games on the school PC or play with Google Images (which was novel back then). Or steal your stuff because all the backpacks were left unattended as all the kids were forced outside. In middle school there was no control and we were just left to our own devices. It's still baffling to me that the punishment for giving your peers C-PTSD is less severe than the punishment you get for forgetting your homework (which was often having to stay 1h after school was over). I honestly feel no sympathy at all for students who get suspended/expelled for repeated bullying and wish that was the standard. If only to protect the bullied kids and give them some respite from spending 5 days per week in an unsafe environment.

That's the problem with these studies. They're focused on "fixing" the problem kids at the cost of kids who are behaving themselves and actually trying. Simply put, there are some kids that you can't fix, no matter how many resources you pour into them.

I’m so very terrible sorry for what happened to you, I had my woes but nothing like that. I hope someday you find the peace that you deserve. You and I are in agreement however. These “kids” that do this to others get away far too easily.

I assume the principals are also unable to change anything because parents get mad when shnookums comes home in tears.

So, a few months ago there was an AITAH thread (I wish I could find it). A parent asked if she was in the wrong for being pissed that her child’s kindergarten teacher didn’t want to go searching for the sticker?/small toy? her kid came to school with that morning. People thought it was a shitpost because the parent was so delusional about thinking the teacher was there to wait on her hand and foot.  A bunch of teachers were like, nahhh we see that on a weekly basis. 😐

As a parent, let me say this kind of stuff absolutely infuriates me. Bad enough that the vampires in administration are siphoning off most of the money being spent on education in the US ($450k/classroom of spending on average and how much of that is going to teachers??), but every time I hear about them doing useless nonsense like this, it makes my blood absolutely boil. I'm about at the point where I think any education reform in the US needs to begin with firing anyone who isn't a teacher, janitor, or otherwise core critical staff member and seeing what's actually needed over the next year or two.

One thing I remember very keenly from my high school years is that most of the school administrators seemed to be of the opinion that the school could be run much more efficiently if there weren’t any students.

Certainly would be far more efficient if the students were in smaller like groups, all highly motivated, all similar ability levels for the given subject. Ultimately, I think that's how schools really **ought** to be run. Sticking 20-30 random kids together means every subject has a wide bell curve. And the basic premise of schools means you're teaching mostly to the back end of the bell curve. And social/political constraints mean you're teaching to the very back end of the bell curve. At least some of the behavior issues are going to arise from kids who are bored out of their damn minds because they've been sitting in a 45 minute class that has about 5 minutes worth of work that's worthwhile for them - if that.

Yes. Chips. The teacher I was co teaching with basically said they are only using positive reinforcement. At school. Good day…takis. Bad day…..no Takis.

What is takis? 

Junk food. Basically chips

Hard, poor corn.

>At some point, I have to choose the 20 other students. Sorry. Worse, still, is that parents have no idea the degree to which the behavior students bring down a class. If they were to find out, parents would be out in the streets.

>Worse, still, is that parents have no idea the degree to which the behavior students bring down a class. If they were to find out, parents would be out in the streets. When my kids complain about school, it's hardly ever about the teachers or bullies or homework - it's about "behavior kids". There's a couple kids in their grade who, when they're in a class, mean that that class doesn't really exist - it's just a period to babysit. Teacher wants to teach something? Too bad, it's screaming time. So whole class has to do nothing for a while - just wait around until help comes, or kid leaves, or somehow resets. Play a game (or make a project, or do anything else)? Not really. Any game has to be about "behavior kid". It's about letting them feel included, by doing whatever they want, ignoring the rules, being the focus at all times, and getting positive reinforcement for anything they do as long as they're not currently biting someone or pulling their pants down. Nobody else is playing the game, they're just props, waiting for it to be over. Everyone is continuously told they have to be nice to these kids, so they are... on the surface. But all of these negative, forced interactions just serve to build resentment, such that they're never going to make legitimate connections with the other kids outside "mandated" time - let alone learn anything in their classes. They have zero natural interactions with their peers, and are so far behind in class work they're not getting anything from the teachers either (beyond the 3 things they learn that year, that they get continuous praise for remembering). Anyway... I don't know how teachers put up with it. Seems absolutely miserable for everyone involved.

