The Sun-Sentinel in Florida wrote about the problem of “violent students,” who can’t be removed from school because they are protected by law.
I hope to hear from Florida teachers about this investigation.
In an eight-month investigation, the South Florida Sun Sentinel found that a sweeping push for “inclusion” enables unstable children to attend regular classes even though school districts severely lack the support staff to manage them.
State and federal laws guarantee those students a spot in regular classrooms until they seriously harm or maim others. Even threatening to shoot classmates is not a lawful reason to expel the child.
Violent students have injured thousands of teachers, bus drivers and staff in Broward County alone and undoubtedly thousands more across Florida, records obtained by the Sun Sentinel show.
“It’s just a no-win scenario right now,” said attorney Julie Weatherly, of Mobile, Alabama, who advises school districts on the legal complexities of removing aggressive students when they have a disability. “Nobody wants a Parkland, of course. It’s this huge nightmare.”
The federal law had a noble purpose when enacted more than four decades ago, long before the ranks of violent students swelled. It ensured that students with disabilities received an education in the same classrooms as their peers, a practice known as mainstreaming.
Florida went even further, requiring agreement from the parents, or a judge, before transferring a disabled child to a special-needs school with more therapeutic services and smaller class sizes.
The drawback today is that the law treats a student with a severe behavioral disorder the same as a harmless student with Down syndrome, ordering that they be educated in regular classrooms unless it’s proven impossible.
To understand how schools became targets of deadly threats and violence, the Sun Sentinel interviewed more than 50 teachers, parents and experts; examined state and national laws and policies; and reviewed thousands of pages of police reports and court records. The records included Florida’s new risk protection orders, created by the Legislature after the Parkland shooting to keep guns away from dangerous people. Most counties had never released the records before.
In only 18 months, more than 100 unstable and potentially dangerous students across Florida have threatened to kill their teachers, classmates or themselves, records from 10 major counties show. Nearly half of the youths had histories of mental disorders, and more than half had access to guns.
Just wondering whether charter schools and religious schools are bound by the same laws or whether they have the right to expel the students they can’t handle.
Anyone who has been teaching for a while can tell you stories of extraordinarily disturbed and disruptive children who could not be dealt with compassionately and sanely because of legal threats and because the resources to deal with them simply didn’t exist. Most schools have cut back on guidance people and school psychologists because they simply don’t have the budgets for these (as they don’t for librarians and libraries and art supplies and theaters and music rooms). It used to be that the US had MANY public alternative schools staffed with folks trained to deal with such students. Those, too, largely disappeared in the budget cuts that followed on the 2007-2008 market crash.
You are correct Bob. Resources have been stolen from the public system for years, only to be4 made worse by privatization ideologues. When Success Academy or KIPP brag about their alleged greatness- they fail to address their outright discrimination & cruel treatment of children with significant behavioral disabilities.
I started my special education career working in a specialized public school for children with emotional and behavioral disabilities. These children were placed out of their zoned schools and into our program that had specialized teachers, counselors, and in home interventions.
We had two full time teachers in every classroom and we capped the number of students in each class at 8 children. When classes and referrals started to increase we started a new classroom. Each class had an additional liaison teacher who facilitated the child’s return to their neighborhood school.
This program continued to evolve & innovate. Until the right wingers & deficit hawks decided austerity & tax cuts were good for society. These innovative programs were slowly starved and dismantled when public school budgets and resources were confiscated by charter chains, vouchers and testing companies.
The problem is not about inclusion for children with disabilities. IDEA allows alternative placements as determined by the IEP team The problem is the shameful federal & state budget cuts to special education and the cruel abandonment of our most in need children.
Right on. The stats support your position.
This is just freaking tragic. Thank you for sharing your story!
It used to be that the words “least restrictive environment (LRE) applied to the needs of the child. I wonder if as budgets were cut the focus was changed to refer strictly to the environment only. All of a sudden, LRE referred to the mainstream classroom, not the environment that was most appropriate for the needs of the student. It no longer mattered if that student was disruptive or even threatening. It was his/her right to be in the mainstream setting.
“… long before the ranks of violent students swelled.”
Assuming it is true that the ranks of violent students have “swelled”, maybe we should wonder why that is. What in our culture might encourage such violence? I can’t begin to fathom. I mean, it can’t have anything to do with on-going wars of aggression all over the planet or the fact that we are destroying that planet before these students even get to enjoy it or the prevalence of guns or the lack of available/affordable mental health services or….
“…even though school districts severely lack the support staff to manage them.”
Yes, this too.
