Last year my colleagues and I were pretty surprised to learn that students would not be suspended any longer.
Why?
Simply because there were too many of them occurring. The educational reasoning was that students were losing educational time when they were suspended. It was educationally responsible to keep those students in school.
Isn't that swell? I wonder if anyone stops to think about the impact of that reasoning on the rest of the students in the class or grade or building. It's not a difficult task to see how poor, accepted behavior creates more poor, accepted behavior. Before you know it, all students think they can do what they want with little repercussions about their actions.
Is there a fix?
Sadly, I think the calm students get short shrift. They are forced to put up with the nonsense of the others and miss out on an education in the long run.
In my humble opinion, we will only look at the long-lasting impact of keeping poorly behaved students in the classroom when a student and his/her parent bring a lawsuit against the school. I am eager to see that happen frankly.
Schools cost a lot of money. There is no reason good students should have to continually suffer the consequences of being in a room with others who have no consequences.
