WILDWOOD, Missouri — A middle school student in Missouri had trouble collecting images of people’s eyes for an art project. An elementary schooler in the same district couldn’t access a picture of record-breaking sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner to add to a writing assignment. A high school junior couldn’t read analyses of the Greek classic “The Odyssey” for her language arts class. An eighth grader was blocked repeatedly while researching trans rights.

All of these students saw the same message in their web browsers as they tried to complete their work: “The site you have requested has been blocked because it does not comply with the filtering requirements as described by the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) or Rockwood School District.”

CIPA, a federal law passed in 2000, requires schools seeking subsidized internet access to keep students from seeing obscene or harmful images online—especially porn. 

School districts all over the country, like Rockwood in the western suburbs of St. Louis, go much further, limiting not only what images students can see but what words they can read. Records obtained from 16 districts in 11 different states show just how broadly schools block content, forcing students to jump through hoops to complete assignments and keeping them from resources that could support their health and safety.

Some of the censorship inhibits the ability to do basic research on sites like Wikipedia and Quora. Students have been blocked from going to websites that web-filtering software categorizes as “education,” “news,” or “informational.” But even more concerning, especially for some students who spoke with The Markup, are blocks against sex education, abortion information, and resources for LGBTQ+ teens—including suicide prevention.

Virtually all school districts buy web filters from companies that sort the internet into categories. Districts decide which categories to block, often making those selections without a complete understanding of the universe of websites under each label—information that the filtering companies consider proprietary. This necessarily leads to overblocking, and The Markup found that districts routinely have to create new, custom categories to allow certain websites on a case-by-case basis. Students and teachers, meanwhile, suffer the consequences of overzealous filtering.

The filters did sometimes keep students from seeing pornographic images, but far more often they kept students from playing online games, browsing social media, and using the internet for legitimate academic work. Records from the 16 districts include blocks that students wouldn’t necessarily notice, representing just elements of a page, like an ad or an image, rather than the entire site, but they reveal that districts’ filters collectively logged over 1.9 billion blocks in just a month.

Related: How AI could transform the way schools test kids

“We’re basically trapped in this bubble, and they’re deciding what we can and can’t see,” said 18-year-old Ali Siddiqui, a senior at a San Francisco Bay Area high school.

The Markup requested records from 26 school districts. Many we selected because they had made headlines for banning library books; others we chose because government records showed they had purchased web filters or because they were mentioned by students interviewed for this article. Although 10 districts did not release the records—almost all claiming it would compromise their cybersecurity—we were still able to compile one of the most comprehensive datasets yet showing how U.S. schools censor the internet.

The blocks raise questions about whether schools’ online censorship runs afoul of constitutional law and federal guidance. The Markup’s investigation revealed that some districts, including Rockwood, continue to block content that’s supportive of LGBTQ+ teens while leaving anti-LGBTQ+ content accessible, something a Missouri court ruled was unconstitutional over a decade ago. What’s more, many districts completely block social media sites, something the Federal Communications Commission said in 2011 was inconsistent with CIPA.

The districts examined by The Markup varied significantly in what they blocked. While many districts blocked YouTube and most blocked social media, only a handful blocked sex education websites.

Catherine Ross, professor emeritus of law at George Washington University and author of a book on school censorship, called the blocks “a very serious concern—particularly for those whose only access is through sites that are controlled by the school,” whether that access is limited because they can’t afford it at home or simply can’t get it.

“We’re setting up a system in which students, by the accident of geography, are getting very different kinds of education,” Ross said. “Do we really want that to be the case? Is that fair?”

Related: Why schools’ efforts to block the Internet are so laughably lame

Survey data show how these inequities play out. The Center for Democracy and Technology asked teachers last year whether internet filtering and blocking can make it harder for students to complete assignments. Among teachers in schools with high rates of poverty, 62 percent said yes; among teachers in schools with lower rates, 50 percent said the same.

Though banned books get more attention than blocked websites in schools, some groups are fighting back. Students in Texas are supporting a state law that would limit what schools can censor, and the American Library Association hosts Banned Websites Awareness Day each fall. The ACLU continues to fight the issue at the local level more than a decade after wrapping up its national “Don’t Filter Me” campaign against school web blocks of resources for the LGBTQ+ community. Yet as the culture wars play out in U.S. schools, Brian Klosterboer, an attorney with the ACLU of Texas, said there are signs the problem is getting worse. “I’m worried there’s a lot more content filtering reemerging.”

“Human sexuality”

When Grace Steldt was in eighth grade in the Rockwood School District, she had to do a research project and decided to study trans rights. As someone who identifies as queer, she was particularly interested in the transgender community’s battle for civil rights. Steldt, now a sophomore, remembers having to do much of her research on her phone to get around the district’s web filter.

She also remembers that one of her teachers that year had a poster on her wall about The Trevor Project, whose site offers suicide prevention resources specifically for LGBTQ+ young people. The teacher wanted students to know her room was a safe space and that there was help available.

But the Rockwood web filter blocks The Trevor Project for middle schoolers, meaning that Steldt couldn’t have accessed it on the school network. Same for It Gets Better, a global nonprofit that aims to uplift and empower LGBTQ+ youth, and The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, which supports openly LGBTQ+ candidates for public office nationwide. At the same time, the filter allows Rockwood students to see anti-LGBTQ+ information online from fundamentalist Christian group Focus on the Family and the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal nonprofit the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group in 2016.

Bob Deneau, the school district’s chief information officer, said his department works with teachers to determine the curricular benefit of unblocking certain categories. “When we look at it, we say, ‘Is there educational purpose?’” he explained.

Related: Is early childhood education ready for AI?

The policy is to block first and only unblock in the face of a compelling case.

Rockwood did unblock some LGBTQ+ sites for high schoolers, including The Trevor Project and It Gets Better, in response to individual requests, but they remain blocked for middle and elementary schoolers, and the district records listed some thwarted attempts to visit the sites.

Rockwood School District gets its web-filtering platform, ContentKeeper, from a company called Impero, which, in 2021, was reportedly used by over 300 school districts in the U.S. One of its filter categories is called “human sexuality,” and it captures informational resources, support websites, and entertainment news designed for the LGBTQ+ community.

Even though the ACLU’s “Don’t Filter Me” campaign, launched in 2011, urged filtering companies to get rid of LGBTQ+ categories, The Markup investigation found that ContentKeeper and a filter from a company called Securly both still use them. Securly is one of the most popular web filters, used in more than 20,000 schools, and its “sexual content” category covers “websites about sexual health and LGBTQ+ advocacy websites.” Despite the category name, it is not designed to include porn.

Two other filtering companies represented in The Markup’s dataset, iboss and Lightspeed, removed similar categories in response to the ACLU campaign. Lightspeed says it serves 28,000 schools globally; while iboss doesn’t offer school-specific numbers, it works with more than 4,000 organizations worldwide.

The ACLU campaign didn’t focus only on filtering companies. It also pressured districts to unblock the categories themselves. Missouri’s Camdenton R-III School District refused, and the ACLU took it to court. Attorneys argued the district’s filter amounted to viewpoint discrimination, blocking access to supportive LGBTQ+ information while allowing access to anti-LGBTQ+ sites. They won.

Yet complaints have continued. Cameron Samuels first encountered blocks to LGBTQ+ web pages during the 2018–19 school year while working on a class project as a ninth grader in Texas’ Katy Independent School District. Like Rockwood, Katy uses ContentKeeper to filter the web; to Samuels, the LGBTQ+ category of blocks felt like a personal attack. Not only did Samuels find that the LGBTQ+ news source The Advocate was blocked, the teen also couldn’t visit The Trevor Project.

“The district was blocking access to potentially lifesaving resources for me and my LGBT identity,” Samuels said.

By senior year, Samuels was ready to challenge the whole filter category, having gained confidence and experience in community organizing. The ACLU of Texas got involved, helping Samuels file a grievance with Katy ISD. District administrators ruled against them, but the school board ruled in Samuels’ favor on appeal, unblocking the entire “human sexuality” category for high schoolers.

Related: How flawed IQ tests prevent kids from getting help in school

Still, the category remains blocked for younger students, and Anne Russey wants to change that. A mom of two elementary schoolers in Katy ISD and a professional therapist for LGBTQ+ adults, Russey first filed tech support tickets to ask for individual websites to be unblocked. After being denied, she escalated her fight through the same grievance process Samuels took, but the school board would not unblock The Trevor Project in its elementary schools. Seeing no further recourse locally, Russey also filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, and that case remains open.

“My biggest fear is that we lose a student as a result of this filter,” she said. The Trevor Project estimates that at least one LGBTQ+ person between the ages of 13 and 24 attempts suicide every 45 seconds.

“On a less catastrophic level,” Russey said, “kids do start to figure out who they are attracted to in these upper elementary grades.” If kids want to explore LGBTQ+ information, thinking they might identify as part of that community, they would only be able to access negative information on school computers.

Representatives from Impero did not return repeated calls and emails requesting comment about ContentKeeper for this story.

Securly’s vice president of marketing, Joshua Mukai, said only that “the Sexual Content category helps schools avoid overblocking websites related to reproductive health or sexual orientation by enabling them to create policies that specifically allow sites discussing sexual topics for age-appropriate groups.” He offered no comment on the idea that blocking LGBTQ+ advocacy websites through the “sexual content” category is discriminatory.

Reproductive health

Maya Perez, a senior in Fort Worth, Texas, is the president of her high school’s Feminist Club, and she and her peers create presentations to drive their discussions. But research often proves nearly impossible on her school computer. She recently sought out information for a presentation about health care disparities and abortion access.

“Page after page was just blocked, blocked, blocked,” Perez said. “It’s challenging to find accurate information a lot of times.”

She resorted to looking things up on her phone and then typing notes into her computer, which was “really inefficient,” she said. “I just wish I had access to more news sites and informational sites.”