It’s very difficult to get a handle on this statistically. (Enterprising grad students with access to funding–great topic for research–creating a good typology/taxonomy and frequency study of classroom disruption.) But why the difficulty? Well, because disruption and violence and potential for these both exist on a continuum. So, where do you draw the line in order to make a report? At criminal charges brought against students? But that, ofc, leaves out ALMOST ALL of what teachers contend with. At every referral for disciplinary action like detention? Often, violent and/or disruptive students are very, very good at acting just within the limits of the rules or just outside the ability of teachers to document or even detect their activity. In other words, they maintain plausible deniability. One of the problems is that teacher power and authority have been dramatically undermined in our schools. As someone who taught many years ago, went into another career, and then back into teaching, I saw that the change, there, has been REALLY dramatic. Teachers are now pretty much POWERLESS, which is one reason why I do not recommend that young people go into the profession–not until Deform is dead and teachers are empowered again. Administrators try to ignore as much of this behavior as possible for fear of upsetting parents or drawing the attention of school board members or journalists or lawyers or even th police. One issue is that there are a LOT of helicopter parents now, convinced that their darlings can do no wrong, and these are very vocal, calling schools and district offices, threatening administrators, even getting local politicians involved. Kids know when they have parents like this, and they play it to the hilt. Many schools do not have sane, consistent disciplinary procedures in place. Many teachers live in fear and frustration because of this. It’s really, really sad, and a BIG problem. Enormous.
In other words, in the current climate, “Your teacher says that . . . .” means NOTHING, so devalued is a teacher’s assessment of a situation now.
Bob, See my comment later on. The Civil Rights Data Collection provides most of the information that circulates about this matter of discipline and related issues.
Bob, just for contrast: it is possible to deal with such situations when local govt is coordinated & properly funded. In my district, schools, police, hosp & county mental facilities are all on the same page.
Anecdote#1: in my youngest’s 8th-gr math class, a [SpEd] girl was serially bullied/ laughed at in class. Her parents demanded action. I found myself at a meeting of teacher, principal, Child Study Team rep, a couple of kid/ school-friendly local cops, & about 8 sets of parents [like me], w/ their kids, who’d been identified as the bully-ers. [In my son’s defense, he was a longtime friend & SpEd peer whose cowardly joining in the laughter had particularly smarted]. The message was clear: this was unacceptable & actionable behavior. The upshot: lots of personally-written & personally-delivered messages of apology, & an end to it. [& renewal of my son’s & her friendship– & social maturing & empathy on his part].
Anecdote #2: My eldest launched into [1st] psychotic mania one morning ar age 16. 1st call to his shrink in nearby town – he chatted w/son & confirmed: needed to check in pronto, preferably voluntarily, to psych hosp. 2nd call to our hisch MSW/psych who was renown for working magic. She immediately tied in local kid/ school-friendly cop team who talked him into self-admitting/ mounting ambulance. 3 wks later he was well enough to step down to county 1/2-day combo psych med-monitoring/ therapy/ tutoring pgm. A highly-experienced tutor worked w/our hisch Child Study head & Guid Counselor, ponying assnts back & forth, & re-shuffling/ tailoring his curr sched for all subjects. My son had many phys issues – rare side effects from psych meds – but w/n 3 wks could begin home study, w/visits 2x/wk from an amazing hisch tutor qual in several subjects plus SpEd. By midsummer… he was caught back up w/his class.
This is what it looks like in a humane blue state & you’re paying top dollar in RE & state & county inc tax: exc schsys, not just for the cheap-to-teach top-performers, but for everybody, supported by coordinated public services.
Part of the reason our municipal taxes are crazy-hi is we have long sent 96% of sch portion [which is 75% of total] back to state for redistribution to poor areas like nearby Newark, thanks to measures by past lib govrs like Kean & Florio [then tax ourselves higher to maintain excellence]. Yet under just 8 yrs of Rep Christie we got huge tax cuts to NJ corporations, coupled w/ major privatization of schs in Newark & Camden.
Those are, indeed, encouraging stories! Thank you so much for sharing them!
WHY THAT IS?…..Children are Common Cored/Bored to death, fed useless kill and drill/test prep curriculum that ultimately leads to them becoming or feeling like nothing more than a piece of data. When children don’t feel respected for their thoughts/opinions, when they are not engaged in their own learning, when they are forced to perform like seals in a circus, they will act out….many of them violently. They haven’t developed their full sense of self yet and act on visceral impulses. Our current public education system (due to the Disrupters) isn’t whole child oriented anymore and that’s sad. If the schools were again, joyful places of learning, we would see a lot of the violence disappear and be left with occasional behavior incidents that could be handled properly.
Yes, this too. Thank you and very well said.
Engaged learners are less likely to act out. Bored or frustrated learners will contribute to chaos if given the chance.
Excellent points, LisaM.
I worry about the mental health of our young and our teachers … for they are being bombarded with a lot of plain “abusiveness” by the deformers, who see kids and teachers as only their “Profits on a spreadsheet.”
A lot of what’s happened is just to BADGER and NUMB students, teachers, and parents to what’s really happening to them … The Hunger Games.