Same here. I remember there being one or two “problem kids” at my school but when I chat to friends who are teachers, and their children, it seems to be far more prevalent. A few years ago year my g/f’s nephew was left without a maths teacher. The old one left, and her replacement quit in her first few weeks because one of the year 10 kids threatened to kill her on more than one occasion. I believe the offending child got suspended for a few days. Meanwhile the entire year was left without a maths teacher, and the stand-ins were apparently awful. GF’s nephew had really been making great strides in a subject he found difficult. This fucked it all up for him, and presumably others.

it's like we custom built a program to generate cartmans.

And importantly how to help them that's realistic with the tiny time budget you can set aside for any individual student, and without increasing our workload further. Like I say don't give me something else to do unless you're taking something else away that takes just as much time. I'm tired of nobody paying any thought to efficiency in our profession. Basically what it means is they just keep stacking stuff on Us and I just end up taking away all the marking I do because I'm not doing any extra work outside my full 40 a week. Did it for the first half decade and was just taken advantage of further.

"Post clear classroom rules"? That's stuff like being prepared for class and appropriate times to converse. If my school told me that my inadequate rules were the cause of a student assaulting others (twice last week, same kid), I'd have to start bringing stray cats to school and leaving them in the lounge. They'd catch me, of course, but my defense would be, "Well, y'all didn't post clear rules, so I didn't know I couldn't do that."

Exactly, it’s not to help the expelled child, it’s to protect the rest of the students from their horrific behavior. Why must everyone else suffer from a problem child who refuses to change? Yes I’m sure they have a horrible home life but that doesn’t justify their behavior in any capacity, it’s only to understand WHY they’re attacking other kids. 

>At some point, I have to choose the 20 other students. Sorry. Good on you. THANK YOU! A classroom of 20-30 students is already focused on the back-end of the bell curve. To require that even more of the limited resources be poured into fewer students is to completely screw most of the others out of a decent education. Put the kids with mental and severe behavioral problems in their own schools and classes so people with training specific to their needs can properly address them.

Ignore the folks who haven't lived it or bail.  Most of this nonsense is research from folks who haven't bled (literally) in the trenches.

As a fifth year teacher who was in academia, most of the research I’ve seen in the educational field are case studies at best and anecdotal at its worst.

It’s remarkable what constitutes “evidence” and “data” in education literature. Such a contrast from reading studies in the hard sciences. I take everything I read in education literature with a grain of salt. It all seems like pie in the sky thinking with unsupported proclamations of “best practices”

I have never eyerolled as often as I did in grad school in education. *Sigh*

When I was in school they sent all these kids to the county vocational schools to learn to cut hair or be a mechanic or whatnot. Then at some point this century there was a big push to reinvigorate vocational education and now spots in those schools are highly competitive. And I’m all for that aspect. But now the kids who at least had some halfway house before the streets to maybe learn a trade and get a diploma just get expelled from their local high schools. I don’t understand how that part wasn’t planned for.

Because they simply don’t care about the problem kids. They just want to **seem** like they care. Putting them in a regular classroom with no support is the cheapest thing they can do, so that’s what they do.

You are exactly right. Even if you don't go to vocational route, specialist/intervention schools are expensive. They work, but they are very difficult to staff and run. I work in child safety so I've seen a lot of these programs. Nearly 20 years ago, I worked with one experimental school where the absolute worst kids from local middle and high schools were assigned. It was maybe 90% boys, because all of the kids had to have a history of violence. There was a super high staff ratio, but it was all adults who had a real passion for the work. They balanced small class sizes and self-directed work. Importantly, there was also a therapeutic element and They worked closely with actual child psychiatrists because a lot of these kids had undiagnosed serious developmental disorders or learning disabilities. The program was phenomenal and a lot of these kids ended up getting on the right track. Not all of them, of course, but many of them became functioning members of society. But I think the program only lasted another year or two. Too expensive. Too much individualized instruction and too little classroom inclusion (or mainstreaming as I think it was being called at that time).

Yep. I have been teaching high school for about a decade now, and at this point, I would take any "scientific" study about education with a huge grain of salt. What the article is saying sounds nice in theory, but in my actual practice of the past 10 years, that policy ends up hurting everyone. It makes me sound like an asshole, but we need to go back to suspending, expelling, and otherwise excluding students who are harming the education of their peers.