In response to a request for records of blocked websites through November, the Fort Worth Independent School District released only two days’ worth of blocking, showing the five most frequently blocked domains (Spotify, Facebook, TikTok, Roku, and Instagram) as well as a list of categories blocked. “Abortion” did not show up as a blocked category, but search engines were blocked more than 4,500 times, education websites were blocked about 3,800 times, and news websites were blocked 648 times.

Planned Parenthood affiliates around the country end up negotiating directly with local school districts to unblock their website, according to Julia Bennett, the nonprofit’s senior director of digital education and learning strategy. Some schools say yes, some no. 

Alison Macklin spent almost 20 years as a sex educator in Colorado; at the end of her lessons she would tell students that they could find more information and resources on plannedparenthood.org. “Kids would say, ‘No, I can’t, miss,’” she remembered. She now serves as the policy and advocacy director for SIECUS, a national nonprofit advocating for sex education.

Only 29 states and the District of Columbia require sex education, according to SIECUS’ legislative tracking. Missouri is not one of them. The Rockwood and Wentzville school districts in Missouri were among those The Markup found to be blocking sex education websites. The Markup also identified blocks to sex education websites, including Planned Parenthood, in Florida, Utah, Texas, and South Carolina.

In Manatee County, Florida, students aren’t the only ones who can’t access these sites — district records show teachers are blocked from sex education websites too.

The breadth of the internet

Like Perez, Rockwood School District sophomore Brooke O’Dell most frequently runs into blocked websites when doing homework. Sometimes she can’t access PDFs she wants to read. Her workaround is to pull out her phone, find the webpage using her own cellular data, navigate to the file she wants, email it to herself, and then go back to her school-issued Chromebook to open it. When it’s website text she’s interested in, O’Dell uses the Google Drive app on her phone to copy-and-paste text into a Google Doc that she can later access from her Chromebook. She recently had to do this while working on a literary criticism project about the book “Jane Eyre.”

Recounting her frustration, O’Dell bristled at the need for any web filter at all.

“While you’re in school, they are in charge of you,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean they need to control everything you’re doing.”

In Forsyth County Schools in Georgia, which blocks a relatively narrow set of categories, records obtained by The Markup reveal a spate of blocked YouTube videos: One video shows a person reading a novel about Pablo Picasso. Another, a clip of Picasso himself painting. A third is an analysis of the painting “Guernica,” and a final one describes Picasso’s life and impact. Besides inhibiting Picasso research, the filter stopped other internet users in the district from history videos, a physics lesson, videos of zoo animals, and children’s songs about the seasons and days of the week.

Among the 16 districts that released records about their blocked websites, 13 shared the categories tied to the blocks. Games and social media were the most frequently blocked categories, along with ads, entertainment, audio and video content, and search engines.

Sites labeled “porn” or “nudity” didn’t crack the top 10 categories blocked in any district. Only in Palm Beach County, Florida, and Seattle were they even in the top 20.

The School District of Manatee County blocks its internet more broadly than almost any other district The Markup analyzed. Internet users in Manatee were blocked from accessing dictionary websites, Google Scholar, academic journals, church websites, and a range of news outlets, including Teen Vogue, Fox News, and a Tampa Bay TV station, according to the records. Manatee’s chief technology officer, Scott Hansen, said many of those websites are available to students and staffers but not guests on the district’s network, such as outside students working on homework during downtime over long sports tournaments or other events. Still, Manatee students can’t access the local public library catalog; most social media platforms; or sites with audio and video content including Fox Nation, Spotify, and SoundCloud.

As Deneau explained in the Rockwood School District, Hansen described a filtering policy in Manatee that errs on the side of blocking. If a category isn’t seen as having an explicit educational purpose, it is blocked.

Hansen started working in school district IT before CIPA required filters. “In the early days, they were all terrible,” he said. “They created lots of challenges, but their intent was good and they were needed.” Now, by contrast, Hansen said the most widely used filters do a good job of properly categorizing the internet, which limits the complaints he hears from teachers; few instructors actually request that sites get unblocked.

While that may be true, interviews with students and teachers around the country indicate many of them have simply resigned themselves to being kept from much of the internet. Students don’t necessarily know they can ask that sites get unblocked, and many who do make the request have been denied. The overarching rationale for the filters—keeping students safe—seems unimpeachable, so few people try to fight them. And schools, after all, have the right to limit what they make available online. CIPA lets the FCC refuse internet subsidies to school districts that don’t filter out porn, but the law doesn’t identify any consequence for excessive filtering, giving districts wide latitude to make their own decisions.

In the Center for Democracy and Technology’s survey, nearly three-quarters of students said web filters make it hard to complete assignments. Even accounting for youthful exaggeration, 57 percent of teachers said the same was true for their students.

Kristin Woelfel, a policy counsel at CDT, said she and her colleagues started to think of the web filters as a “digital book ban,” an act of censorship that’s as troubling as a physical book ban but far less visible. “You can see whether a book is on a shelf,” she said. By contrast, decisions about which websites or categories to block happen under the radar.

When Rockwood started using ContentKeeper a few years ago, O’Dell noticed that the filtering became more restrictive. While she recognizes that the blocking prevents students from playing games on their computers, she doesn’t believe technology should play that role.

“It’s not really teaching kids the responsibility of when to pay attention in class,” she said. “It kind of just takes that entire part of learning completely away.”

A stubborn status quo

The American Library Association has been calling for a more nuanced approach to filtering the internet in schools and libraries since 2003, when it failed to convince the Supreme Court that CIPA is unconstitutional. In that case, the ALA argued that the filters violate public library patrons’ right to receive information, a constitutional protection legal scholars trace back to the 1940s. The Supreme Court has upheld the concept multiple times since then, arguing that the First Amendment protects not only the right to speak but the right to receive information and ideas. In the 2003 case, however, the Supreme Court ruled that, as long as people 17 and older could request a website be unblocked, the filters did not unduly limit internet users’ constitutional rights.

Though CIPA makes clear that school districts only have to block a narrow sliver of the internet, it does leave schools with the power to determine what else is inappropriate for their students. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Education lamented that filters put up barriers “to the rich learning experiences that in-school Internet access should afford students.” Shortly after the Department of Education complained about the law’s impact, the FCC emphasized that school districts should not set up blanket blocks on social media websites.

Yet in more than a decade, districts have had no additional federal guidance about what they owe students online. And the Markup investigation showed that many districts are flouting the limited existing guidelines; almost all districts blocked some social media sites in their entirety. And only three out of 16 school districts analyzed by The Markup let students directly request sites be unblocked. Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said schools that refuse to field such requests are potentially infringing on students’ constitutional rights.

Caldwell-Stone called CIPA “a handy crutch” for censorship that is not justified by the law. “The FCC makes it clear that it’s not [justified], but there’s no remedy for the kind of activity other than going to court,” she said, which is too expensive and time-consuming for many families.

Lawsuits also have limited reach, often changing behavior in only one small part of the country at a time. Rockwood School District has a filter doing what the ACLU sued Camdenton for over a decade ago and the two districts are in the same state, just 150 miles apart. Battling discrimination carried out via web filters is like a game of whack-a-mole in a nation where much of the decision-making is left to more than 13,000 individual school districts.

Bob Deneau, the chief information officer at Rockwood, said he wasn’t aware of the Camdenton case or that the district’s filter policies might be a legal liability.

And besides the cases where filters explicitly block one viewpoint while allowing another—as with LGBTQ+-related content in Rockwood and Katy—the question of what students have a right to see is only getting murkier. In 2023 alone, the American Library Association tracked challenges to more than 9,000 books in school libraries nationwide.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Schools could use the wide latitude the FCC leaves them to take a more hands-off approach to web filtering. In Georgia’s Forsyth County, where books have been banned from school libraries, Mike Evans, the district’s chief technology and information officer, said websites have not been involved in the controversy.

“We’ll always have different families on one side or another,” Evans said. “Some would rather have things more restricted if they don’t agree with any LGBTQ-type material or video that might be available, but we try to stay away from that type of [filtering] altogether.”

Forsyth County Schools does not have a block category for LGBTQ+ resources.

In Texas, meanwhile, Katy ISD grad Cameron Samuels co-founded Students Engaged in Advancing Texas to fight for open access to information statewide. The group supported a bill, introduced by state Rep. Jon Rosenthal last year, that would prohibit schools from blocking websites with resources for students about human trafficking, interpersonal or domestic violence, sexual assault, or mental health and suicide prevention for LGBTQ+ individuals. It didn’t go anywhere, but Samuels hopes it will in the future—especially because new board members in Katy ISD could mean the websites Samuels fought so hard to unblock get blocked once again.

“Censorship,” Samuels said grimly, “is a winning issue right now.”

The post Schools were just supposed to block porn. Instead they sabotaged homework and censored suicide prevention sites appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Jesse Wiese spent seven years in prison; when he left the Iowa facility in 2006, he thought his debt to society had been paid. While inside, Wiese had earned an undergraduate degree and puzzled over how he might do right in the world. He started studying for the law school admissions test, thinking he could become a lawyer and maybe, one day, a judge.

In 2008, Wiese moved to Virginia to attend Regent University School of Law. He loved it, and he did well. Three years and $150,000 in federal and private student loans later, he graduated, and turned his attention to passing the bar. Like the majority of his classmates, he spent the summer foregoing gainful employment to study full-time for the two-day exam. Except, unlike his peers, passing the bar would not be Wiese’s biggest hurdle to becoming a lawyer. Indeed, he could pass the difficult exam and still be denied a license to practice law by the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners.  Before it considers awarding a law license for any otherwise eligible candidate with a felony conviction, the board holds a character and fitness screening.

For Wiese, it was all a big, expensive gamble — and, in one form or another, is one millions of people with criminal records take every year as they pursue education and workforce training on their way to jobs that require a license. Yet that effort might be wasted thanks to the nearly 14,000 laws and regulations that can restrict individuals with arrest and conviction histories from getting licensed in a given field.

