Education Week - Diplomas Count - Issue 34, 2015 - (Page 12)
Discipline Policies Push Students
Off College-and-Career Path
Special-needs students get more than their share of suspensions, expulsions
O
ne of the biggest
hurdles
many students
with disabilities
must clear on
their path to a
high school diploma
isn't academic,
advocates say.
A growing body of data show that
school discipline practices disproportionately
target students with
disabilities-often causing them
to miss out on needed instruction.
Special education students frequently
become disengaged in class
after repeated suspensions. And
that can lead them to drop out before
finishing high school.
In addition, some administrators
expel students for behaviors related
to their disabilities, or "counsel
them out" rather than addressing
those behaviors under processes included
in federal civil rights laws,
advocacy groups say.
School leaders need to "sit down
and have a frank conversation
about 'how did we get here?' Because
only then are you going to
know how to undo it," said Diane
Smith Howard, a senior staff
lawyer for juvenile justice and
education issues at the National
Disability Rights Network, a Washington-based
advocacy group.
In recent years, many schools and
policymakers at local, state, and
national levels have worked to reshape
school discipline practices to
try to address racial disparities and
to reduce reliance on exclusionary
discipline, such as suspensions.
Although those general efforts
have, in many cases, improved discipline
for students with disabilities,
educators should also consider
specific measures targeted to this
population when they overhaul
their discipline policies and practices,
Ms. Smith Howard said.
DATA ON DISPARITIES
In the 2011-12 school year, 13 percent
of all students with disabilities
received an out-of-school suspension,
compared with 6 percent of students
without disabilities, according to the
most recent data available from the
U.S. Department of Education's office
for civil rights.
Those disparities are even more
pronounced for students who are
also members of racial-minority
populations. In that same period,
34 percent of boys with disabilities
who belonged to two or more racial
groups, and 27 percent of girls in
that category, received at least one
12
EDUCATION WEEK s JUNE 4, 2015
out-of-school suspension, compared
with 12 percent of white boys and 6
percent of white girls with disabilities,
the data show. Among black
students with disabilities, 27 percent
of boys and 19 percent of girls were
suspended.
"It's bad enough to be a kid with
a disability or a child of color, but
when those two pieces come together,
the impact on school removal
is exponential," Ms. Smith Howard
said.
And though students with disabilities
represented just 12 percent
of enrollment, they accounted for 25
percent of school-based arrests and
25 percent of referrals to law enforcement
that year, the data show.
LEGAL PROTECTIONS
Those disparities persist because
schools punish students, typically
those with emotional and behavioral
disabilities, for behavior that is associated
with their disabilities, a violation
of federal laws, said Daniel J.
Losen, the director of the Center for
Civil Rights Remedies, an initiative
at the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto
Derechos Civiles, based at the University
of California, Los Angeles.
"Since the law says you should
never suspend a student because
of their disability, if [discipline] was
done right, there would be no difference
[in the data] between kids with
disabilities and their peers," he said.
In the 1988 case of Honig v. Doe,
the U.S. Supreme Court set limits on
how schools can discipline students
under the Individuals with Disabilities
Act. In that case, the court ruled
that schools may not exclude students
with disabilities from class unless
a panel of educators determine
that the disruptive or dangerous
behavior at issue is not associated
with his or her disability, even if that
disability is emotional or behavioral.
Under the idea, a suspension for
more than 10 days triggers a "manifestation
determination," where a
team decides if the offending behavior
is related to the student's disability.
But for suspensions of less than
10 days, no such determination is
required.
But schools don't always scrutinize
shorter-term suspensions or
classroom removals as carefully, researchers
say, and they don't always
analyze discipline data enough to
recognize troubling patterns of discipline
for students with disabilities.
Those patterns can develop because
teachers in mainstream classrooms
may not be familiar with the
individualized education programs,
or ieps, of special education students,
they may be poorly trained to address
behavioral issues, or they may
not recognize that disruptive behavior
is associated with an emotional
or behavioral disability, Mr. Losen
said. Schools may also face pressure
from parents and teachers to remove
disruptive students from the classroom,
regardless of whether the behavior
is disability-related.
What's more, resource-strained
schools often fail to adequately or
consistently provide such services as
counseling and individual support to
students with emotional disabilities,
which is the subgroup of special education
students that is usually the
target of unfair discipline, he said.
"Those kids more than any others
should absolutely be getting all
kinds of behavioral supports and
services," Mr. Losen said.
