Education

THE PROBLEM: In the fall of 2017, hundreds shared personal experiences of educational inequity, such as poor academic achievement and harsh, unequal school discipline. As we began to do our research, we learned a lot about these problems.

 

  • In school and out of school suspensions in our community are primarily for minor, non-violent offenses like being forgetful, yelling at each other and getting into schoolyard fights.

  • One major contributor to academic struggles is the amount of time kids are spending outside of the classroom.

  • According to the United States Office of Civil Rights, during the 2012-2013 school year, Richland One suspended 110 kids out of school from preschool.

  • Students of color bare the brunt of these punitive measures. When you breakdown suspensions by race, in 2013-2014 while every one in ten white students enrolled were suspended, one in every four black students enrolled were suspended.

  • During the 2015-2016 school year, Richland One students missed 17,865 days of school due to out of school suspensions.

    • While the district is 72% black, black children made up 93% of all missed school days.

  • In recent years, according to the SC Department of Education, less than 1% of all out of school suspensions were classified as violent or related to the sale of drugs or weapons.

  • Kids that are suspended once are more likely to be suspended again, expelled or arrested from school.

  • Every time a child is suspended they are 6% less likely to graduate from high school or drop out. In fact, not graduating from school is more highly correlated to suspensions than even failing up to two courses.

  • Punitive school discipline and poor school climate are connected to increased bullying, poorer academic performance, more time outside the classroom with the potential to get into trouble, and a lower number of teachers feeling supported in their job and sticking around.

Action: There are schools and districts all over the country that are using Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, or PBIS, to address this problem. PBIS is a data-driven, proven framework that is free and can be used in any school to build positive school climate. PBIS is a fidelity model practice, which means that very specific components need to be fulfilled, with consistency, to work. It is a best practice identified by local and national experts, including the US Department of Education. Significant evidence shows that PBIS –when done with fidelity - establishes clear school wide expectations, decreases discipline referrals and thus suspensions, increases teaching time for teachers, and it can have a positive impact on academic achievement and increase parental engagement.  

We want to see more transparency in discipline practices in Richland One and Two and for the implementation of proven practices like PBIS to reduce suspensions by addressing misbehavior at the root, keep our kids in school and better support teachers.