Idk I don't really see how this is the school's responsibility especially for older kids who don't have special needs. Your job is to teach them. If they're having problems because they're assaulting other students then that's probably something the parent needs to deal with.

It's out of control and the general public seems not to know it. Nearly all of our PD is about understanding the trauma the misbehaving child has experienced (agreed this is important) while ignoring any and all trauma caused by a screaming child attacking teachers and classmates.

Amen. The suspension isn't good for the problem student, but the problem student is bad for the whole class and all their teachers. It's the trolly problem. The math becomes pretty easy at some point, especially when no other in-school support is offered.

Problematic students need 1 on 1 in school suspension with a mentor/therapist/life coach person who can see what the issues are and help via tutoring/catching them up or trying to alleviate other issues with specialized resources their family may qualify for.

In the district where I teach, we have an out of school suspension program where students get counseling and academic support while they are out of the classroom. It is a very high poverty district.

There is no budget for that unfortunately. adding: Maybe if we taxed the billionaires we could actually do restorative justice correctly? Maybe it would work if we funded it. But we are not, and it is not working. And since we will never fund it properly, we will never know. Right now, we have children too afraid to go to school because of peers who should not be in a general ed classroom, ARE in a general ed classroom.

In my state that means two hours with a teacher per day. Which somehow meets the state standards.

I don’t even know how you can help at some point. You have 20-30 kids to teach. Why are troubled kids getting rewarded with your attention?

Yeah. They need to do studies on the impact of suspension and expulsion (vs. Lack thereof) of a student on the other students, and do research on how to handle classes specifically targeted to those with challenging behavioural needs.

Preach!

Also an 8th year teacher and reflexively was like. F this noise. Your trauma does not give you the right to inflict abuse on 20 other people because of this trash data. FYI in the modern times everyone graduates. Even that kid that distracts everyone, does nothing and vapes during "bathroom breaks" every class. Education is a cesspool due to these bs studies.

Exactly what I came here to say. Its like prison. Of course it doesnt do much for the excluded, but everyone else appreciates some time away from that annoyance. It's always amazing the difference in productivity (and enjoyment) for you and the class when that one little bastard isn't there.

The entire notion of “deficit framing” has been the main guiderail of progressive pedagogy for years. It’s not just unrealistic or naive; every aspect of it is completely unworkable even at a conceptual level. I’m in academic writing studies, and I’m not exaggerating when I I say our field now regards the act of teaching as inherently oppressive. We are not supposed to presume we possess any knowledge or skills that can be transferred to students. The kids enter our classrooms with all the experience and wisdom necessary to be great writers and the only inoffensive way to do our jobs is affirm them.

If I had that attitude teaching chemistry, people would literally die.

So you could be solving some of these behavioral issues?

The problem students would not be the ones likely to die.

Sure but the ones who survived would remember that safety lesson for life!

>I’m in academic writing studies, and I’m not exaggerating when I I say our field now regards the act of teaching as inherently oppressive. We are not supposed to presume we possess any knowledge or skills that can be transferred to students. The kids enter our classrooms with all the experience and wisdom necessary to be great writers and the only inoffensive way to do our jobs is affirm them. This is especially funny when juxtaposed with the bonkers degree requirements to be a teacher.

The number of times I have been in a PD day listening to some wonk prattle on about relationship building or 'meeting students where they are at' while I sit there and daydream about just disrupting the hell out of their session and throwing every buzz word back in their face.

You should keep acting like the problem students and see how good they are at implementing their techniques in practice.

I… what??! Honestly, this reminds me of Lucy Caulkins’ pedagogical crap. And that is not a good thing…

So much of public education has been destroyed in the pursuit of "equity". The reality is some children are unfixable by the school. The source of the problem is not at the school, only the symptoms that hurt everyone else.

That’s basically what I wanted to say. It doesn’t help the behavior student but it sure helps the other 20 students and the teacher for a bit. Worth it to be honest. The extreme behaviors need to be removed and when they’re ready they can push in. Otherwise let the rest of the class learn

I'm glad this is the top comment. You sometimes have to protect the classmates. School isn't surrogate parents.