The rules that govern these barriers to entry are patchwork, scattered across federal, state and regulatory codes, and they can vary from field to field within a state. That means some people are inadvertently steered toward training programs that, for them, are dead ends. At other times, as in Wiese’s case, people have no choice but go through time-consuming and often expensive courses before discovering whether they can work in their chosen field. Advocates say these barriers keep people from good jobs, not only reducing their chances of staying out of prison but robbing the nation of their productive labor.

“The focus should be on rehabilitation and putting people back out in the community so they can participate and be productive and thrive in their communities,” said Caitlin Dawkins, co-director for the national re-entry resource center at the American Institutes for Research.

Related: ‘Wasted money’: How career training companies scoop up federal funds with little oversight

Although licensing requirements vary from state to state, about one in five people in this country need occupational licenses to do their jobs — licenses they get only after completing a designated amount of training and education in their fields. In addition to lawyers, professional drivers must be licensed, along with health professionals, public accountants, teachers, electricians, firefighters, social workers, realtors and security guards.

According to a 2020 study by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit law firm, 31 states allow licensing boards to deny applicants based on their character alone for at least some occupations, leaving room for denials based on any criminal behavior, no matter how minor or how far in the past. Advocates say it’s not uncommon for people to pursue training programs and submit their licensing applications without recognizing the risk. Just 21 states allow people with criminal records to ask licensing boards whether their records will disqualify them from getting a license before enrolling in any required training.

Yet the case for education as a counter to recidivism is so convincing the federal education department earlier this month announced a massive expansion of Pell grants for people pursuing higher education from behind bars. About 30,000 of these individuals are expected to get $130 million worth of the federal aid each year, a cost that researchers have found is far less than detaining reoffenders.

Higher educational attainment is directly correlated with a lower likelihood of being reincarcerated, as is stable employment. Both pieces of evidence have swayed policymakers nationwide. The Institute for Justice found 40 states have eased or eliminated some of their laws keeping people with criminal records from getting employment licenses since 2015. Yet with every type of license bearing its own local, state or federal limitations, many thousands of collateral consequences remain.

Wiese, now 45, went to prison for armed robbery of a bank. He passed the bar on his first try and moved on to the character and fitness screening required because of his prior conviction.

“It was like a mini trial,” Wiese said. He flew people in to serve as character witnesses in front of an initial committee, which ultimately recommended he be licensed. “I was like, ‘Awesome! This is amazing.’ Then their decision was unanimously overturned.”

The Virginia Board of Bar Examiners wasn’t convinced Wiese should be allowed to practice law, considering his criminal history. It told him to reapply in two years. He did, but the same thing happened — there was an initial committee recommendation for licensure followed by a state board denial.

“They said it may be impossible to prove rehabilitation,” Wiese remembered. He appealed to the state supreme court, but it ruled against him, too.

The Virginia Board of Bar Examiners did not comment on Wiese’s case or how the agency considers prior criminal history in its licensing decisions.

Related: ‘Revolutionary’ housing: How colleges aim to support formerly incarcerated students

Many of the county’s laws seem to dictate that the lives of people with criminal records are governed by two competing beliefs — that crimes are proof of character flaws that can never be outgrown and that a criminal sentence should be the full extent of any punishment.

The view that crime is proof of character, which can never be reformed, has received legal support for at least 125 years. The U.S. Supreme Court first affirmed the right to discriminate against people with criminal records in an 1898 decision in Hawker v New York, which held that “character is as important a qualification as knowledge.”

Ronald Day came across this court decision while writing his dissertation as a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the City University of New York. Day has been involved in prisoner re-entry work for about 15 years, since he finished his own sentence and found himself navigating life on the outside. He received his doctorate in 2019 and now serves as vice president of programs for The Fortune Society, an education, service and advocacy organization focused on criminal justice and re-entry.

“The focus should be on rehabilitation and putting people back out in the community so they can participate and be productive and thrive in their communities.”

Caitlin Dawkins, co-director for the national re-entry resource center at the American Institutes for Research.

Day’s time in the archives introduced him to the ongoing legal dispute over the rights of those who are incarcerated, or who used to be incarcerated, taking him on a journey from the Supreme Court’s views in 1898 to the fallout from a 2015 decision by New York District Court Judge John Gleeson. Gleeson ruled in favor of expunging the conviction of a woman who had committed healthcare fraud and, after serving her sentence, found her record a constant barrier to getting and keeping jobs as a home health aide. In approving the expungement, Gleeson wrote, “I sentenced her to five years of probation supervision, not to a lifetime of unemployment.” But even support from the district court judge who sentenced her wasn’t enough. A Federal Court of Appeals overruled Gleeson.

According to the Institute for Justice study, in five states, including Arizona, Tennessee and Virginia, any licensing board can deny an applicant based on a felony, even if it’s completely unrelated to the license. In 30 states, an arrest alone can disqualify applicants. In seven states, there’s no right to appeal after a license is denied.

When the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners denied Wiese’s license a second time, he was told he could try again in two years, but that he would have to re-take the bar because so much time had passed. With the support of his wife, Wiese took time off to study, and passed the test a second time. Once more, he applied for a license, jumped through the hoops at his hearing and was recommended for a license.

But for the third time, the state board denied his application.

Related: Prisons are training inmates for the next generation of in-demand jobs

Wiese appealed the decision of the state licensing board, again taking his case to the Virginia State Supreme Court. This time, it ruled in his favor. Ten years after graduating from law school, Wiese got his license to practice.

Looking back, it didn’t seem like a triumph.

“In my younger days, I would say you can overcome anything. You can outwork it,” Wiese said. He doesn’t believe that anymore. “This is called the second prison. Literally, you walk out of one and you walk into another one.”

Sometimes people with criminal records reach out to him and say they heard about his case and they want to go to law school too, but Wiese doesn’t think he opened any doors. “I feel bad for the next person that’s coming in line behind me,” he said.

31 states allow licensing boards to deny applicants based on their character alone, leaving room for denials based on any criminal behavior, no matter how minor or how far in the past.

Because the laws and regulations are so scattered, they can be difficult for anyone, not just those exiting prison, to navigate. Every field has its own state-level licensing board and related policies. “Just because of the lack of coordination, they’re often unknown for even the people who are responsible for administering and enforcing them,” said Dawkins, of the American Institutes for Research. 

In some states, people serving time can fight fires as part of a prison work crew but can’t get licenses to work as firefighters in local fire departments after they get out. They can cut hair in prison but can’t get cosmetology licenses on the outside. They can do landscaping on city property through a prison work crew, but — with a criminal record — can’t get a government job.

Cosmetology, in many states, is considered “second-chance friendly” and a good path for people coming out of prison. In Virginia, by contrast, applicants can be denied cosmetology licenses for having specific misdemeanor convictions or any felony.

Related: Propelling prisoners to bachelor’s degrees in California

A number of organizations across the country have stepped up to advocate for policy change and to support those with criminal records as they seek to rebuild their lives outside of prison. Jobs for the Future this year put out a framework called “Normalizing Opportunity,” calling on policymakers to remove barriers to employment for formerly incarcerated individuals.

“There’s a multiplying effect there,” said Brandi Mandato, a senior director at Jobs for the Future who helped write the framework. “If we don’t have access to good jobs, we don’t have access to health care, housing, all of these things that are important to launching a life and building community and keeping people safe.”

Such advocacy has bipartisan support. John Koufos, who has led criminal justice advocacy work at organizations across the political spectrum and himself navigated re-entry, said the effort to eliminate employment barriers has galvanized one of the most diverse coalitions in criminal justice.

Just 21 states allow people with criminal records to ask licensing boards whether their records will disqualify them from getting a license before enrolling in any required training.

“[Occupational licensing] serves as an exclusionary barrier to people and to prosperity,” Koufos said.

At a time with very low unemployment and major demand for skilled employees, advocates say the business case for eliminating these barriers is as strong as the humanitarian one.

Wiese is now the vice president for research and innovation at Prison Fellowship, an organization that helps individuals and families affected by incarceration and which gave him his own sense of purpose and possibility while he was in prison. Early in his career with the organization, Wiese managed a caseload of about 70 men who were navigating re-entry. Over and over again, he saw them stop chasing their dreams, confounded by barriers to stable employment. The message they got, he said, was “don’t take the initiative.”

“It really limits people’s ability to make a difference and to contribute,” Wiese said, “and we miss out.”

This story about career licenses was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

The post ‘A second prison’: People face hidden dead ends when they pursue a range of careers post-incarceration appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

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A newsletter from The Hechinger Report

By Olivia Sanchez

*|MC:DATE|*

This week’s newsletter comes to you from my colleague Tara García Mathewson, who spent months looking into the obstacles people face upon leaving prison when they try to get licensed in certain career fields. We’re giving you a sneak peek of her findings. I’ll be back in your inbox in two weeks. 

By Tara García Mathewson 

For years, advocates have successfully pushed for more access to education for people in prison. This summer, the Department of Education announced a massive expansion of Pell grants for people pursuing higher education from behind bars. About 30,000 of these individuals are expected to get $130 million worth of the federal aid each year, a cost that researchers have found is far less than that of sending people back to prison another time.

We’ve known for a long time that higher education can play a huge role in helping people who serve time in prison get back on their feet. Research shows that higher-ed attainment is directly correlated with a lower likelihood of being reincarcerated, as is stable employment.

But people getting out of prison face many obstacles in finding jobs, and lack of educational opportunities is just part of the issue.  A patchwork of more than 14,000 federal, state and local laws and regulations restricts individuals who have arrest and conviction histories from getting licensed in certain fields. Here’s some of what my reporting found about how pervasive this problem is and why it matters:

• Although licensing requirements vary from state to state, about one in five people in this country needs an occupational license to do their job — licenses they get only after completing a designated amount of training and education in their fields. Yet 31 states allow licensing boards to deny applicants based on their character alone for at least some occupations, leaving room for denials based on any criminal behavior, no matter how minor or how far in the past.

