Long-term disasters for youth

Picture this: High school students changing classes, hanging out with friends, trading comments. A fight starts. Fists fly, friends on either side join in. The fight is broken up by other students after a few minutes and everyone moves on to class. No one is seriously hurt -- until news of the fight gets to school administrators: all the participants are kicked out of school for the remainder of the year.

As a result of their total exclusion from the educational system, most of them will fail their grade; many will be too demoralized to ever return to school. Some may end up in prison before the time when they are permitted to return to school.

When the Triangle Lost Generation Task Force examines the causes of the downward spiral of certain African-American and Latino men, it should work to bring public attention to the disproportionate and ineffective response of the public school administrators -- particularly in Wake County -- to the behavior of these young men. "Zero-tolerance" policies, which mandate that students who fight must be suspended for an entire school year, affected more than 750 students in Wake County in 2003-04, the last year for which statistics are available from the state Department of Public Instruction. Well more than half of those affected were African-American and Latino boys.

This "zero tolerance" approach is defended on the grounds that the school must be safe and violence cannot be tolerated. Students must learn that education is a privilege and if it is abused, it will be taken away. The "bad apples" must be removed to allow for the rule-abiding students to have the opportunity to learn without the disruptions and danger presented by the students who disobey the rules.

On their face, these justifications have rhetorical appeal. Regrettably, they rarely hold up in practice.

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Social science research studies about long-term suspensions are virtually unanimous in reaching the conclusion that frequent suspensions, particularly long ones, are an ineffective discipline tool that neither makes schools safer nor improves the behavior of the offending child. The studies indicate that long suspensions are more likely to encourage antisocial behavior than prevent it, and schools that routinely use suspensions create an overall negative atmosphere that exacerbates the dysfunctional behavior of students.

Why don't suspensions work? First, suspension is an abandonment of the teaching role. Rather than trying to build a relationship with the student, model good behavior, offer alternative strategies for dealing with anger or solving disputes, schools that suspend children for long periods provide them with no useful tools. The suspended children feel discarded and rejected. When (and if) they return to school, they are academically behind, without a known peer group because they must repeat a grade, and alienated from school administrators.

Second, both neuroscience and psychological research shows that adolescents are, by and large, developmentally incapable of moderating their impulses and making fully rational decisions that take long-term consequences into account. As a society, we recognize that adolescents are not fully mature. This accounts for our separate juvenile division of the courts, as well as for restrictions from entering into contracts, consenting to medical procedures, voting and driving, for example. Although even young children know the difference between right and wrong, that is an entirely different matter than having the skill, when under pressure, to exercise adult-like self control.