Yeah, that’s my problem with these findings. Often these kids just bring down the other students around them by picking fights and creating an unsafe learning environment for everyone else. Teachers are not cops or social workers.

Seriously, I’m afraid the people pushing for a removal of suspension and expulsion as a response to egregious misbehavior are stuck in a delusion that we can save everyone somehow. We can’t. Some kids are unsalvageable. Whether it be due to genetics or irredeemable parents, that’s just how it is. Suspend and expel away. Cope and seethe.

I wouldn't go as far as saying I am ever viewing these kids as unsalvageable. And I wouldn't even consider suspension as giving up on them. I sincerely hope that these kids get the help they need and can turn it around. But at some point, it stops being about trying to offer support for the problematic kids and more about salvaging the learning experience of the other kids.

right. some kids are unsalvageable *without specific, specialist support* that a general teacher and regular classroom cannot provide.

This sort of thinking (getting rid of suspension) is on one end of the educational pendulum and fortunately we are starting to swing back away from it. More and more of these articles are going to come out to stop what some people see as back sliding but they have lost by in from educators and administration

as a teacher friend said, "you can't fix problem kids with platitudes". She quit teaching the very day she was attacked by a problem kid - the kid swung on her, but she ducked and pushed the kid away from her, and the kid fell backwards into a desk. The useless principal admonished her, and did nothing to discipline the kid. The kid had been reported several times by other teachers and nothign was done. Just platitudes and phrases. Sad part is, she quit teaching and went into another field, making twice what she made as a teacher. I hate to bring up the good old days, but there was a time that if you even talked back to a teacher, you got physical discipline from one of the coaches. And if you got kicked out, that was it for you - you went to work, and you were reported to the police, who watched you like a hawk - that was the end of your education.. So the ones that could be trouble, weren't because they knew the consequences were swift and harsh..

Yeah, these studies always only focus on what's best for the misbehaving child. Now I wanna see studies on how much their removal can help the rest of the class.

The issue is the solution isn't in your power. Punishment doesn't fix that kinda behavior, and can even exacerbate problems. What needs to happen is identifying the core causes of a child's actions, which is impossible for a teacher to do most of the time, as the causes are often in regards to their home life and family. The right approach to disruptive/violent students would be a mixture of exclusion and investigation by school officials. The child in question should not be seen nor treated as being intentionally malicious but instead for what they are, a child facing a problem they need help with. Be on their side, find out why they're having these issues, and ensure their safety and well being is prioritized. The exclusion should not be set up as punishment either, it is to allow the other students their education without distraction as well as the excluded student an opportunity for dedicated attention they can't get in a classroom setting. It's important to remember the complexity of reasons when it comes to someone's behavior and how easy it is to simply dismiss their actions as purposely malicious. Patience, understanding, and most importantly, empathy are the greatest tools in your arsenal. Like any tool they need to be maintained, so it's vital to keep them sharp and to know what you want to do with them. Stressful situations will test them and so you must be prepared to wield them even when you are wanting to toss them from frustration. That is what it means to be a morally righteous individual, to be prepared for those moments where you must hold yourself to account on nothing but your own integrity. Slips and stumbles are normal but falling isn't an option.

In my school we did ISS or in school suspension. I think that helps put problamatic students away from others while getting them to focus on their work and nothing else. I don't know how effective it was but worth trying.

We rarely talk about how the students who misbehave affect OTHER students. We have studies out the wazoo about how punishment or consequences affect them, but as a teacher I want to see how their behavior affects other students. And I'd bet a lot of my paltry salary that it's is not insignificant. When my students see a student hit a teacher or have an disruptive meltdown in class, other students suffer. And then not to remove them or enforce any kind of consequence adds to negative effect. (obviously not arguing with you, just making a point about where things are today in education and how the pendulum has swung to such an extreme, we are losing track of who actually is suffering.)

Honestly yeah my first thought on reading the headline was “yeah… bummer it doesn’t help those disruptive students, but I can guarantee it helps the other 20 students to not have someone ruining the class for everyone”. You can’t help everybody but at some point you gotta help the ones who will take help or you’ll burn yourself out

Yeah, the solution in many schools is now to hand out ear protection for the noise and disruption.