• After leaving prison, some people are inadvertently steered toward training programs that, for them, are dead ends because of these restrictions.  In other cases, people have no choice but to go through time-consuming and often expensive courses before they can even apply for a license and find out whether they’ll be permitted to work in their chosen field. Just 21 states allow people with criminal records to ask licensing boards ahead of time whether their records will disqualify them from getting a license. 

• Because the laws and regulations are so scattered, they can be difficult for anyone, not just those exiting prison, to navigate. In some states, people serving time can fight fires as part of a prison work crew but can’t get licenses to work as firefighters in local fire departments after they get out. They can cut hair in prison but can’t get cosmetology licenses on the outside. They can do landscaping on city property in a prison work crew, but — with a criminal record — can’t get a government job. 

• There has been some progress. Forty states have eased or eliminated some of their laws keeping people with criminal records from getting employment licenses since 2015. 

My upcoming article is our second this year that uncovers major problems with the nation’s workforce training system. Earlier this year, Meredith Kolodner and Sarah Butrymowicz reported on the lack of oversight and accountability for unaccredited training programs that receive millions in federal money. 

Keep an eye out for a link to the full story in the Weekly Update newsletter by our editor in chief, Liz Willen, on Tuesday, or in the next edition of this newsletter. 

Do you have questions about these or similar kinds of barriers to earning career licenses? Do you have thoughts on where our coverage should go next? Let us know by replying directly to this email.

Support for this newsletter comes from: 

• Prisons are training inmates for the next generation of in-demand jobs 

• The next frontier for college programs for prisoners and ex-prisoners: Teaching them entrepreneurship

• ‘Revolutionary’ housing: How colleges aim to support formerly incarcerated students 

• Propelling prisoners to bachelor’s degrees in California

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A 6-year-old in Leila Lubin’s classroom wouldn’t budge from his seat. The rest of his peers had filed off to their enrichment classes but he refused to move. He wasn’t done with his work and he didn’t want to go.

Lubin, a champion of behavior management and crisis prevention training for teachers, knew what to do. She turned to a script that has become such a routine part of her classroom that it seems to elicit an almost Pavlovian response – steering misbehaving students back on track at the sound of the words: “Aw man, you’re having a really rough time right now. We’re going to do some learning later.” 

This time, it didn’t work. “Boom. Explosion,” Lubin said recently, recounting the episode. “‘I don’t want to learn later! I don’t want to practice with you!’ ”

Teachers at all grade levels see some version of this in their classrooms. The catalyst or the nature of the disobedience may change, but the core issue remains. What are they to do?

In some parts of the country, teachers in Lubin’s position pull out a paddle.

5 percent of teachers are responsible for more than one-third of all office discipline referrals, according to a study of one large California district.

Punitive school discipline is rampant in the United States, whether it’s corporal punishment or, much more commonly, suspensions. Students lost more than 11 million days to out-of-school suspensions during the 2017-18 school year, the last federal count, and they spent many times that number in in-school suspension rooms, kept from the classrooms where their teachers were teaching. Black students face more than their fair share of this punishment, as do boys.

Teacher burnout is at record highs, and surveys continue to show that educators believe student behavior is worse than it was before the pandemic. With everyone in school buildings stretched to their emotional limits, some districts across the country have been suspending students even more. 

“This is not only a big problem, but a pivotal one,” said Jason Okonofua, a psychologist at University of California Berkeley who studies school discipline. “It changes children’s entire lives – and also teachers’ in leaving the profession.”

Related: Some kids have returned to in-person learning only to be kicked right back out

Critics point out that punitive discipline doesn’t teach students the skills they need to behave differently – like how to manage their frustration when the bell rings and they’re still working. And it creates new problems: Students who get suspended generally do worse in school, graduate at lower rates and are more likely to have run-ins with the police. Reducing suspensions has become a national goal, but some schools have cut corners, simply removing the option without changing much else, and thereby leaving teachers overwhelmed.

What schools should do instead, experts argue, is help educators learn how to pre-empt the behavior that gets students punished. Ultimately, students are wild cards. But the adults leading schools can both control themselves and enough of the student experience to prevent misbehavior. When that isn’t enough, as in Lubin’s classroom so recently, educators can assign consequences that offer empathy and aim to teach, rather than punish.

“Even really difficult kids are actually using positive behaviors 90 percent of the time.”

Scott Ervin, creator, Behavioral Leadership model

That’s ultimately the path Lubin chose.

First, she gave the boy a couple minutes to calm down while she busied herself in the classroom. When he was ready to hear it, she got to the point: He couldn’t refuse to put his work away. She understood his frustration, but he needed to control it.

Lubin sent the boy to his next class so he wouldn’t miss any more instruction, but later in the day, when the rest of his peers were choosing their own activities, Lubin had him sit down and simulate being interrupted in the middle of his work. The boy’s consequence for his morning misbehavior was four run-throughs of a frustration-free transition.

The Greater Dayton School, where Lubin is a founding teacher, doesn’t assign suspensions. Educators at the private, tuition-free school for students from low-income families are trained and coached to avoid doing so. “What we want to do is create that love of learning,” Lubin said. “If a student is sent home every time they do something wrong, they’re going to grow up not really liking school.”

The more Lubin has studied behavior management techniques during her five years of teaching, the more second-nature her responses have become – and the more effective. Sticking to her scripts, armed with information about child development and the nature of behavior, she has seen real change.

“If I’m calm, if I’m mindful, empathetic, if I’m showing verbal and nonverbal signs of calm, I can actually calm you down, too.”

Susan Driscoll, president, Crisis Prevention Institute

“It transforms the classroom,” she said.

The model the Greater Dayton School used this past year is called “Behavioral Leadership.” Its creator, educational consultant Scott Ervin, began developing the approach as a teacher. After, that is, he spent his first two years yelling himself hoarse trying to keep his students in line.

Like other successful approaches, Behavioral Leadership emphasizes the power adults have over children’s behavior. And as Ervin so painfully learned in his early years of teaching, that power is most effectively wielded quietly.

Related: ‘State-sanctioned violence’: Inside one of the thousands of schools that still paddle students

While Lubin found most of Ervin’s strategies easy to implement, she struggled with his advice to quickly move past misbehaviors. Ervin recommends teachers spend more time pointing out good behaviors than bad ones, creating incentives for students seeking attention to behave properly.

“Even really difficult kids are actually using positive behaviors 90 percent of the time,” Ervin said.

He advises teachers to take only the briefest pause from instruction to acknowledge bad behavior and to always do it with empathy – “Aw man, you’re having a really rough time right now.” True to her training, Lubin followed those statements up with a comment about “doing learning later,” something that would take up Lubin’s time, but be more of an investment than a cost. As the school year went on, for example, the student who refused to stop working got better at transitions and learned something about managing his emotions. And that, overall, saved Lubin time.

“What kids are rebelling over is compliance and boring instruction.”

Michael Toth, founder and CEO, Instructional Empowerment

Along with Ervin’s techniques, Lubin had other training to draw on – a model designed by the Crisis Prevention Institute. The institute trains teachers on de-escalation techniques grounded in brain science. Student outbursts and defiance are often unthinking responses, not calculated ones. Kids are emotional and acting emotionally. While teachers can’t control students’ behavior, Susan Driscoll, president of the institute, insists they can affect it.

“If I’m calm, if I’m mindful, empathetic, if I’m showing verbal and nonverbal signs of calm, I can actually calm you down, too,” she said.

Perhaps counterintuitively, being mindful and empathetic can come down to maintaining a level of emotional detachment. Student misbehavior can feel like a personal attack to teachers.

School District U-46, a 36,000-student district west of Chicago, has used CPI training for almost 15 years to help teachers retain their calm and remain empathetic. Mark Gonnella, an assistant principal who has trained his colleagues on CPI strategies at an elementary, middle and high school in U-46, finds that “rational detachment” element to be crucial.

“We as adults, we have to separate ourselves from that situation and not take things personally in order to help these students,” he said.

Such separation can help teachers develop and preserve supportive student relationships, which, in themselves, can lead to calmer classrooms. Okonofua, the UC Berkeley psychologist, has drawn clear connections between a lack of empathy for certain types of students and more frequent discipline of those groups. Okonofua tested what he now calls “Empathic Instruction” through real-life experiments and said he saw repeated success. The approach not only resulted in a reduction of total school suspensions, but also reduced disparities in school discipline for Black students, boys, and those with disabilities.

“It seems to work surgically well specifically for the groups that are at heightened risks of getting in trouble,” Okonofua said. “It’s especially beneficial for them and it’s because they were the ones least likely to receive that empathy or that benefit of the doubt.”

Related: Many schools find ways to solve absenteeism without suspensions

Okonofua’s model asks teachers to spend less than an hour online at the beginning of the school year, reflecting on the power teachers have to help students, especially when they misbehave.

“Most educators join the profession because they want to help children learn and grow and become their best possible selves,” Okonofua said. “It’s about tapping into what’s already in their hearts and minds.”

And just as adults have control over themselves, they also control much of the student’s school experience. Experts say clear and reasonable behavior expectations are critical to well-functioning schools. These expectations should be consistent across all parts of the school so students don’t have to manage major shifts over the course of their day.

Last year, teacher Tony DeRose worked as a behavioral coach at Glenwood Middle School in Findlay, Ohio. He crisscrossed the school, consulting with teachers on issues in their classrooms, monitoring the school entrances and hallways, and, perhaps most dramatically, transforming the lunchroom.

“When I first walked in there, I was like, ‘This is craziness. It’s not safe. It’s not enjoyable,’” DeRose remembered. Students were being bullied, they were yelling and cursing, and the standard response was to send troublemakers to the office for discipline.