Agreed, LisaM. Here’s another BIG problem with what we force upon kids. No wonder they act out. You would, too. Anyone would. https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/one-way-to-make-high-school-suck-less/
Agreed. The Disrupters are ruining our public education system. We need to disrupt their disruption.
Why are children becoming more violent?
“The Department for Education has released statistics about how many children are excluded and why. Critics are already claiming that bad behaviour is on the rise – are they right?” …
“Children with special educational needs make up 73% of all suspensions and exclusions, even though those children make up less than 0.5% of all school pupils in the country. There’s your headline. …
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check/2013/jul/26/expulsions-british-schoolchildren-violent-trends
Parents’ Use of Physical Punishment Increases Violent Behavior Among Youth.
https://www.apa.org/pi/prevent-violence/resources/violent-behavior
Violent Media And Aggressive Behavior in Children
“This research suggests that violent media can cause aggressive behavior in children and that this behavior can be incredibly problematic if violent media includes guns. Indeed, children are incredibly curious about guns, and they can have difficulty understanding the difference between real and toy guns (Benjamin, Kepes, & Bushman, 2017).” …
“The clear implication from here is that if you don’t want your children to be aggressive or violent, keep them away from violent media, and even away from toy weapons that might encourage aggressive behavior all on their own. That doesn’t mean you won’t end up with an aggressive child—some children are just naturally more aggressive than others—but it’s certainly a start.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-baby-scientist/201801/violent-media-and-aggressive-behavior-in-children
“TV viewing among kids is at an eight-year high. On average, children ages 2-5 spend 32 hours a week in front of a TV—watching television, DVDs, DVR and videos, and using a game console. Kids ages 6-11 spend about 28 hours a week in front of the TV.” …
What about TV and aggressive or violent behavior?
Literally thousands of studies since the 1950s have asked whether there is a link between exposure to media violence and violent behavior. All but 18 have answered, “Yes.” The evidence from the research is overwhelming. According to the AAP, “Extensive research evidence indicates that media violence can contribute to aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, nightmares, and fear of being harmed.” [14] Watching violent shows is also linked with having less empathy toward others [14a].
http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/tv
The ranks of students living in poverty have swelled. Stress at home causes stress at school. Changing school policy would be a band-aid to cover the gaping wound of wealth inequality wrought by forty years of bipartisan neoliberalism.
Exactly!
Actually child poverty is at its lowest level since the Great Recession (2005-2009) and has decreased in absolute terms from the 1960s. The greatest correlate of childhood poverty is single parenthood, not “neoliberalism.”
https://www.childtrends.org/indicators/children-in-poverty
This definition of child poverty is a matter of semantics.
According to the data you linked, deep poverty has declined.
But a majority of black and Hispanic children and more than 25% of non-Hispanic white children are low income.
That’s a very high percentage overall living in low income situations, less likely to have proper medical care or nutrition.
Let’s look at the actual numbers instead of repeating someone’s deliberately misleading claim.
Each chart measures a different element of child poverty.
Figure 2.1: The only countries worse than the United States on this chart are: Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, and Mexico. There are 35 countries on this chart with lower child poverty rates than the United States.
Figure 1.1: Spain, Mexico, Bulgaria, Turkey, Isreal, Romania. There are 34 countries on this chart with lower poverty rates than the United States
“The best and worst performers on child well-being
“Overall, the countries that performed best across the indicators on children’s well-being were the Nordic nations, Germany and Switzerland. At the bottom of the league table were Chile, Bulgaria, Romania, Mexico and the US.” …
“In two-thirds of the countries, children from the poorest households are now worse off than they were in 2008. Obesity rates among 11-15-year-olds are climbing, and so is the number of adolescents reporting two or more mental health problems a week.”
And the United States is NEAR the bottom of those comparisons. I suggest next time you fall for a faulty cherry-picked comparison that ignores reality, check all the facts like I just did.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/these-rich-countries-have-high-levels-of-child-poverty/
Due to number of violent incidents in schools, Florida has mandated “mental health learning” in the schools. While some districts are hiring mental health professionals or counselors, other districts are going to address the mandate through cyber social-emotional learning. In my opinion this move is like trying to put a band-aid on a broken leg. The group providing the cyber approach is most likely to be The Cyber Smile Foundation. Their website describes their anti-bullying and gaming software.https://www.cybersmile.org/news/florida-mandates-mental-health-learning-in-schools
The SEL was the straw that broke the camel’s back for us and lead us to sending our 2nd to private HS. PBIS K-5 that didn’t seem to work for anyone. Growth mindset worksheets as classwork and homework for Algebra/math classes in MS. Days long Empathy seminars conducted by outside companies. SEL data collection from numerous surveys. As more of this was piled on, the behavior in the ES and MS got worse and worse. My son’s MS was like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s like the school system was performing psychological experiments without parental consent.