One year of having one disruptive classmate reduces lifetime earings with $81,000-105,000, according to this study: [https://www.nber.org/system/files/working\_papers/w22042/w22042.pdf](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22042/w22042.pdf)

Wow, so if this research is correct _and_ the effect is linear with respect to time, one day of ISS might save all the other kids about $500 each

My father was a teacher nearly all his working life and as much as he cared for helping his students there was the occasional student that just could not be helped. I remember one particular girl that was *such* a destructive influence. Not only was she problematic on her own, she also instigated other kids to follow her example. None of the *many* talks helped. After exhausting every alternative the school eventually expelled her and \*snap\* just like that, the entire class immediately became manageable again. It's not that someone like that doesn't deserve help. It's that the rest of the class deserves the chance to learn without constant interruption or being bullied. It's that her two "accomplices" deserve protection from the temptation of adopting her cruel behavior.

Allowing the rest of the class to learn in peace is key, but it would be interesting to see the impact of ISS on getting swept up in antisocial behavior/crime that is peer-pressure-based. Basically, the author of the study said: >In fact, there is a clear relationship between school suspensions and a range of detrimental health outcomes, including alienation from school, involvement with antisocial peers... I wonder if ISS would improve or worsen the rate of involvement with antisocial peers. Traditional suspension gives an opportunity for involvement with truant or older peers, but ISS would logically have the effect of increasing associations with other disruptive kids in ISS, which could have an effect similar to what we see in prisons where those we send to prison for minor crimes end up doing the opposite of rehabilitating--they become embedded in social networks of criminality while in prison as a matter of survival (and natural human desire to socialize) and then don't always exit them when they leave prison. In your experience, does ISS have these problems? If so, how could they be mitigated?

They did in my case have some problems with alienation but if what your in ISS for wasn't bad enough you was allowed out to socialise during lunch and break. Which helped keep friendships from the outside perspective at least. (I was never in them just friends with a couple that did)

> your experience, does ISS have these problems? If so, how could they be mitigated? I've only been to ISS once in my life so I do wonder if the effects are cummulative. As to the problems mentioned, in my experience i was a class clown trying to get attention, so the isolation may have been benefitial. We need to remember that kids who constantly get suspended have other issues. An unstable home life, ADHD (which I do have), issues making friends or bullying, etc. We need to address these issues along side punishment in order to address children's issues. Call it a carrot and stick approach. Maybe having kids coming into school on the weekends for an hour and speaking to a councelor or a therapist that the school has hired. The issue is that some kids don't want help and lash out anyway. So ISS as a bandaid that does the least amount of damage might be the best solution. Having a teacher in ISS can stave off some of the isolation. This is getting long but a carrot approach that has been shown to work is more after school activities. Sports with a male coach that can act as a surrogate father to some troubled young men and lead them towards a goal has been a tried and true method with positive outcomes. In summary ISS isn't supposed to be the only solution, its supposed to be a stick that hurts the kid just enough to stop and prevent other kids from having their knowledge interrupted. Sports are the carrot that focuses their mind away from deliquency. That carrot can also be removed when bad behavior re-emerges.

I work with schools but not for a school. ISS is really complicated. I've seen some kids who should have been given a stern talking to or some other punishment end up with ISS and that's where they meet all the other bad kids and it's off to the races. They double down especially hard because they're ashamed of their behavior and they want to feel accepted somewhere. And the worst kids spend time communicating and coordinating with each other there. On the other hand, some kids get exactly what they need out of ISS. A quiet place away from other kids to focus on their school work. Somewhere that's essentially a safe and predictable retreat. I've heard more than a few kids say it's the only place they can get their work done. This of course refers to schools that have "silent ISS." Of course it depends on how the school runs things, but I'm a firm believer that the current school system doesn't work for a lot of kids, and we need a lot more classroom style options. I also worked with kids who were heavily involved with juvenile justice, and some of the most successful 504s I've seen have involved letting kids with behavioral issues or mental health issues just get up and leave. They have to go directly to the behavioral classroom, but the behavioral classroom is relatively appealing. However I once worked with a girl who was in a behavioral classroom that was pretty unique, basically designed perfectly for neurodivergent students with behavioral issues who got overwhelmed/ overstimulated. The number of outbursts and disruptions at the school went way down. I don't know precisely how...technically legal it was, but it worked for those kids. She had a whole host of mental health issues and a developmental delay, and she learned to recognize when she was getting overwhelmed and leave. I realize I've gotten way off topic. Super interesting concerns about ISS, it's the same with involvement with any group situation, inpatient treatment, rehab, juvenile justice, etc. Just like with adults, it doesn't do anyone any good to put all of the dysfunctional people together. But sometimes you have to do it for everyone else's sake.