DeRose created new structure to the lunch period, setting new rules for when students could leave their tables, requiring clean language and quieter speech, and projecting optional conversation prompts onto a screen including “would you rather” questions and brain teasers. DeRose also handed power back to students, creating a student volunteer corps – another element of Ervin’s behavioral leadership program. Well-behaved students were deputized to dismiss tables at the end of the period and plan activities for recess.

Very soon, no students needed to be sent out of lunch for discipline, DeRose said; the total number of office referrals schoolwide dropped by 26 percent.

Related: Hidden expulsions? Schools kick students out but call it a ‘transfer’

Of course, educators exert the greatest influence over students through teaching. Planning engaging learning experiences, then, is arguably the most powerful way to keep students from misbehaving. Students who are focused on class activities don’t have time to misbehave. In Illinois’ U-46, a post-pandemic focus on improving classroom instruction is expected to improve student behavior, too. The underlying model, developed by an organization called Instructional Empowerment, emphasizes making students more active participants in classroom instruction, working in groups, talking and thinking through lessons rather than simply sitting and listening to lectures.

“What kids are rebelling over is compliance and boring instruction,” said Michael Toth, founder and CEO of Instructional Empowerment. His organization works primarily with high-poverty, low-performing districts and trains teachers to offer kids more rigorous, engaging learning opportunities. As he has guided schools through the transformation, he has seen behavior problems drop precipitously.

“If a student is sent home every time they do something wrong, they’re going to grow up not really liking school.”

Leila Lubin, founding teacher, The Greater Dayton School

But the fact is, kids will continue to act out. Just as they are learning about science and math and history, they are learning how to control their emotions, how to interact with their peers and how to respond to unexpected challenges. Every now and then, they won’t do it right. And if every child, every now and then, erupts, that means a lot of potential outbursts in any given school over the course of the year to which educators must respond.

As evidence of the negative consequences of punitive discipline continues to pile up, there is greater urgency to find alternatives. Schools, however, face a cultural challenge in making this shift. Despite the negative effects of suspensions and the studies that say they don’t work to change behavior, teachers, parents and even students want to see kids face consequences for misbehaving.

Changing school culture can be painstaking work. Even Illinois’ U-46 saw its suspension rate climb from 6 per 100 students before the pandemic to 8 per 100 last year. Lela Majstorovic, the district’s assistant superintendent, said expanding CPI training and helping teachers and other staff members manage student behavior is a priority going into the 2023-24 school year.

“This is not only a big problem, but a pivotal one. It changes children’s entire lives – and also teachers’ in leaving the profession.”

Jason Okonofua, professor, University of California Berkeley

Studies show schools can also offer targeted support to teachers who most frequently send students to the office and have an outsized impact on overall discipline rates. Researchers from the University of Maryland College Park and the University of California Irvine recently found 5 percent of teachers in a California district were responsible for more than one-third of all office discipline referrals – and their overreliance more than doubled the Black-white gap in such discipline. Helping just those few teachers better manage and respond to student behavior can not only drive down total school discipline but the pernicious disparities researchers have been tracking for decades.

Lubin has been a voracious consumer of new approaches to maintaining order and calm in her classroom. This summer, she is strategizing how to teach students specific techniques for regulating their emotions and how to help them choose the right methods in the moment. She finds all of the models she has studied flow together well and just wishes more schools incorporated them.

“We don’t need in-school suspension, we don’t need to send kids home, because they’re missing out on instructional time,” Lubin said. “There is no point of that.”

This story about misbehavior in classrooms was produced byThe Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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A bill that would have stopped Arizona schools from issuing out-of-school suspensions to students who miss class failed to make it out of the Legislature this year, despite bipartisan support.

Rep. Laura Terech, a Democrat, crafted House Bill 2748 in response to a nearly yearlong investigation by AZCIR and The Hechinger Report, which revealed for the first time the scope of the controversial disciplinary practice of suspending Arizona students for tardiness and truancy.

The Hechinger/AZCIR analysis — which relied on data from 150-plus districts and charter networks that enroll about 61 percent of the state’s public school students — identified more than 47,000 suspensions for attendance violations over a five-year period. Students reported feeling even more disengaged and academically lost after serving these suspensions. Black, Latino and Native American students received a disproportionate share of the punishments.

“Being an educator in the field, you often see that students are not coming to school for a variety of reasons. Maybe they have to watch younger siblings at home, or there’s something happening at school — there’s a bullying issue or they’re particularly stressed out about one of their classes,” Terech, a former elementary school teacher, told lawmakers at a House Education Committee hearing this year.

Rather than suspending students, Terech said she believes such problems “are better addressed through working with the student, supporting the student, learning what they need so we can keep them in school.”

Related: When the punishment is the same as the crime: Suspended for missing class

Terech found a handful of allies across the aisle: Republican Sen. John Kavanagh, for instance, told AZCIR he signed on as a bill cosponsor because he found blocking students from class for missing class “ridiculous on its face.” But Republican leadership never brought the measure to the House floor for a vote, after other members of the party expressed concern that lawmakers would be removing a tool schools rely on to give parents a “wake-up call.” Terech has vowed to revive it next year.

The debate comes as the larger issue of keeping students in school is receiving renewed attention statewide. Read On Arizona convened a task force this spring to address a spike in chronic absenteeism, which state law defines as students missing more than 10 percent, or about 18 days, of school in an academic year.

Chronic absence has long been an issue in Arizona, but the pandemic led to dramatic increases across the state. According to data from the Arizona Department of Education, 14 percent of K-12 students were chronically absent in 2019. By 2022, that portion had jumped to 34 percent, and some schools responded to the rising absenteeism with even more attendance-related suspensions, the AZCIR/Hechinger investigation found.

The Read On Arizona task force brings together members of the governor’s office, school districts, state agencies, community organizations and the legislature. Together, they will parse state and local data about attendance, chronic absenteeism and student performance, gather advice from national experts and develop recommendations and resources to help school districts prevent continued absenteeism.

Members of the task force say the AZCIR/Hechinger investigation illuminated the connection between suspensions and absenteeism in Arizona, something that had never before been made public. A key idea discussed at the group’s first meeting was the need to move away from punitive responses to absenteeism and instead focus on supports.

Related: Many schools find ways to solve absenteeism without suspensions

“We have the right players at the right table at the right time to begin to have that conversation,” said Read On Arizona’s Lori Masseur, who is overseeing the task force.

The shift away from punishing absenteeism has already begun at the local level. The Valley of the Sun United Way has helped districts in Maricopa County address chronic absenteeism for several years, focusing on supportive approaches that address the reasons students miss school as part of a wider effort to meet students’ social-emotional needs.

The organization will expand this work in the coming years and Read On Arizona will launch its own professional development for schools, in collaboration with the national nonprofit Attendance Works. Both efforts aim to help teachers and school leaders move away from punitive responses to absenteeism.

“Sometimes, the suspension will actually get their attention, bring them to the table. And that, I think, would be a justification or at least the reason for some of these suspensions in those cases.”

Eric Patten, Yuma Union High School District spokesman

Dawn Gerundo, community development and engagement director for education at the Valley of the Sun United Way, said avoiding suspensions as a response to absenteeism is a central recommendation. A growing body of research has tied missing just two days of school per month to concrete consequences, including lower reading proficiency in third grade, lower math scores in middle school and higher dropout rates in high school.

“Suspensions are absenteeism,” Gerundo said. “If a student is suspended, they are absent.”

Among districts in the AZCIR/Hechinger sample that suspended for attendance, missing class led to 10 percent of all suspensions, resulting in tens of thousands of additional missed days of school. Students served about 1 in 5 of those suspensions out of school, which the U.S. departments of Justice and Education highlighted as particularly concerning.

Presented with the findings last fall, then-Arizona Department of Education spokesman Richie Taylor suggested the state should reexamine its policies around discipline for attendance-related issues.

But that was before the state superintendent’s office changed hands, coming under the direction of Republican Tom Horne in January. Though Horne’s opinion on the prospective legislation is unclear — his administration declined to comment to “respect the legislative process” — he historically has supported schools taking a hard-line approach to discipline.

If Arizona lawmakers move to ban suspensions for absenteeism next year, the state would join at least 17 others that have already limited or removed school districts’ ability to punish attendance issues with suspensions.

Related: Civil rights at stake: Black, Hispanic students blocked from class for missing class

Though school districts across the state largely declined to take a position on the proposed ban, some educators told AZCIR they felt attendance-related suspensions had a place as a “last resort.”

In Yuma Union High School District, spokesman and former teacher Eric Patten said that in cases where “the communication is there about what’s going on” — such as when barriers to attendance or punctuality include students working to support their families or being responsible for younger siblings — staff “can work on a solution rather than a suspension.”

But when parents haven’t been responsive to phone calls, emails or home visits, officials may turn to out-of-school suspensions to jolt them into action. Yuma Union was among the five districts that issued out-of-school suspensions for attendance problems most frequently over the five years reviewed by AZCIR and The Hechinger Report.

“Sometimes, the suspension will actually get their attention, bring them to the table,” Patten said. “And that, I think, would be a justification or at least the reason for some of these suspensions in those cases.”

School officials elsewhere in the state disagreed. Interviews with those administrators pointed to an appetite for state leaders to intervene to limit attendance-related suspensions, something Lupita Hightower, Arizona’s Superintendent of the Year and head of the Tolleson Elementary School District, acknowledged as unusual.

“Being an educator in the field, you often see that students are not coming to school for a variety of reasons. Maybe they have to watch younger siblings at home, or there’s something happening at school — there’s a bullying issue or they’re particularly stressed out about one of their classes.” 

Rep. Laura Terech, an Arizona Democrat

Hightower, whose district issued just three out-of-school suspensions for attendance from 2017-22, is among those willing to give up some local control of student discipline to support a statewide ban on suspensions for tardiness and truancy, which can push students over the chronic absenteeism threshold.