Ridiculous. Anything to avoid having actually to deal with the problem. Oh, yeah, let’s make the teachers take an online training. Lord knows, THAT will be SOOOO effective, and teachers haven’t anything else to do.
Disruptive kids know when they have helicopter parents who will vehemently defend their children, and they know that administrators are really, really afraid of such parents, and they play this to the hilt. Terrible behaviors are allowed to persist and fester and grow when they could have been nipped in the bud. Almost any teacher will know what I am talking about here.
I certainly do, Bob….
Diane
Your closing question is a good one – the answer is “it depends” –
This is a reasonable summation of the issues – mainly – do they receive any federal funding in any form
https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/research/education-law/can-private-schools-discriminate-against-students.html
This part in particular is what addresses it most “Private schools receiving federal funds can’t exclude qualified students with disabilities or charge them more, as long as only “minor adjustments” are needed to provide an appropriate education.”
So they CAN discriminate even if receiving federal funding if the disability is more than “minor”. The obligation to provide a Free Appropriate Education to all is on the State to do through Public schools.
I had a student tell me, “Go ahead. Send me to the office. The principal and I will talk about last week’s football game. Then she’ll send me back here.” Another said to me, “Yeah. Call my Mom. I wouldn’t want to be you when THAT happens.”
OMG, these students sound just like that dump.
Yes. Mr. Plausible Deniability. The immature adolescent “What? I didn’t do nuthing” president. The Teflon Don v. 2.0. He needs removal from office. And then detention for a long, long time.
Worries me … to the max.
Here’s a positive story.
I gave some books to two Hispanic families I know on Monday. Yesterday, one of the mothers sent me a video of her daughter lying on her single bed reading one of those books. This mother’s message was, “Thank you.”
When I gave these 2 mothers the books, we chatted a bit and they told me that their kids (elementary to high school span) were all anxious to go back to school after the holiday break; their kids missed going to school and being with their teachers and their friends.
These parents and their children give me hope.
Imagine if the Gates Foundation or the Waltons or Bloomberg or any of the other billionaire Deformer/Disrupters had spent a tiny fraction of their money on sending a half dozen beautiful, important children’s books to every poor family in the US. Alas. No Carnegies in that sick crowd.
Wonderful, Yvonne. GOOD FOR YOU!!!! This kind of local, personal work is very important. It can make an enormous difference in specific kids’ lives. Bless you.
Especially valuable in this regard, books with lots of pieces that are returned to again and again for years–a big, illustrated Mother Goose Rhymes, D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths.
Young people need access to appropriate books as many homes do not provide them. Some districts are eliminating school library positions.
Violent kids are crying for HELP.
EXACTLY!!!!
Reformers have a vision for destruction but no vision for building. The mythical “market” will demand the proper things and reward good things. Carnegie had a vision for building up capacity. The reformers see what they think doesn’t work and don’t think about how to improve, they think about how to grind down the “bad” and let the market replace it with good. This obviously does not work but this is their philosophy.
exactly
I have spent a long time thinking about how much help we should give the individual child and how quickly we should pull the cord on a child. When I first began teaching, it was a common practice for the principal to bring a child into the office and tell a kid this:
“You have been around here a long time and you do not want to be. I know things are difficult for you. Maybe you should just get a job and be an adult. You are really a good guy, its just that being around here makes you get on our nerves and makes us get on your nerves. If you leave, we won’t look for you.”
That speech was usually given to a kid who was 16, had begun to drive, and had a job that was beginning to take the kid out of school. The kid generally was breaking school rules, smarting off to teachers, and making himself a nuisance in general.
I do not feel we should have done things that way, but funding left us little choice. These children were demanding time of us that should have been going into forming better lessons and responding to the students who were trying to get something out of the experience. We did not then, and do not now have the money to give them what they need.
When we cut kids loose now, we make ourselves get on the front page as a failing school. Meanwhile, schools that get to choose kids make the ratings for the national best. There has to be a point that allows the public school to admit that they are not helping a child. Otherwise the persistent phenomenon of on-line class diploma mills, violent children walking about with their hostility unaddressed, and meaningless degrees will persist.
I have served these students for 30 years, 17 of them as a classroom teacher. I’m still doing it now.
This is a complicated issue, and once again the discourse in this digital agora acknowledges that and, for the simple-minded, reiterates that there are no pat answers or solutions for complicated issues.
So I thank everyone here for that.
One thing I can say about this: the frequency and level of violence skyrocketed when the smartphone became a ubiquitous possession among adolescents. Nine or more times out of ten when we meet with kids to process a violent incident, we learn the incident started on social media and broke through into the real world.
I’m still not sure why we allow these devices in schools. Would we let a kid arrive everyday with a smart television and a cable modem/router? I don’t think so, These phones are just miniature versions of that smart television.
