8/3/04 - If school boards take a close look at student suspension rates, they might discover that a student's chances of being suspended can depend a great deal on the school he or she attends.
That's the message that Russell Skiba, associate professor of counseling and educational psychology at Indiana University, delivered at the Council of Urban Boards of Education's (CUBE) 2004 Issues Seminar in Baltimore in June.
Speaking to CUBE's Racial Isolation Task Force, Skiba described his research aimed at discovering why a disproportionate percentage of minority students are disciplined in the nation's public schools.
Although student misbehavior is at the heart of any disciplinary measure, Skiba pointed out that the nation's schools are not consistent in the disciplining of students. Black students, for example, are two to three times as likely to be suspended as whites.
Minorities who misbehave also are more likely to be sent to the principal's office, paddled, and expelled.
Schools can vary greatly in their reliance on the use of suspensions as a disciplinary measure, he says. A study of suspension rates in one Midwest urban school system found that one school suspended only 11.3 percent of students sent to the principal's office, whereas another school suspended 86.5 percent of discipline referrals.
"Put all this together, and school factors are more predictive of the chances of suspension" than a student's behavior, Skiba says.
Research suggests that certain conditions in a school increase the likelihood that students - particularly minority students - will be disciplined more severely.
School boards can expect to find a problem in schools with a high suspension rate, a high student-teacher ratio, less-experienced teachers, low academic performance, a poor attitude about improving student achievement, a lack of attention paid to school climate, and a staff that spends a disproportionate amount of time on discipline.
Providing more training in classroom management and alternate discipline techniques can help such schools, Skiba says. School personnel need to break away from the "one-size-fits-all" approach to disciplining students and implement a graduated set of consequences to misbehavior.
"Let the punishment fit the crime," he says, suggesting that a student who writes on a restroom wall could be handed a brush and told to clean it up.
Other alternatives worth consideration include in-school suspensions, after-school detentions, teen courts to handle minor infractions, and community service assignments. Skiba also says teachers and principals can prevent misbehavior by teaching conflict resolution skills and building a more positive school climate.