Education
Reducing Suspension/Expulsions
Many schools today employ exclusionary punishments which take the form of in-school-suspension, out-of-school suspension, expulsion, and even referrals to the criminal justice system. The rise of exclusionary discipline practices in schools correlates with the use of zero-tolerance policies. Zero-tolerance policies involve “the application of predetermined consequences, most often severe and punitive in nature, that are intended to be applied regardless of the gravity of behavior, mitigating circumstances, or situational context”. While suspension and expulsion are defended as necessary to maintain order and safety in schools, recent research by the American Psychological Association has questioned the effectiveness and fairness of these zero-tolerance policies. Although suspension is meant to deter future misbehavior, several studies show that suspension correlates with an increase in future misbehavior and repeated suspension. In fact, suspension has been found to be a moderate-to-strong predictor of eventual dropout.
The negative impact of exclusionary discipline practices which remove students from the classroom warrants an ongoing and continued investment into prevention and intervention strategies that employ alternative disciplinary tactics. Strategies such as Restorative Justice, Conscious Discipline, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, and Collaborative Problem Solving aim to keep students in the classroom unlike more punitive practices. Growing Kings addresses school pushout by providing research data and by advocating for systemic change that promotes the use of non-exclusionary discipline measures that take into account the circumstances and root causes of student misbehavior. By trying to understand and correct behavior in a productive way, schools can use student disruption as a learning opportunity rather than as an opportunity to prevent learning.
Truancy
One of the foundational criteria for student academic achievement is school attendance. Each day of absence results in students missing key instructional time and reduces their likelihood to graduate. Nearly 92,000 students in Alabama’s public schools missed 15 or more days of school during the 2013-2014 school year, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Education. In Birmingham City Schools, 19.5% of Black/African-American students were chronically absent during the 2015-2016 school year.
Attendance monitoring initiatives should focus on providing the supports and resources children and families need rather than employing punitive measures that remove children from their homes and take adults away from work by placing them in jail. While accountability for school attendance primarily resides with students and their parents or guardians, there are several extenuating circumstances that lead to a child missing school. A review of truancy literature shows that this issue is most prevalent among students from neighborhoods marked by higher levels of violence, child maltreatment, crime, drug abuse, and unemployment.
Growing Kings addresses school attendance and truancy challenges by providing research data on attendance disparities and by advocating for the use of more discretion coupled with trauma-informed care practices when enforcing attendance and truancy policies. Growing Kings works to promote the understanding that economically disadvantaged individuals are more likely to miss school time and that the cause of such absences are often due to extenuating circumstances, such as a lack of transportation or healthcare, rather than intentional disregard. In doing so, Growing Kings hopes to shift the way in which attendance enforcement is carried out so that students, families, and schools are lifted up with supports to improve attendance rather than penalized for circumstances beyond their control.
Learn more (https://www.aecf.org/work/juvenile-justice/jdai/) – Annie E. Casey Foundation
Learn More (https://jlc.org/youth-advocacy) – Juvenile Law Center
Learn more (https://dys.alabama.gov/) – Alabama Youth Services
Learn More (http://www.act4jj.org/sites/default/files/resource-files/JJDPA%20Reauthorization%20Summary%20December%202018.pdf) –
Summary of the Juvenile Reform Act of 2018.