And they have made it just about impossible to teach.
“I’m still not sure why we allow these devices in schools.”
Because of September 11. Now because of the possibility of a catastrophic event, everyone has to have the ability to reach their friends and loved ones at every minute because that minute could be their last, or at least the “only” way for people to connect to find each other and make sure people are safe.
This origin has since metastasized to include any possible remote threat of harm, no matter how small or unlikely. Children and parents have to be able to contact each other because OMG, Little Sally could be kidnapped and sex trafficked! Or, some dark-skinned person could pull over and ask them for directions, which, these days, is the same thing. Cell phones are leashes in the name of safety.
Dienne, the timing coincides with the avail tech/ reasonable pricing, which was I think the major factor. Flip phone adult usage was becoming pretty common by late ’90’/ early 2000’s. I remember K12 age usage was still being debated in mid-2000’s. Parents who insisted on it might be considered by others as helicoptering &/ or spoiling. The convenience factor took over soon after.
Yes. We need detectors at the doors and no weapons or cell phones allowed. Collect them at the beginning of the day. Return them at the end.
Exactly right, Bob, and I don’t see any alternative to your procedural recommendation. As I say frankly to my students, I have nothing, and I do mean nothing, that can compete with what you get from your phone: constant stimulation, approbation that actually has neurological features, and general ego gratification all day every day.
What do I have? Work that challenges students to think, focus, and re-evaluate the world every day.
I think I don’t need to belabor the problems we face because of these devices.
There are devices that will block the ability of a mobile phone connecting to a wireless network. Why shouldn’t all public schools have one of these devices in each classroom?
“A mobile phone jammer or blocker is a device that deliberately transmits signals on the same radio frequencies as mobile phones, disrupting the communication between the phone and the cell-phone base station, effectively disabling mobile phones within the range of the jammer, preventing them from receiving signals and …”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_jammer
But there are legal issues when it comes to cell phone jammers because the companies that make money from mobile phone users have managed to get laws passed that make jammers illegal.
https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone-jammer5.htm
What’s It Like?
Cell-phone users don’t know they’re being jammed. The phones just indicate that there’s no service or no signal from the network. The jammer simply interrupts the phone’s ability to establish a link with the nearest cell-phone tower.
Lloyd…..my son goes to a private HS and he has a whole staff of cell phone blockers…..no fancy gadgets needed!!! Student are allowed to have their phones on them, out of site with ringer turned off from 7:30 am until 4:30pm while INSIDE the school building. They are allowed to use their devices if they leave the building during an open period or lunch. If the rules are not followed, the student will have the phone confiscated, the parents must come in to get the phone AND 6 after school detentions are given (45 minutes each day). It’s in the rule book and ALL school staff enforce the rule. My son knows of no kid who has broken the rule (he is a Soph).
LisaM, my school had the same rule. DID NOT WORK. The kids would constantly sneak the phones out. They were adept at hiding them in the folds of a skirt, behind a book, at the top of an open backpack, but running, and so on. The moment a teacher looked away to deal with one kid, another would have the phone out. And the moment they hit the halls between classes, they would be on those phones, fomenting trouble, often, with other kids, that would then erupt into incidents. NO. NO. NO. The phones need to be banned from the school during the school day. NOT PRESENT ON THE KIDS.
Since Lisa’s son goes to a private HS, and I think you teach at a public high school, does that mean it is more of a challenge for teachers to manage public school students?
After all, private schools usually require parents to be involved and sign behavior contracts that come with dire consequences but public schools, I think, are not allowed to do the same thing.
And children that do not conform to a private school’s rules are usually tossed back to the public schools.
Bob…..it does work if everyone is on board with the policy. Students can’t even use their phone in the hall….they must leave the building. I guess this being a private HS and parents having to sign that they have read and will abide by the behavior policies is a big factor. No student wants 6 days of detention….one of the days is a Saturday.
It was a nightmare in my school. There was a policy, consistently enforced, but it was constantly violated. And there was constant disruption. I’m with Mark. They simply lead to trouble.
Lisa I was just looking up our local hisch’ cell policy, it’s the same as you describe. (I’m not sure if there are draconian suspensions attached tho). & I was wondering how on earth it could be enforced– pictured what Bob described. Maybe the difference is that the private school classes are smaller? I can see being able to do it w/ say, 18 kids.
The way our hisch policy is worded, sounds like some teachers (a lot?) have studs use smartphones in class for acad work. Whew, that makes it impossible to control! They should be left in lockers at least. Plus, I learned it’s fine to do ear-budded music in halls as long as you keep one bud out… ?!
Meanwhile the elemsch policy is cells in backpack turned off until dismissal time (& of course their backpacks aren’t on them in class).
“for the simple-minded…” 🙂 🙂
There has been, over the past few decades, a dramatic devaluation of the authority of teachers, to the point that it’s common for any differences in the accounts of an incident given by a teacher and by a student are treated as an unresolvable “he said/she said.”
