That Kid Had to Go

latte

From the preceding post: “ESSA also requires new data to be reported about school “climate” and safety, including data on school suspensions, expulsions, violence, and chronic absenteeism.”

America is overdue at demanding some of this information. Numbers on chronic absenteeism should be nailed down. Chronic absenteeism causes many academic failures, especially in urban and rural areas. Strategies for tackling the problem of those empty desks should move to the forefront of attacks on the achievement gap.

I’d like better violence numbers as well. The government has already documented that violence rates are much higher in larger and urban schools. We might benefit from understanding why loss of learning from violence has become heavily clustered within certain locations, school types and demographics, at least if we could honestly own up to the conclusions we drew — like “you should not put 42 urban high school students in one classroom” or “you may need to pay attention to probable gang affiliations in scheduling classes.”

Eduhonesty: But I don’t like the insistence on data on school suspensions and expulsions. A couple of days ago, I subbed in a class where I sent one student out twice during the day. The Principal came to get him both times. Apparently, this boy interrupts his classes rudely and regularly. I don’t know him well enough to say for sure, but I’d consider the possibility that he suffers from oppositional defiant disorder. The class told me the boy always causes trouble. As defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), oppositional defiant disorder may be diagnosed in a person who has a recurrent pattern of angry/irritable moods, argumentative/defiant behavior, or vindictiveness lasting at least 6 months. In my personal experience, we may be talking a lifetime, if a short lifetime, of defiant behavior that responds only occasionally to interventions.

After the second time I called in the cavalry, I broke from the lesson plan to give a short lesson on the latté effect. First we ran specialty coffee numbers. I showed students that one $5 coffee per day might not seem to be much money, but that coffee cost $25 by week’s end if we only stopped on weekdays on the way home. By year’s end, we had spent $1,300 dollars, somewhat more if we also went out for coffee on the weekends. Then I moved into minutes. If we lost 20 minutes per day listening to “Wilhelm” rant and refuse to do his work, while sometimes making random noises simply to disrupt the class, we lost 60 learning hours per year, which might be broken down further into 12 school days, or 1/15 of the school year. (Yes, the school day runs a bit longer, but I discounted art, P.E., lunch and passing periods.)

That 20 minutes per day no longer seemed so trivial when we were done. A few kids were staring seriously at those numbers, obviously aghast. I presented the case for ignoring Wilhelm, which might extinguish at least some behaviors, but then I had to leave this class to spend the rest of the year with the boy who had been hijacking their learning daily.

America has many Wilhelms. My concern with data on suspensions and expulsions is that I foresee pressure to prevent those suspensions and expulsions. The shift is already occurring. Offenses that used to net suspensions and expulsions now may receive lunch in an in-school suspension room. Data showing that regularly suspended students or expelled students tend to drop out of school and fall further behind due to missed school has led to a movement to keep students in the classroom as we attempt to salvage their learning. Teachers are then expected to keep these students well-enough managed so that other students learn in spite of the student regularly disrupting or trying to disrupt their classes.

Let’s add to this the pressure to present a good picture to state bureaucrats who are scanning the data under ESSA to identify problem schools. Many educational leaders and teachers are running scared now, afraid to tell truths that may put them in a spotlight leading to possible mandatory improvement measures. If 20 suspensions seem like “too many,” will nervous principals and administrators opt for lower penalties that stay off the radar? Will Wilhelm receive a check-in/check-out form instead of a suspension, a behavior form for all his teachers to fill out daily, so that no tick mark has to be put in the suspension column of data intended for the state? When sent out, will Wilhelm receive another lecture from his Dean that amounts to nothing more than a break from class? Will the teacher keep Wilhelm in class to avoid upsetting that Dean, who may be getting steadily more stressed as he or she tries to avoid suspending or expelling students who ought to be suspended or expelled?

Well-meaning but fuzzy-headed leaders have been trying to rescue our Wilhelms, and they have my sympathy. I can see the good in Wilhelm. I can see the potential. But I also remember an old saying that gets forgotten too often. As the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., said  “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”

Wilhelm’s regular attempts to disrupt his classroom(s) are not victimless crimes. At 20 minutes a day, this kid can steal 1/15 of an entire school year away from every student he distracts for that length of time. He is stealing learning from everyone around him, day by day by day.

The problem with reporting expulsions and suspensions as part of a government mandate: I foresee schools declining to issue those expulsions and suspensions in order to look better to their state. But I was in that classroom. I assure readers, that kid had to go. He wasn’t going to let me get a word in edgewise. He wasn’t going to let me present the day’s lesson in any continuous fashion. He loved making random, loud noises just to try to break my flow. He had to go.

And I kicked him out. But I was the sub. I never had to return to that classroom again. I didn’t have to care what the Principal thought of me. The Principal in question is an old-school guy and I am guessing he did not think less of me for my decision. He probably approved. But if I were a first- or second-year teacher, would I have had the courage to make those calls? Educators are running scared. Educational administrators are running scared.

“Too many” suspensions and expulsions will undoubtedly look bad to bureaucrats in state departments of education. But too few will ensure that. for the sake of a few defiant kids, whole classrooms end up knowing far less than they might have known otherwise. That’s the conundrum, and that’s why I’d like to return local control to schools, rather than add a few more data categories to NCLB under the new name ESSA, while ensuring that legions of state bureaucrats get to keep their jobs.

The bottom-line must be learning. If Wilhelm is making learning impossible, he needs to go. It’s too bad about Wilhelm’s lost learning. The plan where we let him sink the ship with everyone else in it, however, seems only slightly dumber than my kickstarter to build an elevator to the moon. I prefer the plan where we make Wilhelm the Captain and only occupant of his own ship, and send him home to deal with the consequences of his actions.

I am open to Plan B where we create a learning environment within the school where Wilhelm can have an in-school suspension with continued academic demands and opportunities for learning. In fact, I prefer Plan B, but I am also aware that some struggling schools may not have the staff, space and money to put Plan B into action right now. Those schools should not have to be afraid to send disruptive students home.