Students with emotional and
behavioral disabilities are also frequently
funneled into what civil
rights advocates call the "school-toprison
pipeline" when they are reprimanded
or arrested by school-based
police officers who may not be aware
of their special educational needs,
those advocates said.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne
Duncan and then-Attorney General
Eric Holder referred to that connection
when they visited a juveniledetention
facility in Alexandria, Va.,
in December.
Incarcerated students, many with
emotional disabilities, sometimes
say they feel more support coming
from educators in youth lockups
than they did in traditional schools,
Mr. Holder said, calling such experiences
"unacceptable failures" and
"lost opportunities."
CHANGES IN SYRACUSE
Schools that have attempted to
rein in higher discipline rates for
students with disabilities have
done so by implementing positive
behavioral supports, which introduce
more targeted and intensive
services for the students most in
need of them.
Some districts also provide additional
teacher training to ensure
fair disciplinary practices.
After a New York attorney general's
investigation revealed unfair
use of suspensions in the Syracuse
public schools, for example, leaders
implemented a plan to reduce the
use of exclusionary discipline.
That plan includes teacher
coaching, regular training for all
teachers on emotional disturbances
and behavioral disorders,
and training on students' due
process rights, Syracuse Superintendent
Sharon Contreras told a
meeting of civil rights advocates in
Washington this spring.
While disability-rights advocates
applaud national efforts to examine
discipline data and hold schools
accountable for troubling patterns,
they say such initiatives may have
an unintended consequence: "informal
removals."
That's the term advocates use
when districts repeatedly send
students home sick for nonmedical
reasons or transfer them to an alternative
classroom to avoid counting
the act as a formal suspension,
Ms. Smith Howard said. Without
a formal discipline determination,
students with disabilities miss out
on mandated hearings designed to
prevent future problematic behavior,
and schools lose an accurate
picture of how their practices are
affecting students, she said.
A group that the National Disability
Rights Network assembled
this year to explore the discipline
of students of color who have disabilities
plans to recommend that
federal officials issue guidance on
students' rights to attend a full
day of school. States could also
intervene by requiring schools
to document attendance several
times a day to catch students
who are dismissed after morning
enrollment counts are made, Ms.
Smith Howard said.
Schools should be concerned not
just with meeting the dictates of
federal civil rights law, but they
should also take every opportunity
to prepare all students for
the world beyond high school,
she said.
"The purpose of the idea is not
just to get us all through school,
but it is to produce individuals at
the end who are capable of civic
life and working," Ms. Smith Howard
said."The same problems that
cause you to be sent home [from
school] at 11 every day will also be
problems in the workplace. Workers
also can't have meltdowns at 1
o'clock, either." s
Coverage of school climate and student
behavior and engagement is supported
in part by grants from the Atlantic
Philanthropies, the NoVo Foundation,
the Raikes Foundation, and the
California Endowment. Education
Week retains sole editorial control over
the content of this coverage.
The Rules for Engagement blog tracks news and
trends on this issue. www.edweek.org/go/
rulesforengagement
By Evie Blad
http://www.edweek.org/go/rulesofengagement
http://www.edweek.org/go/rulesofengagement
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - Diplomas Count - Issue 34, 2015
Education Week - Diplomas Count - Issue 34, 2015
Inside
After Special Ed., Path Is Less Certain
DATA OVERVIEW: Students with Disabilities In School and Work
BY THE NUMBERS: Hearing Impairment
Md. Senior Opts For University Geared To Students With Hearing Impairments
In College, Students Face Choice: Seek Help or Go It Alone?
BY THE NUMBERS: Emotional Disturbance
At Lab School, Pennsylvania Student Prepares for Career In Culinary Arts
After K-12, Students Must Be Self-Advocates
BY THE NUMBERS: Specific Learning Disability
On Road to College, Georgia Student Learns To Speak for Herself
For Job-Oriented Students, Work Experience Is Critical
Discipline Policies Push Students Off College-and-Career Path
BY THE NUMBERS: Autism
Budding Politician Sets Sights on College
State Diploma Requirements Vary
Common Core: Will Bar Rise For Students With Disabilities?
BY THE NUMBERS: Intellectual Disability
In Virginia, Jobs Enable Twin Brothers To ‘Walk Taller’ After High School
Graduation Rates Reach New Highs, But Gaps Remain
TABLE: Graduation Rate Tops 80 Percent
State-by-State Data
Education Week - Diplomas Count - Issue 34, 2015
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