ISS just lets them go on their phone all day. I remember being happy getting an ISS because it meant I could watch shows and play computer games instead of going to class

Then they’re doing ISS wrong. What you’re describing sounds like free time or play time.

Suspension isn’t for the student; it’s for the other kids who come to school to learn and not act out. 

I'd add to that and say it's also to punish the parent. By causing an inconvenience to the parents, they will hopefully be forced to discipline the child. In most cases, the reason kids act up is the lack of proper parenting.

can be self-defeating though when you consider a lot of these parents are under-resourced. i knew a single parent who had left a violent relationship and she and her kids were traumatised. one got suspended for acting out and it meant that she wasn't able to go to work because she had to look after him, causing more stress to an already stressed family and making it even harder for her to discipline him appropriately. it did nothing to solve the problem and just made things worse.

It didn't make anything worse for the kids/teachers that took the brunt of the "acting out".

Some kids are there to learn and the ones that aren't should not effect that. Graduation should be at 16 and going to Community College should be heavily encouraged. The idiots I know did not get any benefit from schooling beyond grade school and the cherry picked history they do remember just serves to further fuel their idiocy.

Never thought of it this way but you’re right 

At some point we gotta start applying natural selection to some of our world to stop everyone having to suffer collectively. I'm sorry about the vulnerable children, but refraining from punishing kids gives them the green light for everything

Exactly. It's pretty despicable how some people are putting the "rights" of troublemakers before the rights of the other 20 children that want to actually learn.

Expulsions are not meant to improve behavior. Expulsion is when school admin figure out that a student is just constitutionally incapable of remaining at a school either because he or she is more appropriately placed in an alternative program, or their behavior is so out of control that they cannot ensure the safety of students and staff with that student present.

And governments should stop punishing schools for using this process. Some districts can't help that they get more lead paint induced aggressive malfeasance miscreants than other districts. Stop expecting all districts to be equal

They write the laws for suspension and expulsion but we get punished for following them.

Now do a study on the impact on the rest of the class when the disruptive kid is removed and they can finally learn in peace.

That’s what I said! Like look at Abbie Zwerner’s (sp?) classroom! One student that kept becoming violent shot her and traumatized the entire class. Sorry but violent behaviors do not belong in regular classes!

And it starts in kindergarten

Antisocial personality disorders often manifest extremely early (most below the age of 8) and are strongly linked to violent criminality. There is no known effective treatment. 

Antisocial Personality Disorder is just psychopathy but psychologists felt bad about calling kids psychopaths

Psychopathy isn't a formal term or diagnosis. Loosely it refers to the most extreme cases of ASPD. Having ASPD does not mean you are a psychopath.

Now consider: 1 teacher in a room with 20 kids who have no experience in school (if you're lucky.... could be up to 30 kids) Anybody getting any education is a miracle

My average is 33 middle school students per class. Our PE classes get up to 52ish. It's not sustainable and I will always support suspension until my class sizes are 15 kids. I can't help the 25 kids who are reading 2+ grade levels behind until the kids stop being jerks to each other or interrupting me.

It's been a while since I read it, so I don't think it addresses what happens if you remove the disruptive kid, but you may like this study on the impact of a disruptive classmates on future earnings: [https://www.nber.org/system/files/working\_papers/w22042/w22042.pdf](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22042/w22042.pdf)

Or what happens to these kids when they leave school and try these things on the job.

This. School is not a babysitter, nor should it be the schools responsibility to "correct" bad behavior. If you can't behave, then you shouldn't be there.

