Flagrantly and persistently disobeying a teacher used to get you suspended. Now in California, such students are protected by state law.
Gov. Gavin Newsom last week signed legislation barring public and charter schools across the state from suspending middle school or elementary school students for “willful defiance.” Students face suspension for drug use, theft, or violence but not for repeatedly defying their teachers. (This was already the case for grades K-3.)
Los Angeles had already banned these suspensions, arguing that they fall disproportionately on students of color. Even though African American students made up less than 6% of California students in the 2017-2018 school year, they represented 17% of suspensions across the state, according to data from the California Department of Education.
Not everyone, however, is convinced that the suspension ban will help. After a group of researchers looked at the effectiveness of this type of prohibition in the Los Angeles Unified School District, they concluded, “There is limited evidence on the efficacy of these new policies.”
Charter schools are also displeased. The executive director of the Charter Schools Development Center, Eric Premack, opposed the law for what he called its “one-size-fits-all” standard, which is “not a fit for all schools in all circumstances.”
Other states, including Connecticut, Oregon, and Texas, have similar suspension bans, and individual districts may have produced positive results. Broward County, Florida, banned nonviolent suspensions and saw fewer students acting up. Also, more time in the classroom “lined up with higher test scores,” Carly Berwick explained for the Week.
If these results prevail, Berwick speculates, nonviolent suspensions may someday go the way of corporal punishment in schools and fall entirely out of use.
