When I went to school, corporal punishment was still a thing; California banned it in 1986. Did we miss it, really? No, we didn’t. Last September, new discipline guidelines for California schools were announced that limited suspensions. Do we miss the old policy, really? No, we don’t.
This week, I decided to look back at what EdSource wrote about the changes six months ago, and I re-read the letters in response. Oh my. They were furiously apocalyptic. I will quote only one mild one: “This is Absolutely Absurd – no discipline, no accountability.” Were these letter writers right? Have we gotten rid of “discipline” or “accountability”? Have things gotten worse in our schools since the policy changed? Not really.
I can only see the view from where I teach in a Los Angeles public high school, but I think things have improved. Sure, there are still some difficult students who would be much better off in a nonpublic school, and there have been a few fights, but the police are gone, and there are barely any suspensions. The mood of the school seems positive. The reforms have worked.
The culture of discipline and punishment we have lived with offers a choice that every school makes, just as cities like Los Angeles have had to decide whether to make sweeping criminal justice reforms. Schools that buck the trend and continue to dole out punishment for minor “infractions” end up producing the very thing they wanted to attack: more bad behavior. The happiest schools are those where they know when to turn a blind eye.
This is why I believe the absolute worst job in education today is being responsible for “discipline.” There are ways to do this job without being overzealous, without resorting to harassing students (or teachers), but this job changes people for the worse. After a time, when every nail they see needs to be hammered, they become consumed by it. I see this in other administrators and teachers too.
What would I prefer to see? I believe that schools need to apply “least restrictive environment” (LRE), a concept important in special education, which I teach, to school discipline. I know many teachers who would be very uncomfortable adopting this approach, but, if least restrictive environment is central to the mental health of special ed students, who are generally our most challenged, why cannot it be applied to all students? This approach should be formalized in state law and discussed in district-sponsored workshops and professional development sessions.
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