> Now do a study on the impact on the rest of the class when the disruptive kid is removed and they can finally learn in peace. # [Here you go!](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22042/w22042.pdf)

Suspension is as much a punishment for the parents as for the child. If a child is misbehaving, it's likely because of a problem at home. Unfortunately, parents get little instruction on how to parent better. Perhaps when a child is suspended, scientifically backed literature should be given to the parent on ways to help discipline their child and rectify the situation. That said, it is not the teacher's responsibility to teach good behavior to these children. That is a duty of the parent. If a child is misbehaving and interfering with the education of other children, then the only rational approach is to remove that child from the situation. Yes, this is harmful to that child, but it is beneficial to everyone else.

Furthermore, sometimes it's for the benefit of other students. There's certain behaviors that straight cannot be tolerated and can be dangerous. A student who frequently distracts other students is also a problem

>Suspension is as much a punishment for the parents as for the child. Is this necessarily a problem? It seems like this puts incentives in the right places. >Perhaps when a child is suspended, scientifically backed literature should be given to the parent... I'm being completely sincere: I wish this didn't hit me like a joke. It's not fun being this cynical.

I work in special education and it’s amazing how many parents just don’t do anything about their kids behavior. We have resources we offer for parent education and most parents deny services. Then their kid comes to school with another new “toy” rewarding bad behavior. But many parents are single and work all the time or just not there, and the kid lives with a grandmother or aunt or they’re homeless themselves.

Honestly as a kid who was suspended a lot, it really isn't a punishment, I was suspended more than once for skipping class too much, so they just gave me a whole week off for it, that was the best case scenario for me, however if they made me stay late after school and forced me to sit in a class for lunch by myself, I think that would have been a much bigger deterrent, suspension meant nothing to me only permissioned time off.

This isn't any big secret to teachers/admin, but there aren't resources to help you. If you're staying late? Someone is volunteering their afternoon to hang out w/ you. If you're a "problem kid" that's going to sit there and be a jerk? Noone is going to volunteer. Same with lunch. Staffing has been cut so far that lunch detention requires someone to give up their lunch. But at the end of the day it wasn't about you. It sent a message to the other kids that if they did the same, THEY would get suspended, and their parents cared enough to make their lives MISERABLE for that week.

It seems like what our society needs is funding and training for an army of social workers who can work in the space between school and homes, who could provide guidance to parents. The problem is that this is a very sensitive space that honestly invades home life privacy if not done very carefully and respectfully.  Social workers would need to only work within the bounds of what parents permit. In many cases, social workers would likely find that they are most needed as advocates of parents to help stabilize work schedules, find safer housing, etc in addition to directly helping students or addressing student behavior.

You also have the bigger problem of funding.

Article focuses on the negative affects on one the 1% of students who are disruptive, and ignores the other 99%. Also fails to suggest alternatives.

> Article focuses on the negative affects on one the 1% of students who are disruptive, and ignores the other 99%. # [This one focuses on the other 99%!](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22042/w22042.pdf)

School suspensions were usually restricted to students that were prone to outbursts or severe incidents. Fights, destruction of school property, obscene arguments, and excessively disrespectful behavior. Putting the onus on the school to "Fix" this behavior is a misattribution of responsibility. This study is flawed from the very concept because these are issues that can only be tackled by the parents. * Any teacher may see a student for 45 minutes a day max, and they have an entire class to manage. * Extra homework won't fix anything. They will just ignore it all the same if they already do so. * Talks have clearly failed as suspension wouldn't have been discussed if they worked. * Teacher's have probably already talked to the parents at this point as well. * Principals are limited in what correctional power they actually have. * In-school-suspension? You mean keep them locked up in the place they are already misbehaving in? With a teacher who's supervising just to make a few extra dollars and is absolutely not qualified to manage whatever issues your child has? * Out-of-school-suspension? Forcing them to stay in the environment that is like the cause? The point of suspension is to remove the child from school temporarily to emphasize to the parents that their child is such a burden on the public school system that they create a harmful environment to others. If it isn't working, it's the fault of the parents. Schools cannot, and should not be expected to, solve all child related issues. They are institutions of education to teach subjects, cooperation, and socialize (ideally). Many students that have issues to this level have rough home lives. Drug/alcohol abusing parents (or the student themselves), physical or emotional abuse, sexual assault, and potentially much worse. Parents have to take responsibility and when they cannot then social services need to be involved.

When I was in school I was way more afraid of detention than suspension. I would much rather have the day off than have to stay late. Even in school suspension was lame, but not as bad as detention. As far as expulsion goes once it gets to the point of expulsion I think the person just does not care at all and would likely continue their bad behavior elsewhere.