Admin: OK. Tell me what happened.
Teacher: Well, I had the desks in groups, pushed up against one another, four in a group, for group work. He pulled his desk out and pushed all the books off the table onto the floor in the center, between the desks. Big, heavy lit texts and papers and pencils. A big mess. So, the students had to be gotten out of their seats, the desks pulled back, and everything cleaned up.
Admin: You saw him do this?
Teacher: No, I had turned away for a moment. I was helping a kid. I heard the crash.
Admin: So, you weren’t observing your students. How do you know it was him?
Teacher: He was smirking and laughing and what the kids call “flexing.” And his desk was pulled away.
Admin: It’s your word against his. Sorry.
Teacher: This stopped everything in my class for, I don’t know, ten, fifteen minutes. And he’ll just do it again. This wasn’t the first time. It certainly won’t be the last.
Admin: Sorry. Nothing I can do.
Administrators like leaving things like that because it means they simply don’t have to deal with it. Kids in schools where administrators don’t support their teachers know that that is the case because kids gossip continually and communicate continually via cell phone about any incidents that occur. In many schools today, teachers are, to a lot of the kids, simply a joke because their parents think of their kids as angels and teachers as the enemy, and administrators think of the teachers as just more cattle to be herded around.
cx: for any differences in the accounts of an incident given by a teacher and by a student to be treated as an unresolvable “he said/she said” involving equally credible parties.
Bob Sheperd, what you described you went through while teaching matches what I experienced for the entire 30 years I was teaching [1975 – 2005]
After I transferred from a middle school to one of the districts high schools, a year didn’t go by that one of the gangbangers would ask me what I’d do if they jumped me.
My reply was always the same, “I’d fight to the death and do all I could to kill as many of the gangbangers that jumped me.”
Every time, the gangbanger that asked me the question replied (with shock on his face), “You can’t do that. You’d get fired or arrested.”
I’d always say, “Go ahead. Test me. I have three choices: A. Do nothing and get beat up, injured, or killed — B. Get fired or possibly be severely injured or end up dead. — C. fight back just like the Marines taught me and do as much damage to my attackers as I possibly can before I go down. … My choice will always be C.”
Or how about those kids that tell their parents that the teacher doesn’t like them when they don’t get an “A” on their report card and the parent calls in to complain? Just about every school system has some kind of online grade/assignment log that parents can view to know that Jr. missed 15 homework assignments out of 20 or scored a 52% on a big test. Those parents will bully Admin and the teacher will have to give extra work so that Jr can get an A. I’m sorry, but you get what you get….period!! The only thing worse than helicopter parents are the lawn mower parents and when you have parents that are a combo, it is really awful.
I told my Juniors. Look, you are 16, 17 years old. You are old enough to put punctuation marks at the ends of your sentences. If you don’t do this in your Bell Work, I will give it a 0. It’s a matter of developing good writing habits. So, I did this, and the parent of one of my students, who was a lawyer, sent the Principal, on his law firm’s letterhead, a note threatening to contact the District Office and to sue the school unless the grade was changed. The Principal sent back a note saying that sending such a letter, on his firm’s letterhead, was a violation of legal ethics and that if he persisted, she would have to contact the state bar. What do you think?
There was a LOT of this bullying by parents at my school. I retired at the end of last year. So, I no longer have to deal with this. But it was demeaning and intolerable. I was never, in my career in publishing, treated with such disrespect. Some parents, in contrast, were great, but there were quite a few of these others, and every teacher in the school had to deal with this.
I don’t call them adminimals for nothing!
Thanks Bob–this pretty much sums up what I’ve dealt with for the entirety of my career. Very nicely put.
Of course, there is a reason why administrators act like that. They’ve worked hard to get where they are, and they are paid well, and they have a lot of power. They are big fish in a small pond. But their tenure is tenuous. It doesn’t take much parent complaining to cost them their jobs. This is a significant issue–a systemic problem that has to have a systemic solution.
The Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) is a biennial (i.e., every other school year) survey required by the US Department of Education’s (Department) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) since 1968.
Bob Shepard noted that data for making local decisions is not easily found. I would add that it might not be accurate.
Even so, here is a partial list of USDE’s data for the 2017-2018 school year, with a focus on Discipline, Offenses, Harassment and Bullying, Restraint and Seclusion. The CRDC data is collected for charter, public schools and others that receive federal funds.
I have lightly edited this list for length Almost every category for reporting requires that information is disaggregated by race, sex, disability-IDEA (or 504 only), and English Learner.
Most categories also require a report that offers a comparison between students with disabilities and students without disabilities.