“If we’re contributing to that problem as administrators, that’s not good for kids,” she said. “If it has to be legislated, I would agree with that.”

For Ernest Rose, superintendent of the Phoenix-based Wilson Elementary District, the issue is similarly cut and dry. During suspensions, students don’t get support to change bad habits, and they don’t get help with barriers that might keep them from school, such as family and work commitments or school-based bullying.

“I don’t want to say it’s common sense, because if it was common sense, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Rose said. But “when we’re looking at overall academic attainment of our students, if they’re not in school, then they’re not able to partake in the instruction.”

Early last year, after noticing what he described as an overreliance on suspensions in general, Rose introduced a new code of conduct that discourages attendance-related suspensions. The Wilson district had issued eight out-of-school suspensions and 26 in-school suspensions to its youngest students for missing school between September and December of 2021, according to AZCIR/Hechinger data.

Rose noted the district continues to employ in-school suspensions in certain cases when ongoing attendance issues “escalate.” But he supports Arizona eliminating out-of-school suspensions for attendance problems.

Even when students are habitually truant, he believes educators’ focus should be on bringing those students back into the fold rather than issuing blanket punishments. “To suspend them defeats the purpose,” he said.

Terech cited the same logic in discussing her plans to revive her bill next session.

“Yes, it’s a tool,” she said of attendance-related suspensions. “But it’s not a good one.”

This story about House Bill 2148 was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter and the AZCIR newsletter.

The post Proposed bill to ban suspensions for attendance violations falls short in Arizona appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

BOSTON — After María Mejía’s son was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in preschool, the question of where he should go to kindergarten focused entirely on his special education needs.

Mejía and her husband, Spanish-speaking immigrants from the Dominican Republic, only later learned that Joangel, now 7, would have been an ideal candidate for one of the four elementary schools in Boston that teach students in both English and Spanish, Joangel’s first language. Experts say such programs offer English learners the best chance at academic success. BPS has pledged to start dozens more.

But kids like Joangel, who have individualized education plans, are often left out,their families unwittingly forced to place them into English-only special education programs to help meet their learning needs. Mejía said she was shocked when she learned there was an alternative.

“They didn’t tell me there was a bilingual school,” Mejía said in Spanish, “only a school that would take a child with an IEP.”

District enrollment data obtained by The Hechinger Report through a public records request shows students with disabilities — who make up 22 percent of the student population —are starkly underrepresented in the district’s seven dual-language programs. They make up between 8 and 14 percent of the enrollment in each of the district’s five Spanish-English programs. None are enrolled in the two-year-old Vietnamese-English program at Mather Elementary School. And in the district’s Haitian Creole-English program, so few students with disabilities are enrolled, the district can’t reveal the total without risking student privacy.

Related: Rising popularity of dual-language education could leave Latinos behind

Experts and advocates say the disparities stem partly from a staffing issue — there are simply not enough bilingual special education teachers — but are also the result of overt discrimination and cultural misconceptions about whether students with disabilities can handle bilingual education. The district has pledged to add 25 more bilingual programs in the next two years. But both advocates and state officials question whether BPS can move that quickly, and early signs suggest the district may struggle to include students with disabilities as it opens new programs: The bilingual program at Mather Elementary, now in its second year, will only be ready to serve students with disabilities in its fourth year, according to the principal.

BPS plays a large role in determining placement for English Learners, who make up nearly a third of the district, as well as students with disabilities. Families in Boston get to select their preferred schools, but if students need English language or special education services, their registrations are routed through the Newcomers Assessment and Counseling Center or the Special Education department. Language testers make school recommendations based on students’ English proficiency, and special education department staff identify specific schools for kids with IEPs.

BPS spokesman Max Baker said in a statement the district is “devoted to becoming a fully inclusive district, providing full access to a continuum of services to all students,” but declined to answer questions about the reasons students with disabilities might be underrepresented in the dual-language programs, or state what specific steps the district intends to take to remedy the lack of representation.

Bilingual special education experts say the underrepresentation of students with disabilities is more than a missed opportunity — it’s discrimination. They say there’s no reason schools can’t serve students with disabilities. And equal opportunity law suggests they have to.

“Kids with disabilities need dual-language education more than anyone else.”

Maria Serpa, BPS English Language Learner Task Force member

Maria Serpa, a pioneer in the field and a member of the district’s English Language Learner Task Force, said the enrollment data is shocking. “Kids with disabilities need dual-language education more than anyone else,” Serpa said.

BPS has long been criticized for failing its students with disabilities and those who don’t speak English fluently — only narrowly avoiding a state takeover last year in part by pledging to improve services to these two groups. A cornerstone of its plan is an ambitious expansion of dual-language programs.

These programs, which bring together students who are learning English and native English speakers in a joint quest to become academically proficient in both languages, are considered one of the only ways to close the achievement gap between the two groups. English learners who go through these programs outperform their English learner peers on reading and math tests and graduate at higher rates.

Why dual-language instruction works so well is multifaceted. Research has found it’s better for kids whose dominant language is Spanish, for example, to spend part of their day getting academic instruction in their native language. Researchers and educators also highlight the benefits to self-esteem and belonging when kids who are traditionally seen as lacking because of their language background get to be the “experts” in front of their peers. And as English-speaking families across the socioeconomic spectrum flock to these programs, dual-language education has also been heralded as a method of school integration.

Related: A Spanish-English high school proves learning in two languages can boost graduation rates

Because students with disabilities and those dubbed English learners have among the lowest test scores and graduation rates in the district, advocates like Serpa believe they could benefit the most from a “gold standard” program.

Yet, so far, BPS has not followed that logic.

More than 14,600 BPS students are English learners. One in four has a disability. Yet just 6 percent of these students attend a dual-language school.

Dania Vázquez, headmaster of the Margarita Muñiz Academy dual-language high school, started her career in bilingual special education in the 1980s just as the twin specialties coalesced into a field. At her school, nearly 14 percent of students receive special education services, more than in Boston’s other dual-language programs, yet still below the district average.

She doesn’t know exactly why her school enrolls students with disabilities at higher rates than other dual language schools but noted the school coordinates its outreach to inform all families about its program.

“We are not choosing students,” Vázquez said. “Students are choosing us.”

At the Muñiz Academy, Vázquez said special education teachers spend time in classrooms supporting students with disabilities as they learn from core subject teachers.* The teachers also provide small group support in the school’s “resource room.”

“I don’t see the urgency for them to serve these kids.”

Suleika Soto, BPS mother and director of the Boston Education Justice Alliance

Historically, few English learners with disabilities in BPS have had access to both bilingual and special education.

“I don’t see the urgency for them to serve these kids,” said Suleika Soto, a BPS mother and director of the Boston Education Justice Alliance. Soto ranked two of the district’s dual-language programs at the top of her list of schools when she was registering her daughter for kindergarten but her child didn’t get into either program.

Soto enrolled in BPS after moving from the Dominican Republic when she was 7 and took bilingual classes until she became fluent in English. By the time she graduated, the state had banned bilingual education for immigrant students.

That ban, which lasted from 2002 to 2017, when the state Legislature offered districts renewed flexibility in language acquisition programs through the LOOK Act, continues to affect schools, both in staffing challenges and cultural perceptions around bilingual education.

Serpa said both English-speaking district administrators and non-English-speaking families need to be educated about the potential of dual-language programs.

“BPS has told a lot of families that the best thing for their kids is to learn only English,” Serpa said.

Related: How can being bilingual be an asset for white students and a deficit for immigrants?

Hai Son, principal of Mather Elementary School, sees the state ban’s continued impact on the teacher pipeline. A whole generation of bilingual students and young teachers who might have gone into bilingual education never did.

Students in Mather Elementary’s dual-language classrooms cannot receive special education services, according to Son, who said his team is already stretched thin creating a Vietnamese-language curriculum. Son said the district rushed the program’s opening last year, which pre-empted adequate planning time, leaving his team to design the program as they implement it.

Son said he expects to submit a plan for serving students with disabilities in his bilingual classrooms next year. If it is approved, the school could begin enrolling such students in 2024, he said.

How he will staff those classrooms, however, is an open question.

In a sweeping 2022 evaluation, the Council of Great City Schools, a coalition of the nation’s 78 largest school systems, criticized BPS for relying on teachers with multiple certifications to serve students with disabilities and those still learning English. While dual licensing technically complies with state and federal laws, critics say it stretches teacher capacity. In the district’s latest teacher contract, BPS committed to decreasing the practice.

Bilingual special education experts say the district can find more teachers by looking abroad or creating pipelines within the city’s immigrant communities.

Meanwhile, parents, teachers and community advocates report families are counseled to leave dual-language programs when it becomes clear their children need special education supports, or they’re told to enroll elsewhere from the start.

And mothers like Mejía see the high price of going down such a path. After Joangel entered elementary school and began spending the majority of his waking hours in an English-only classroom, Mejía said he quickly started losing his ability to communicate with his family in his native Spanish.

“There are parents paying so their children can learn another language,” Mejía said. Meanwhile, she is watching her son’s bilingualism slip away.

Although the district has pledged to open more bilingual programs, many remain skeptical. While the district plans to open 25 new bilingual programs by the end of the 2024-25 school year, it has yet to even announce when those programs will launch or where those programs will be located.*

Every year’s delay means a new class of kindergartners misses out on bilingual education, starting off their elementary school careers on a monolingual track. If the district cannot provide more dual-language programs and address why students with disabilities are underrepresented in those that are offered, families will continue to face frustration and regret.

Sonia Medina is the mother of two boys, 13-year-old Luis and 15-year-old Michael. Both have IEPs: Luis for ADD and Michael for ADHD and autism. When Medina, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, was considering kindergartens, she wanted her eldest son to enter the dual-language program at the Hurley K-8 School but the district placed him in an English-only program elsewhere.

