Comments on: Classroom Management Problems? Hire a Bouncer

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:31:39 +0000

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by correctdate: Classroom Management Problems? Hire a Bouncer at The Core … http://bit.ly/2ZFUnH...

By: Ben F

Ben F — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:33:19 +0000

Ha! I’ve observed the “cone of ignorance” in my classroom. (See Matt’s link to the Simpsons clip.) I’ll sometimes notice that a cluster of girls, some of them good students, bomb a test –probably because they’d been silently communicating with one another rather than listening.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:12:28 +0000

I tend to find that schools will expel for the big, isolated incident like bringing a knife to school. (And yes I agree that a Cub Scout pocket knife should not be cause for expulsion. Zero tolerance policies are problematic.)

What schools don’t deal with well, and what has the greatest negative impact on student learning, are the kids who never do the one big bad thing. They are the obnoxious punks who show up every day and have no interest in learning. Since these students never cross the line into the big 3 that get dealt with seriously (Sex, drugs, violence) they just disrupt the class day after day after day. It reminds me of this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F1HMq3_eXU

By: Ben F

Ben F — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:20:24 +0000

One big reason our district is loathe to suspend or expel is that we’re trying to get dubbed a School to Watch (I’m not sure what organization bestows this dubious honor). One of the criteria for getting this designation is a low rate of suspensions and expulsions. Never mind that kids are dissing teachers with impunity, learning takes a back seat to social chit-chat, and the morale of staff is in the toilet –a low rate of suspensions proves that we are a School to Watch!

By: Stuart Buck

Stuart Buck — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:45:48 +0000

Well, I wasn’t claiming anything about how common such expulsions. The very fact that they happen at all proves how wrong it is to claim, “Public schools don’t expel, even after repeated serious offences, while private schools do.”

Public schools most certainly do have the power to expel. If they choose to exercise that power rarely, and for stupid reasons, that is yet another political dysfunction that shows the need for greater school choice.

By: Claus

Claus — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:59:25 +0000

Stuart–There have been a smattering of “zero tolerance” cases out there where students have been expelled from traditional public schools for stupid reasons. They’re so extreme that they end up in the papers. Can you find data to suggest that such expulsions are commonplace? The generally enrage parents and communities–quite rightly–and end up on CNN.

Robert is right about students who are “counseled out” of high-performing charters well before they are expelled. According to Nancy Flanagan’s most recent blog posting, the Providence Charter school’s principal quite openly acknowledged that policy in her own school. High attrition rates at other schools, like Boston’s charters and KIPP schools, suggest that students are leaving because they aren’t a “good fit,” sometimes because they lack motivation or self-control.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:40:50 +0000

Well, I guess my point would be that some public schools seem expel or suspend kids for circumstances that are the furthest from extraordinary (having a completely harmless pocketknife, for example), while not keeping a handle on the sorts of disruption that would actually be relevant.

By: Robert Pondiscio

Robert Pondiscio — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:34:36 +0000

Fair point, Stuart, but the issue is less expulsion than the ability to control more tightly the school tone and environment. High functioning charters might “counsel out” a disruptive student well before it gets to the level of expulsion; public schools can expel, but it usually takes an extraordinary circumstance (drugs, weapons, not “mere” disruption) before that’s on the table. But the disruption is chronic in poor schools and is, I think, too easily accepted. Charters have more means at their disposal to address it. And that’s a good thing, by the way.

Indeed, I don’t think that a charter’s ability to control its environment is something they need to apologize for or pretend isn’t so. The comment by the Canadian teacher in the post that “most parents are pro-discipline, pro-safety, pro-high standards and anti-bullying” is exactly right. Charters should embrace this as part of their unique selling proposition to urban families.

By: Stuart Buck

Stuart Buck — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:16:53 +0000

What makes people think that public schools don’t (can’t) expel people? Google “zero tolerance” policies. E.g., this NY Times story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/education/12discipline.html?_r=2&partner=MOREOVERNEWS&ei=5040

The Christina school district attracted similar controversy in 2007 when it expelled a seventh-grade girl who had used a utility knife to cut windows out of a paper house for a class project.

Maybe the real problem is that public schools expel kids for stupid and unpredictable reasons.

By: GGW

GGW — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:01:36 +0000

Well said Robert.