DISCIPLINE
Students (K-12) who received one or more in-school suspension:
–Number of preschool students who received one out-of-school suspension
–Number of instances of out-of-school suspensions that K-12 students received
–Number of school days missed by K-12 students who received out-of-school suspension
–Number of instances of out-of-school suspensions that K-12 students received
–Number of school days missed by K-12 students who received out-of-school suspensions
Number of preschool students who were expelled
–Students (K-12) who were expelled (with educational services; without educational services; because of zero-tolerance policies):
Students (K-12) who were transferred for disciplinary reasons to alternative school
Students (K-12) who were referred to law enforcement agency or official:
Students (K-12) who were arrested for school-related activity:
Students (K-12) who received corporal punishment:
–Number of preschool students (ages 3-5 years) who received corporal punishment
OFFENSES
Number of documented incidents that occurred at the school of:
Robbery with a weapon;
–Robbery with a fire arm or explosive device;
–Robbery without a weapon;
–Physical attack or fight with a weapon;
–Physical attack or fight with a firearm or explosive device;
Physical attack or fight without a weapon;
–Threat of physical attack with a weapon;
–Threat of physical attack with a firearm or explosive device;
–Threat of physical attack without a weapon;
–Rape or attempted rape;
–Sexual assault (other than rape);
–Possession of a firearm or explosive device;
Whether any of the school’s students, faculty, or staff died as a result of a homicide committed at the school.
Whether there has been at least one incident at the school that involved a shooting (regardless of whether anyone was hurt).
HARASSMENT AND BULLYING
–Number of reported allegations of harassment or bullying of K-12 students on the basis of: sex; race, color, or national origin; disability; sexual orientation; religion.
–Number of K-12 students reported as harassed or bullied on the basis of: sex; race, color, or national origin; disability.
–Number of K-12 students disciplined for engaging in harassment or bullying on the basis of: sex; race, color, or national origin; disability.
–Existence of harassment or bullying policies (Local Education Agency).
RESTRAINT AND SECLUSION
Students (K-12) subjected to mechanical restraint:
–Number of non-IDEA students subjected to mechanical restraint
–Number of students with disabilities (IDEA) subjected to mechanical restraint
Students (K-12) subjected to physical restraint:
–Number of non-IDEA students subjected to physical restraint.
–Number of students with disabilities (IDEA) subjected to physical restraint.
Students (K-12) subjected to seclusion:
–Number of non-IDEA students subjected to seclusion
–Number of students with disabilities (IDEA) subjected to seclusion
Number of instances of mechanical restraint, physical restraint, seclusion.
Click to access 2017-18-crdc-overview-changes-data-elements.pdf
This is to say that there is something like a taxonomy for reporting on issues, and there are other reports from EdStats, but these reports do not address the underlying issues and are too rarely publicized as a basis for taking action.
Teachers are increasingly blamed for problems that exist well beyond schools and that schools are not able to address, even if they are provided with wraparound services…and too few schools have those services.
In the last school where I taught, a middle school student arrived with a bloody arm from a knife wound inflicted by his father. He was treated in the ER and school officials reported the incident to the police. I do not know if the father was charged or if social services were enlisted in any followup. I witnessed a drug exchange in the school hall. Along with other teachers who witnessed the exchange, I gave court testimony. The teachers who lived in the neighborhood and who offered testimony had garbage thrown on their front steps. A culture of intimidation functioned as if perfectly normal.
The first school I taught in, years ago, was in a small factory town. Lots of latch key kids (ones whose parents would be working when they got home, so that they had to fend for themselves). That first year, one of my kids, a fourteen year old, stole his father’s car and ran away with his girlfriend. They were apprehended in another state. A kid in one of my classes called another kid “goofy.” The “goofy” kid–a big, gangly fellow–picked up his desk–his entire desk–and hurled it across the room at the other student. One of my students, a thirteen year old 9th grader, got pregnant and had to drop out. She was a timid little girl with very strict parents, and this probably happened the first time she was alone outside their presence. Another of my students, a sophomore girl, got into a fight with another girl and kicked her repeatedly in the head, giving her a concussion for which she had to be hospitalized. This happened right outside the school doors one morning. Another student slashed a teacher’s tires in the parking lot. A gym teacher took a gun away from another of my students, who had one of his classmates up against a locker and was saying, “I’m gonna blow your *****ing brains out.”
I was dating, that year, a woman who went to a Chicago high school where she was raped in the boys’ room by five young men.
In some places, teachers should get a combat bonus.
I wonder if this is entirely accurate: “Restraining or isolating a disorderly student is frowned upon and tracked by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.” When my sis taught yrs ago a school for the emotionally disturbed, the first thing they learned was various holds– for self-defense, protection of student from harming self or others, comforting/ quieting. Maybe they mean “restraining” as in restraints? And how is evacuating the classroom not isolating the ‘disorderly student’?
