This commentary is by Alyssa Chen, a career educator who recently made the transition to education advocate and community organizer.
Over the past two years, Vermont Legal Aid has brought much-needed attention to the issue of disproportionate suspension, the practice by which certain students get suspended at rates exceeding those of others. Legal Aid formed the Dignity in Schools Coalition to fight for statewide policy change. Bolstered by the findings of the Kicked Out Report (January 2015), the coalition succeeded in passing the H.490 bill to ensure the state analyzes school discipline data.
Recently, the coalition introduced a bill to limit the use of suspensions (S.194) to the Senate Education Committee. Currently, schools have local control to create behavioral guidelines for suspensions. Under S.194, suspensions could only be used when students posed a risk of harm or when non-exclusionary discipline has repeatedly failed. While the bill is well-intentioned, it lacks input from those it is designed to serve. Most significantly, there is not a single teacher or parent of color on the Dignity in Schools Coalition. Additionally, disproportionate discipline is a symptom of deeper societal problems, mainly racism and classism. Addressing the symptoms only obscures the root of the problem.
Also, the bill doesn’t get at the root of why so many poor students and students of color are disciplined for acting out in class. Students from lower-income families and families of color in Vermont are much more likely to experience trauma than their peers (Vermont Department of Public Health, 2012). Trauma creates behavioral and other problems that can persist into adulthood if not properly addressed.
Over the past two decades, we have made great strides in our scientific understanding of trauma. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study (Felitti et al., 1998) assessed the collective impact of various traumatic childhood experiences such as homelessness, abuse, food insecurity, etc. The study found that ACEs were essentially a measure of toxic stress. Large doses of toxic stress “can have damaging effects on learning, behavior, and health across the lifespan” (Center on Developing Child, Harvard University). A 2011-2012 Vermont Department of Public Health Study found that children with three or more Adverse Family Experiences were less likely to engage in school, exhibit resilience, and flourish. Additionally, their families were more likely to be contacted by the school about their children’s behavioral problems.
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