Maryland board takes a second look at zero tolerance

The Washington Post reported that the Maryland State Board of Education, at its July 24 meeting, approved new regulations that aim to reduce suspensions, keep students in class, and create a less punitive environment in school. A recent study found that too many students, disproportionately those from poor schools, were removed from school for offenses that could be handled in a different manner, allowing the students to stay in class.

According to board President James H. DeGraffenreidt Jr, Maryland’s main accomplishment was to bring student learning and disciplinary consequences into the same conversation, moving away from the get-tough approach after the Columbine massacre in 1999. “We have taken the best thinking from around the state and turned out something that is workable for our local districts to implement,” the Post quoted him as saying. The new regulations—adopted in a 10-0 vote with two Board members absent—represent “a common-sense change.”

This action was based, in large part, on a report given to the board, which showed that 54 percent of out-of-school suspensions were for nonviolent offenses. Although the board doesn’t intend to step into individual discipline matters—those are left up to local superintendents, rightly so—the board now requires the implementation of policies that will reduce the amount of time students suffer from missing school. For example, the regulations require that when students are suspended, they must be provided with classwork and a school-based liaison to contact.

Some parents and educators expressed concern that students in the classroom who are not misbehaving suffer from being distracted by students who are. These folks claim the “bad” students should be removed from classrooms in order for their “good” students to get the attention from teachers they need to excel.

But the board disagreed in general. Students who are suspended are at increased risk of dropping out, they noted.

A controversial aspect of the regulations would equalize suspensions given to African-American, white, Asian, and Hispanic students. Currently, Hispanic and African-American students are suspended much more often than white or Asian students are.

Some educators and parents also argued the policy, while politically astute, would miss the boat on fixing misbehavior and may in fact increase racial tensions if school systems increase punishment for white and Asian kids while decreasing that for black and Hispanic kids—lowering the threshold for suspension in one case, raising it in another.

This regulation follows a national movement that has school systems rethinking their zero-tolerance policies. Driven mainly by performance on standardized tests—if kids aren’t in school, they’re not learning the subject matter that gets tested on the standardized tests—schools are trying to reduce the snowball effect suspensions produce: dropouts, behavior problems, problems outside of school, and so on.

What I think is that there’s a problem with zero-tolerance, but there’s also a problem with misbehavior in our schools. I’m not talking about violent offenses here: no one could argue that those should not be dealt with sternly. Minor offenses, on the other hand, not intended to hurt anyone, can still be disruptive to a teacher’s classroom and deprive our young citizens of their education.

This is exactly what I mean when I say education reform doesn’t happen in Washington or in school board rooms; it happens in your child’s classroom. It isn’t possible to legislate a compromise here, since each and every case must be considered on its own merits: The consequences of punishment include all those side-effects of depriving students of an education that is theirs by right. The consequences of failing to punish the students who misbehave include the same deprivation of education, just for different students.

It’s never acceptable to let bad behavior continue, since it’s disruptive and makes students feel unsafe in their own schools. However, depriving even troublemakers of valuable classroom time, though not the same as depriving them of their liberty, should not be taken lightly. That’s why we leave the decision of suspension up to superintendents. I like how the Maryland board put classrooms and learning in the same discussion as discipline, but the board has set each superintendent on a long journey to discover a needle in the haystack of suspensions and standardized test data. Instead, what I think they should have done is to get out of the superintendents’ way.