Regardless, what stands out in the article is that FL is sorely lacking in trained SpEd staff & appropriate classification/ designation of appropriate environment. The behavior they’re describing sounds like raging that may be borderline involuntary. Mainstreaming such kids is an abuse of the “least restrictive environment” guideline, & smacks of slashed SpEd budgets in low-ed-expenditure states. As Broward County’s SchSupt spokesman clearly states, “What is most needed is better funding and resource alignment to enable more personnel to provide intervention and support services to students and families both in and outside of the school day.”
It’s commonplace now, Bethree, for teachers to have battery charges brought against them for ANY touching of a student. For this reason, I wouldn’t even let students hug me in thanks for something. I would back away and say, “I’m sorry. But I can’t do that.” Furthermore, I never met with a student alone, for example, one-on-one in my room, but always in a public area, such as the cafeteria, when doing tutoring. The legal climate for teachers has gotten completely out of hand.
Wow, Bob. So, in other words, there’s a complete disconnect—at least in FL, where I gather you most recently taught—between what might be appropriate management of a seriously emotionally disordered child and a, well, ‘regular’ kid. I say FL because I have read that in FL regardless of circumstances/ dg/ etc, parents have the right to have their [seriously emotionally-disordered kid] in the same classroom with everyone else. And who knows, maybe what you’re reporting about litigation applies to many states. And maybe even if those other states don’t allow parents to willy-nilly mainstream their kids against prof’l recommendation, it will take months of red tape to get the kid into a special school or self-contained classroom against parental wishes—months during which teacher & other students are at daily risk of bodily harm.
I’m trying to put this together w/Laura Chapman’s list of OCR data-collection. Even tho it’s a simple data-collection form, if I were an admin faced w/this thing, I’d be thinking, gotta keep these numbers way down or I’m gonna get called on the carpet.
Something is seriously rotten in Denmark here. A complete abandonment of common sense—in the name of civil rights—which harms everyone involved, & provides no help whatsoever to the black/ brown/ poor/ disabled kids supposedly targeted for assistance by these measures. Looks like, on the one hand, govt bureaucrats chasing merrily down a rabbit hole cuz that’s what they do, & on the other, low-ed-expenditure states taking advantage of the situation by mainstreaming everybody.
The article quotes IDEA law: “Every child in America deserves a decent public education, even if there’s something different about them.” What needs to be recognized is that for some emotionally disordered students, a “decent public education” may be limited to years of therapy and training in specialized settings, just to get them to a place where they can begin learning in a larger group setting. Sure that’s expensive, but it could enable the child to grow into an adult who can support himself in a min-wage job. In the long run the cost is peanuts compared to lifetime social support in jails and hospitals.
“Experts say many children with disabilities act out aggressively when they can’t convey their needs or feelings.” Truer words never spoken– and not just about disabled children, as any parent or teacher of PreK’s can tell you. I remember a run-in w/teacher & conf w/MSW when my 2.5 yo eldest slapped a kid for no apparent reason. The MSW imparted this same gem of wisdom, predicting my son was on the cusp of articulate verbal expression [she was right]. Just last wk (providing Span enrichment), I had a 5yo melt down in inarticulate rage over– ? (he couldn’t say). The K teacher advised me same stuff happening in reg classroom & suspected same syndrome. [He’s small/ immature compared to peers, plus 2-3 langs at home).
If schools are actually seeing an increase in such behavior at older ages, it suggests many possibilities. Some have mental issues that need to be handled in small specialized classes w/trained staff & supports, & that’s increasingly not happening as public ed budgets are steadily slashed. Some– like the kid whose brother was found hanging from a tree– are in shock & PTSD from untreated mental illness at home– & steadily finding fewer & fewer emergency social support at school & elsewhere.
Most worrisome to me is the kid sheltering wDad in a nbr’s shed, as I suspect our spiraling income inequality makes this increasingly common. Dirt-poor poverty inflicts a daily, deleterious grind of food/ shelter/ clothing insecurity– fear. Rare is the parent in such a situation who can model verbal articulation of hopes, fears, feelings. Their children too will eithe shut down, or flail out violently, in the absence of needed social supports.
The biggest consequence of how things are done today is the degradation of the educational experience of the well-behaved students.
I put the blame on the so called “school to prison pipeline,” and I am saying that as a black male. While knee jerk suspensions were/are a problem, I don’t think simply sending students with egregious behaviors back to class is the solution. Those students need more involved interventions, and that cannot necessarily be done by the general education teachers with everything they already have on their plates.
This is the biggest fallacy in the whole “schools and districts should be run like businesses” philosophy. The reformers only want that in the case of how TEACHERS are hired, fired, and compensated. Meanwhile, go read a business book, and there will be chapters on how to attract the right customers and to repel and get rid of bad ones.
If I go to an actual business and cause multiple issues for the other customers and employees, if I am not arrested, I will at a minimum be trespassed from the establishment.