Think Twice Before Disciplining or You’ll Undermine Learning

There’s an old saying that: “The only two things that are certain in life are death and taxes.” Well, educators can add a third: kids will misbehave in school. A big challenge for school districts is figuring out how to address student misbehavior without undermining their core purpose of educating children.

Kids can’t learn if they’re not in the classroom. Yet more than 7 million kids nationwide—a disproportionate number of them kids of color--were disciplined during the 2011-2012 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Student misbehavior doesn’t just disrupt learning for those misbehaving students. It disrupts learning for their classmates and it infects their school and district’s learning environments as well. This persistent disruption to teaching contributes to high rates of burn out and stress, high levels of disengagement and ultimately, high turnover rates within the teaching profession that annually costs school districts millions of dollars and kids higher levels of learning.

Teaching and learning are best enabled when teachers and students are fully engaged and ready to work with minimal behavioral distractions. But kids are not widgets. Some arrive to school with gaps in academic preparation and social and emotional readiness to learn.

Kids’ learning relies on caring adults who believe in them and can count on to nourish and develop their abilities without exception. When kids misbehave in non-violent ways, the discipline response should not undermine learning – neither academic learning nor the learning that comes from understanding why that behavior was inappropriate. Every time a child is kicked out of school or their classroom for failing to comply with often ill-defined, inconsistently applied behavior standards, we communicate that learning is secondary to compliant behavior.

Reducing high student discipline rates and discriminatory discipline in America’s schools requires leaders and policy makers to define behavior as a school district problem, not as an isolated school or a classroom teacher problem.

If we want kids to behave in a manner that enables learning, try this:

A school district leader must clearly define a set of shared behavior standards that reflect the district’s core values. He or she must accept responsibility for walking the walk and be held as accountable to these standards as teachers and non-teaching employees are. Students may rarely see their superintendent, but they should experience his or her behaviors through the people closest to them (their teachers) since they too should be modeling desired behaviors. It’s tough to expect respect from kids, when they don’t feel respected. Kids do what they see, not as they’re told. And they are always watching the adults in their orbit at home and at school.

Shared behavior standards must be communicated broadly and consistently applied across the school district from elementary to middle AND to high school, from classroom to classroom and from school bus to cafeteria in order to provide a seamless experience for students as they are promoted and as employees pursue new positions. Behavior standards not only serve as guardrails when they are headed off road but inform decision-making and the district’s priorities.

Misalignments between promoted values of equity, caring for one another, respect or excellence, can be identified more clearly through the conduct of employees and students when behavior standards or “rules of the road” are well-defined, shared and when employees and students are held accountable to and expected to live these behaviors as they learn and work.

Integrating conduct - how learning and work gets done in a school district—into recognition, performance, hiring and communications systems helps to reinforce desired behaviors and focus the district on its culture, which becomes established through these shared behaviors. And more intentional positive reinforcement of desired behaviors can go a long way to reducing the undesired ones.

Kids will misbehave. And when they do, consequences must follow. But those consequences shouldn’t undermine learning. A 14% national student discipline rate is too high to tolerate. It is symptomatic of misaligned values and behaviors and less about out of control children and families. Policies can direct attention to desired conduct. Leaders can set the tone and lead the way.