She wishes things had gone differently. Both children understand a decent amount of Spanish, but her younger son, in particular, speaks less fluently. In Santo Domingo, with family, language barriers prevent flowing conversations. And even when the boys can get their point across, Medina knows speaking is only part of the battle.

“It is one thing to speak [the language],” Medina said. “It’s another thing to write it, and another thing to read it.” In this aspect, Medina said her sons lost out. “The damage is done.”

* Clarification: This story was updated to clarify the nature of the Muñiz Academy’s services for kids with disabilities.

Correction: This article has been corrected to reflect the timing of when BPS will have 25 new bilingual programs in place.

This story about bilingual special education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post Students with disabilities often left out of popular ‘dual-language’ programs appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

BOSTON, Mass.– Después de que el hijo de María Mejía fuera diagnosticado con un trastorno del espectro autista en el preescolar, el tema de a cuál kínder debería ir se centró completamente en sus necesidades de educación especial.

Mejía y su esposo, inmigrantes hispanohablantes de la República Dominicana, supieron más tarde que Joangel, quien ahora tiene 7 años, habría sido un candidato ideal para una de las cuatro escuelas primarias de Boston que enseñan a los estudiantes tanto en inglés como en español, el idioma materno de Joangel. Los expertos dicen que tales programas ofrecen a los estudiantes de inglés la mejor oportunidad de éxito académico y las Escuelas Públicas de Boston (BPS, por sus siglas en inglés) se han comprometido a comenzar unas docenas más.

Pero los niños como Joangel a menudo quedan fuera. Sus familias, sin saberlo, se ven obligadas a participar en programas de educación especial únicamente en inglés para recibir servicios de sus programas de educación individualizados (IEP, por sus siglas en inglés) que ayuden a satisfacer sus necesidades de aprendizaje. Mejía dijo que se sorprendió cuando supo que había una alternativa.

“No me dijeron que era una escuela bilingüe”, dijo Mejía, “simplemente una escuela que aceptaron a un niño que tiene IEP”.

Los datos de inscripción del distrito, obtenidos por The Hechinger Report a través de una solicitud de registros públicos, muestran que los estudiantes con discapacidades —que representan el 22 por ciento de la población — están claramente subrepresentados en los siete programas de lenguaje dual del distrito. Representan entre el 8 y el 14 por ciento de la inscripción en los cinco programas de español e inglés. Ninguno está inscrito en el programa vietnamita-inglés de dos años en la Escuela Primaria Mather. Y en el programa de creole haitiano-inglés, hay tan pocos estudiantes con discapacidades inscritos que el distrito no puede revelar el total sin poner en riesgo la privacidad de los estudiantes.

Los expertos y defensores dicen que las disparidades se deben en parte a un problema de personal — simplemente no hay suficientes maestros de educación especial bilingüe — pero también son el resultado de una discriminación abierta y de conceptos culturales erróneos sobre si los estudiantes con discapacidades pueden manejar la educación bilingüe. El distrito se ha comprometido a agregar 25 programas bilingües más en los próximos dos años. Pero tanto los defensores como los funcionarios estatales cuestionan si BPS puede avanzar tan rápido, y las primeras señales sugieren que el distrito puede tener dificultades para incluir a los estudiantes con discapacidades a medida que abre nuevos programas: el programa bilingüe en la escuela Mather, ahora en su segundo año, solo estará listo para atender a estudiantes con discapacidades en su cuarto año, según el director.

BPS juega un papel importante en la determinación de la ubicación de los estudiantes de inglés, que constituyen casi un tercio del distrito, así como de los estudiantes con discapacidades. Las familias en Boston seleccionan sus escuelas preferidas, pero si necesitan servicios de inglés o educación especial, sus inscripciones están mandados al Centro de Evaluación y Orientación para los Recién Llegados o el Departamento de Educación Especial. Asesores de lenguaje hace recomendaciones basadas en el dominio del inglés y personal del departamento de educación especial identifica escuelas específicas para niños con IEP.

El portavoz de BPS, Max Baker, dijo en un comunicado que el distrito está “dedicado a convertirse en uno totalmente inclusivo, brindando acceso completo a una serie de servicios para todos los estudiantes”, pero se negó a responder a preguntas sobre por qué los estudiantes con discapacidades están subrepresentados en los programas de lenguaje dual o qué va a hacer para cambiar eso.

Los expertos de educación especial bilingüe dicen que la subrepresentación de los estudiantes con discapacidades es más que una oportunidad perdida: es discriminación. Dicen que no hay razón para que las escuelas no puedan atender a estudiantes con discapacidades. Y la ley de igualdad de oportunidades sugiere que tienen que hacerlo.

María Serpa, una pionera en el campo y miembro de la Fuerza Especial para Aprendices de Inglés del distrito, dijo que los datos de inscripción son increíbles.

“Los niños con discapacidades necesitan educación bilingüe más que nadie”.

María Serpa, miembro de la Fuerza Especial para Aprendices de Inglés de BPS

“Los niños con discapacidades necesitan educación bilingüe más que nadie”, dijo Serpa en inglés.

BPS ha sido criticado durante mucho tiempo por reprobar a sus estudiantes con discapacidades y a aquellos que no dominan el inglés — evitando una toma de control del estado el año pasado en parte al comprometerse a mejorar los servicios para estos dos grupos. Una piedra angular de su plan es la ambiciosa expansión de los programas bilingües.

Los programas de “lenguaje dual”, cuyos se unen los aprendices de inglés y los hablantes nativos intentando dominar los dos idiomas a nivel académico, se consideran una de las únicas vías para cerrar la brecha de rendimiento entre los dos grupos. Aprendices de inglés que toman estas clases superan a sus compañeros que también están aprendiendo el inglés en las pruebas de lectura y matemáticas y a graduarse en tasas más altas.

Por qué funcionan tan bien se debe a varias razones. La investigación ha encontrado que es mejor para los niños cuyo idioma dominante es el español, por ejemplo, pasar parte del día recibiendo instrucción académica en su idioma nativo. Los investigadores y educadores también destacan los beneficios para la autoestima y la pertenencia cuando los niños que tradicionalmente se consideran deficientes debido a su origen lingüístico se convierten en “expertos” frente a sus pares. Y a medida que las familias de habla inglesa de todo el espectro socioeconómico acuden en masa a los programas de lenguaje dual, también han sido anunciados como un método de integración escolar.

Hasta ahora, BPS no ha seguido esa lógica.

Más de 14.600 estudiantes de BPS son aprendices de inglés. Uno de cada cuatro de ellos tiene una discapacidad. Sin embargo, solo el 6 por ciento de ellos asisten a una escuela bilingüe.

Dania Vázquez, directora de la Academia Margarita Muñiz, la comenzó su carrera en educación especial bilingüe en la década de 1980 justo cuando las especialidades se fusionaron en un solo campo. En su escuela, casi el 14 por ciento de los estudiantes reciben servicios de educación especial, más que en otros programas bilingües de Boston, pero todavía por debajo del promedio del distrito.

Vázquez dijo que no sabe exactamente por qué su escuela inscribe a estudiantes con discapacidades a tasas más altas, pero señaló que la escuela hace un esfuerzo coordinado para informar a todas las familias acerca de su programa.

“No estamos eligiendo estudiantes”, dijo en inglés. “Los estudiantes nos eligen a nosotros”.

En la Academia Muñiz, Vázquez contó que los maestros de educación especial pasan tiempo en los salones de clases apoyando a los estudiantes con discapacidades mientras estos aprenden de los maestros de las materias en español o inglés.* También brindan apoyo en grupos pequeños en la “sala de recursos” de la escuela.

Históricamente, pocos aprendices de inglés con discapacidades en BPS han tenido estas oportunidades.

“No veo en ellos la urgencia de servir a estos niños”.

Suleika Soto, una madre y organizadora con la Alianza de Justicia Educativa de Boston

“No veo en ellos la urgencia de servir a estos niños”, dijo Suleika Soto, una madre en BPS y organizadora con la Alianza de Justicia Educativa de Boston. Soto trató de que su hija ingresara a una escuela bilingüe pero la niña no estaba elegida para ninguno de los dos programas que clasificó en la parte superior de su lista.

Soto se mudó a Boston desde la República Dominicana cuando tenía 7 años y tomó clases bilingües hasta que aprendió inglés con fluidez. Cuando se graduó de la escuela secundaria, el estado había prohibido la educación bilingüe para estudiantes inmigrantes.

Esa prohibición, que duró de 2002 a 2017 — cuando la legislatura estatal ofreció a los distritos una flexibilidad renovada en los programas de adquisición de inglés a través de la Ley LOOK — continúa afectando a las escuelas, tanto en desafíos de dotación de personal como en las percepciones culturales en torno a la educación bilingüe.

María Serpa dijo que tanto los administradores distritales como las familias inmigrantes deben ser educados sobre el potencial de los programas bilingües.

“BPS les ha dicho a muchas familias que lo mejor para sus hijos es aprender solo inglés”, dijo Serpa en inglés.

Hai Son, director de la Escuela Primaria Mather, lamenta la interrupción en el flujo de educadores bilingües. Toda una generación de estudiantes bilingües y jóvenes maestros que podrían haber ingresado a la educación bilingüe nunca lo hicieron.

Los estudiantes en las aulas bilingües de Mather no pueden recibir servicios de educación especial, según Son, quien dijo que su equipo ya está al límite creando un plan de estudios en idioma vietnamita. Son dijo que el distrito apresuró la apertura del programa el año pasado, lo que anuló el tiempo de planificación adecuado, obligando a que su equipo tuviera que diseñar un programa a medida que lo implementaban.

Son dijo que espera presentar un plan para atender a estudiantes con discapacidades en sus aulas bilingües el próximo año. Si se aprueba, la escuela podría comenzar a inscribir a esos estudiantes en 2024, dijo.

