CADRE Executive Director Maisie Chin. CADRE members conducted a survey of 120 young adults about why they dropped out of high school.
Photo by Martin Lipton
By Christine O’Keefe
Staff Writer
The LAUSD Board of Education unanimously passed the Discipline Foundation Policy for School-wide Positive Behavior on February 27. This policy aims to move discipline procedures away from a focus on punishment and towards positive behavioral support. According to both grassroots and district stakeholders, the passage of the policy is only a first step. Various stakeholders must now work together to find ways to implement the policy that address everyone's needs.
Parents and community activists want to find solutions that support positive changes in students who act out by getting to the root of their problems. LAUSD teachers, who teach some of the largest classes in the country, want to find consistent and effective ways to promote positive student behavior.
The new policy requires all schools support students in learning appropriate behavior before punishing misbehavior. The goal is to decrease the number of student suspensions and discipline actions by establishing a preventive system geared towards establishing a positive school climate.
The policy has its roots in the 1996 Chanda Smith Consent Decree, a federal court order directing the district to comply with special education requirements. The court found students with disabilities were disproportionately suspended at some schools, and ordered the district to provide training on positive behavior support.
Examples of positive behavior support include rewarding good behavior, posting behavior standards in the classroom, and talking with students about the reasons for their misbehavior.
The consent decree process opened a broader examination of school discipline procedures. Rene Gonzalez, LAUSD Assistant Superintendent of Student Health and Human Services explained, "It became clear that suspension may be a school wide problem and not just a problem for students with disabilities."
According to Maisie Chin, Lead Organizer and Director of the local grassroots group Community Assets Development Redefining Education (CADRE) based in South Los Angeles, CADRE became concerned about discipline policies in 2006 following incidents of violence between students on South Los Angeles campuses.
Their concerns led them to conduct a survey of 120 young adults about why they dropped out of South LA high schools. CADRE found a strong relationship between students’ decisions to drop out and school discipline policies. In subsequent research, CADRE discovered that suspensions were used as a first response for minor behavioral problems such as yelling to another student across the hallway. The “zero tolerance” policy surrounding fighting in schools led to one student being suspended even though he was protecting himself in an unprovoked attack.
Further, they found that 927 students in Local District 7 (South Los Angeles area) were transferred from one school to another under the opportunity transfer policy, in which a student who has been identified as having problem behavior is transferred in the hopes that a new environment will elicit a change in behavior. One parent reported that her eighth grade child was transferred between four different middle schools, resulting in less than one month of total attendance in school during the academic year.
Chin and CADRE welcomed the new LAUSD discipline policy as a way to decrease the number of suspensions, expulsions, and opportunity transfers in schools. Chin said that, “We looked at the opportunities the policy would provide for an approach to discipline that is different from the zero tolerance approach that is currently in place at some campuses."
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At first, several key stakeholders did not share CADRE’s enthusiasm. The United Teachers of Los Angeles raised questions about how staff members could respond to student behavior under the new policy. For example, suggested responses to students found under the influence of alcohol or drugs, stealing, or sexually harassing another student, included convening a group of students to discuss the issue, encouraging parents to visit the classroom, and assigning in-school suspension or detention. The vague wording and lack of clear consequences caused concern among union members.
According to Chin, lists such as this one may have given the wrong idea about the policy. Chin said, "Some teachers were afraid they wouldn't be able to send students to the dean for egregious behavior."
In response to the concerns, UTLA worked with the board members who sponsored the resolution (Marlene Canter, Julie Korenstein, and Marguerite LaMotte) to ensure the wording of the policy did not interfere with a teacher's right to refer students or to suspend students from class with cause, and the policy was approved on February 27 by all five board members who were present at the meeting.
Although some are optimistic about the new policy, others are skeptical.
School board member Jon Lauritzen, who represents the Valley, commented, "You're not going to get anywhere if you don't have buy-in from teachers, as well as from principals and school site councils. Personally, I'd like to see school site councils get more involved with this kind of thing.”
Three term board member David Tokofsky, who represents areas from South Gate to Highland Park, lauded the idea but fears that an insufficient implementation plan will keep the policy from succeeding, "Right now there's no budget, no timeline, and no training."
The test of the policy will be in its implementation. Marcus Lee, who has taught history for the last six years at Hamilton High School, said, "I can see the desire to have one district with one discipline policy. If it's done properly, it could work. But I also see the potential for problems. When a principal can't tweak a discipline policy to fit the needs of the school that can be a problem. A discipline policy needs to match the style of the administrator. The one size fits all approach doesn't work well in a district like LAUSD."
According to Assistant Superintendent Gonzalez, although the policy is intended to create consistency in discipline policies across schools, each school plan will be individualized. "Certain basic principles will carry over, but the idea is not to create a one size fits all plan, but rather to let schools tailor it to fit their needs."
Gonzalez said Professional Development time will be used at schools to develop a plan. The district is also creating a website with resources for positive behavior support, a list of model schools with contact phone numbers, and training teams in local districts. Currently, the LAUSD training teams are working on the first phase of implementation, introducing the policy to schools and creating a climate for change.
Tom Carter works at a school that has already begun this process. As Title I Coordinator at Central Los Angeles Middle School #4, he is on the discipline committee for the school, which opened for the 2006-2007 school year.
Earlier this week the committee reviewed the new Discipline Policy with parents. "It's my understanding that for minor incidents like tardiness or talking back, they want you to ask questions of the student before doing anything else. You need to be a good listener and to let the kid know that you care."
The school already has developed a system in which each teacher has a list of students who need a little extra support. The teacher is asked to check in informally with these students every week or two.
"If they know that you're checking up on them, they might tend to behave a little better. It's more positive than punishment," said Carter.
For more information on discipline policies in public schools, go to:
LAUSD Policy:
http://www.utla.net/pdf_lausd/DisciplinePolicy03-07.pdf
United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
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