Florida Atlantic University offers a course called Crime in Schools that contributes to criminal justice majors.
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The discussion answer covers the topics of suspensions and whether they are a good or bad policy. The discussion board also covers the school-to-prison pip...
Suspensions are just one of the most common practices among zero-tolerance policies
found in schools. They are necessary in the circumstances of students who exhibit extremely
negative or “at-risk” behaviors, like drug or alcohol possession on the school premises, because
they prevent the student from committing the same behavior again and put a stop to the behavior
negatively affecting other students. However, more often than not, policies like suspensions are
overused in schools. The policy often acts as a bandaid irresponsibly placed over a more serious
or malignant issue going on with the student either cognitively or adversely.
While I do believe suspensions are a decent policy when they are fairly given out to
students who deserve this degree of punishment, there are better ways to combat negative student
behavior without having to resort to one of the strictest and severest school policies. While
suspensions often disproportionally affect minority students and open the doors to the
school-to-prison pipeline, there are other strategies that can diminish these unfortunate
likelihoods. These strategies include behavior mentoring/monitoring, the incorporation of
in-school interventions like PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports), and even
in-school suspensions (Massar et al., 2015). Behavior mentoring/monitoring ensures that
students can foster positive relationships with other students and teachers. Through these
relationships, students can learn life skills and self-motivation through these well-respected
mentors in their schools. Interventions, like PBIS, have been proven to be highly effective in
externalizing behaviors and are moderately effective in internalizing self-disciplining behaviors
(Mayer & Jimerson, 2019). Finally, in-school suspensions have been shown to be less harmful
than regular suspensions because they will feel less marginalized than they would if they were to
be cast out of the school for a non-severe offense. Moreover, even though these strategies have
been proven to be more effective that the implementation of zero-tolerance policies, a way to
continue to determine if these strategies are effective or not is to keep studying their trends in
schools over time. One example as to which aspects of the school environment should be
observed over time is by observing how many students go from being deemed as “at-risk” to no
longer “at-risk”.
Overall, suspensions should be used only in the most severe circumstances, as the
overuse of them has been proven to have negative effects on students. Instead, less aggressive
strategies should be integrated in order to cultivate a positive school climate.
References:
Massar, M., McIntosh, K., & Eliason, B. (2015, May). Do out-of-school suspensions prevent
future exclusionary discipline? [Review of Do out-of-school suspensions prevent future
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