The state's education department announced Monday it will work with more than two dozen schools, including several in Central Massachusetts, to reduce “inappropriate or excessive” long-term suspensions and expulsions of students.
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education selected schools for the project based on student discipline data those districts submitted to the state a year ago. Under a new state law governing student discipline that went into effect in 2014, the department is required to identify schools that are over-relying on out-of-school suspensions or have large disparities among their suspension rates for certain racial groups, and help them develop new ways to reduce harsh, long-term punishments, which research shows increase a student's risk of dropping out.
Schools picked by the state for the initiative will be expected to learn from each other as they develop new student discipline plans that “will include approaches that encourage positive school climates and intermediate options that (they) can employ before resorting to suspensions and expulsions,” according to the department’s announcement.
Among the 25 schools in 18 districts the education department is working with on the new project are Fitchburg High School, Arthur M. Longsjo Middle School, and the Sizer School charter school in Fitchburg; the entire Gardner school district; Quaboag Middle High School in Warren, and Bartlett High School in Webster.
“The department looks forward to learning with these districts and implementing practices that will reduce reliance on suspension and expulsion while at the same time ensuring that schools are a safe and orderly learning environment,” Education Commissioner Mitchell D. Chester said in a statement. “In many cases, the participating districts and schools already have taken steps to reduce suspensions and expulsions at their schools, and their experiences will be valuable to the group.”
In most of the Central Massachusetts schools that were selected, the amount of students disciplined declined from the 2013-14 to 2014-15 school year. But almost all of those schools also had higher out-of-school suspension rates for African-American and Hispanic students and students with disabilities, state data from last school year shows. In some cases, students from those populations were sent home with suspensions at twice or even triple the rate of white students.
Last year was the first one in which the state's new student discipline law and regulations were reflected in those statistics, however, which caused several school officials in selected districts to second-guess their accuracy.
“I question the validity of the data – it’s a one-year snapshot,” said Brett Kustigian, superintendent of the Quaboag schools, who defended his high school’s approach to discipline and its principal and assistant principal specifically, who “do an outstanding job.”
“My only reluctance (with the state’s project) I would have is that the data is not yet clear,” said Fitchburg Superintendent Andre Ravenelle. “Everybody’s defining it differently.”
While he supports the state’s overall goal to reduce excessive use of harsh discipline, Mr. Ravenelle said there’s still not enough uniformity across the public education system since the new law took effect in terms of how those incidents are recorded, interpreted and reported. He also believes asking public school administrators to reduce long suspensions puts those officials in a difficult spot.
“When all is said and done, students are still going to have behavioral issues” that schools will have to deal with, he said. School officials should try to keep those students in school, he added, but “you also have a responsibility to all the other students in their classroom – it’s a complicated issue.”
Despite their reservations with the state’s use of the data, school officials contacted Monday said they still intend to be willing participants in the department’s project, although Webster superintendent Barbara Malkas said it's “to be determined” whether the exercise will be useful.
“These are very complex student cases,” she said. “I remain cautiously optimistic that at least the technical assistance we would be provided could help us.”