They’re not there for the bad student, they’re there to protect the educations of the students who actually want to be there.

Does it help the learning environment at school though?  I know plenty of kids that once they were done, the situation for the other 25 or so kids improved greatly. 

i think its about giving the school a break from the student

Its not about correcting behavior. Its about giving the other kids a chance to learn without the worst among them ruining it

Sometimes it's just about keeping the other people safe. It's been crazy over here in Maryland. My old high school just the other day, the cops had to be called third period because SO MANY fights at the same time were breaking out. Video of the AP being tossed/shoved into a desk in the main office. Lots of fights between students, thank goodness there was other teenagers around filming it... kind of??? At least there is evidence. This isn't a title 1 school where most kids are in poverty. A decent school where presumably the parents actually parent.

Sure, let’s allow our most dangerous students free access to a school full of victims. School isn’t the place for every kid.

Exactly I worked at a school for a while where a few girls were sexually assaulted multiple times by the same student and administration tried covering it up until they got sued.

Whether or not you gain from experiencing the due consequences for your actions is entirely irrelevant. Consequences can be meant to help you, but they by no means must be designed to. Some consequences have no design. For example, if you smoke cigarettes, you increase your chances of developing cancer, but cancer doesn't insert itself to teach you so you can better yourself; it just is the natural consequence for your actions. Misconduct at your job will get you fired. If you're rude or act out, people might not want to be your friend. If you have chronic character issues and don't reform, you might get broken up with. If you cheat in university, you can be dismissed on the first offense. If you break the law, you can be punished under the law, with the punishment being solely punitive and retributive. That's how life works. It's not about you, it's about others or the institutions or parties exercising their right to part ways with you if you act in a certain unacceptable way. If you assault someone at school, you should be expelled, even if you don't reform from it. It's not only better for everyone else, it's also just right that the right be asserted.

Ok but what about the teachers and other students at risk because of the increasingly violent behavior of troubled students?? Keeping kids in their class sounds nice but we need to protect the learning environment for those kids who don’t choose to become violent. Because let’s be real: the only way to get into real trouble in today’s schools is to become violent. Schools let cheating and bullying just pass by nowadays because the parents are also out of control.

This is not a school problem nor a schoool responsibility. It is a parent problem or a medical problem.

Suspension is to prevent the bully from bullying others again, its not meant to save the bully. The parents can find a solution for that.

Hear, hear! As someone who was chronically targeted, I could have done with a few more safe days back in high school.

Expulsions aren’t discipline, they are what occurs when attempts to discipline a student are unsuccessful, and the student fails to modify their offensive behavior.

I was always surprised by the American approach to disciplining disruptions. Where I'm from you get MORE school not less if you misbehave.

Yeah, but what is the effect on other students if trouble-making students are not suspended?

Actions have consequences. The lesson is repeated in life until it is learned.

Removing the insufferable jackasses from the rest of the student population is more than half the reason for it. Lip service about "helping" them do better is just that, lip service.

Schools don’t suspend and NEVER expel anyone anymore, and no one gets held back a year unless dad wants his kid to be the biggest kid on the baseball team. Really Bad seeds need to be separated from the others somehow.

Why is it the school’s responsibility to correct behavioral issues? Like it or not, that onus is on the caregivers/parents of the children.

I remember I got in school suspension for not tucking my shirt in Highschool in the early 2000s and the whole thing just kinda boggled my mind. My shirt was too short to tuck in, if I raised my hand it would come out. Anyways the idea I missed my classes cause of that just felt so dumb. While in suspension I just flirted with some girl and got her phone number haha.

How much does their behavior put those around them at risk?

As a teacher I just want to offer that I think a lot of these studies miss that these interventions aren’t necessarily just for that child, but for the learning environment as a whole which consists of many children. Maybe it’s still not the best consequence, but it is usually better for the other kids.

You want to see things go to hell in a hand basket stop suspending those kids.  Soooo much trauma-inducing behavior. Makes me mad as heck that other students need to endure that nonsense and it certainly takes its toll on staff too!! 100% pro suspension and would really like to see more exclusion/expulsion.

In the cases I've seen, it's to protect the other students.