Sin embargo, la forma en que dotará de personal a esas aulas es una pregunta abierta.

En una amplia evaluación de 2022, el Consejo de Escuelas de Grandes Ciudades, una coalición de los 78 sistemas escolares más grandes del país, criticó a BPS por depender de maestros con múltiples certificaciones para atender a estudiantes con discapacidades y aquellos que aún están aprendiendo inglés. Si bien la licencia dual técnicamente cumple con las leyes estatales y federales, los críticos dicen que fuerza la capacidad de los maestros. En el último contrato de maestros del distrito, se hizo el compromiso de reducir la práctica.

Los expertos de educación especial bilingüe dicen que el distrito puede buscar maestros de otros países o crear canales dentro de las comunidades de inmigrantes de la ciudad.

Mientras tanto, padres, maestros y defensores comunitarios dicen que se aconseja a las familias que abandonen los programas bilingües cuando queda claro que sus hijos necesitan apoyo de educación especial, o se les dice que se inscriban en otro lugar desde el principio.

En el caso de Mejía, después de que Joangel ingresó a la primaria y comenzó a pasar la mayor parte de su tiempo en un salón de clases en el que solo se hablaba inglés, rápidamente comenzó a perder la capacidad de comunicarse con su familia en su español nativo.

“Hay padres que pagan para que sus hijos aprendan otro idioma”, dijo Mejía. Mientras tanto, ella ve cómo se desvanece la oportunidad de su hijo de ser bilingüe.

Aunque el distrito se ha comprometido a abrir más programas bilingües, muchos siguen siendo escépticos. Si bien el distrito planea abrir 25 nuevos programas bilingües para fines del año escolar 2024-25, aún tiene que anunciar cuándo se lanzarán esos programas o dónde se ubicarán esos programas.*

Cada año de retraso significa que una nueva clase de niños de kínder se perderá la educación bilingüe, comenzando sus carreras en la escuela primaria en un entorno monolingüe. Sin más programas ni un cálculo de por qué los estudiantes con discapacidades están subrepresentados en los que existen, las familias seguirán enfrentándose a la frustración y al arrepentimiento.

Sonia Medina es madre de dos niños: Luis, de 13 años y Michael, de 15 años. Ambos tienen IEP: Luis para desorden de déficit de atención y Michael para el autismo y desorden hiperactivo y déficit de atención. Cuando Medina, una inmigrante de la República Dominicana, estaba escogiendo un kínder, quería que su hijo mayor ingresara al programa de lenguaje dual del Hurley, pero el distrito lo colocó en otra escuela sin la educación bilingüe.

Ella desearía que las cosas hubieran sido de otra manera. Ambos niños entienden bien el español, pero su hijo menor, en particular, habla con menos fluidez. En Santo Domingo, en familia, las barreras del idioma impiden que las conversaciones fluyan. Incluso cuando pueden expresar su punto de vista, Medina sabe que hablar es solo una parte de conocer un idioma.

“Una cosa es tu hablarlo”, dijo Medina. “Otra cosa escribirlo, y otra cosa es leerlo”. En ese aspecto, Medina dijo que sus hijos se han perdido. “El daño está hecho”.

*Aclaración: Este artículo se actualizó para aclarar como funcionan los servicios de educación especial en la Academia Muñiz.

Este artículo ha sido corregida para reflejar el momento en que BPS tendrá 25 nuevos programas bilingües en funcionamiento.

Este artículo acerca de la educación especial bilingüe fue producido por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente sin fines de lucro enfocada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación. Lee sus artículos en español.

The post Estudiantes con discapacidades a menudo son excluidos de populares programas de ‘lenguaje dual’ appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Dos veces por semana, Ricky Carmona, de 16 años, sale de su casa en La Verne para asistir a la escuela que se encuentra a pocos pasos del Boot Barn en un centro comercial cercano.

Terminó en la escuela chárter Options for Youth en Upland después de que fuera suspendido de Bonita High al comienzo del año escolar 2022-23 por fumar en el baño. Menos de una semana después de la suspensión, Stephanie Carmona, su tía y tutora, recibió una carta: El director había recomendado a Ricky para un “traslado involuntario” fuera de Bonita High.

Técnicamente, Ricky no había sido expulsado. Pero todo indicaba que sí.

“Un traslado es algo que se hace voluntariamente”, dijo.

Los traslados como el de Ricky representan una parte importante pero oculta de la disciplina excluyente de California, que impide a los estudiantes asistir a sus escuelas y los empuja a nuevos campus o a escuelas alternativas más pequeñas, según una investigación del Hechinger Report.

Mientras que algunos educadores defienden los traslados como una alternativa más suave a la expulsión, los críticos dicen que estos movimientos tienen protecciones limitadas o nulas del debido proceso y pueden acarrear los mismos problemas asociados con la expulsión al interrumpir la educación de un estudiante.

A pesar de las políticas que requieren que los distritos escolares de California informen sobre el número de estudiantes transferidos, los requisitos de información del Departamento de Educación del estado, superpuestos y vagos, significan que frecuentemente no está claro por qué un estudiante fue cambiado de escuela.

Los funcionarios de California se negaron a proporcionar datos a nivel estatal sobre las transferencias, diciendo que la base de datos en la que mantienen la información está exenta de divulgación, ya que contiene información que identifica a los estudiantes.

Un análisis de Hechinger de los informes a nivel de distrito — obtenidos a través de solicitudes de registros públicos a 23 de los distritos más grandes del estado — reveló una visión más profunda de las prácticas locales de transferencia que existen con poca responsabilidad pública o políticas claras de divulgación.

Durante cinco años académicos, de 2016-17 a 2020-21, estos distritos registraron 5.800 transferencias por “razones disciplinarias específicas”. Hasta 3.700 de estas transferencias podrían haber sido expulsiones. Los distritos escolares están obligados a informar de las expulsiones al estado y al público. Pero la categoría de “razones disciplinarias específicas” también incluye traslados involuntarios como el de Ricky y traslados por orden judicial a escuelas de centros de justicia juvenil.

Los distritos — que atienden a casi 1 millón, o alrededor del 17 por ciento, de los 5,9 millones de alumnos del estado — también registraron más de 16.300 traslados a escuelas alternativas. Los defensores de los alumnos y los educadores afirman que estos traslados se producen con frecuencia tras problemas de conducta. Pero el estado no exige a los distritos que especifiquen la razón por la que un estudiante es trasladado a una escuela alternativa.

Los estudiantes pueden inscribirse en escuelas alternativas para satisfacer sus necesidades: campus más pequeños, apoyo conductual o académico o una jornada escolar más flexible. Los educadores y otras personas afirman que puede ser beneficioso para algunos alumnos cambiar de escuela y empezar de cero.

Pero los defensores dicen que la transparencia es necesaria en los datos del estado para garantizar que los distritos no están ocultando las transferencias por motivos disciplinarios a las escuelas alternativas, especialmente cuando eso campus pueden tener menor rigor académico, bajas tasas de graduación y el absentismo crónico más alto.

“Los traslados se están utilizando como una forma encubierta de sacar a los niños de las escuelas”, dijo Chelsea Helena, abogada de educación de Neighborhood Legal Services del condado de Los Ángeles. “Y está afectando más a los niños afroamericanos y latinos”.

En la mayoría de los distritos, incluyendo San Bernardino City Unified, Long Beach Unified y Oakland Unified, los estudiantes afroamericanos estaban desproporcionadamente representados entre los estudiantes transferidos por razones disciplinarias, según los datos de los distritos. Aunque los estudiantes latinos no estaban sobrerrepresentados en la mayoría de los distritos, su considerable proporción de matriculación significa que fueron transferidos con mayor frecuencia.

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Es probable que se produzcan aún más traslados disciplinarios cuando se aconseja a los alumnos que cambien voluntariamente de una escuela tradicional a otra.

Victor Leung, director de equidad educativa de la ACLU del Sur de California, afirma que este tipo de traslados son “uno de los problemas más comunes e insidiosos” que ve su equipo. A menudo se presiona a los padres para que acepten un traslado voluntario a fin de evitar una expulsión formal, a pesar de que la expulsión conlleva garantías procesales y derechos de apelación, afirma Leung. Una capa adicional de supervisión requiere la aprobación de las expulsiones por parte del consejo escolar.

A diferencia de las expulsiones, generalmente asignadas por causar lesiones físicas graves o poseer drogas o armas, los traslados carecen en gran medida de regulación. Los distritos elaboran sus propias políticas sobre traslados, con normas variables — si las hay — para realizar apelaciones.

“Los traslados se están utilizando como una forma encubierta de sacar a los niños de las escuelas. Y está afectando más a los niños afroamericanos y latinos”.

Chelsea Helena, abogada, Neighborhood Legal Services del Condado de Los Ángeles.

En 2014, una ley estatal prohibió a los distritos obligar a los estudiantes a trasladarse si se recomendaba su expulsión, pero ganaron su audiencia de expulsión. Sin embargo, sigue existiendo un vacío legal que permite a los distritos trasladar a los estudiantes en lugar de expulsarlos y enfrentar un escrutinio mínimo.

A raíz de las preguntas de una periodista al Departamento de Educación sobre sus normas de supervisión e información del proceso de traslado, el superintendente estatal Tony Thurmond reconoció en un comunicado de prensa “que algunos distritos han empujado a las familias hacia el traslado voluntario o involuntario para evitar informar de las expulsiones”.

El mes pasado anunció la creación de una línea de denuncia pública para identificar los distritos que hacen exactamente esto.

“No se tolerará que los distritos escolares intenten ocultar los índices reales de disciplina mediante prácticas de enmascarar las expulsiones como traslados”, dijo Thurmond.

Una de las razones por las que las expulsiones han sido objeto de controversia en California y en todo el país, es por el trastorno que causan en las vidas y trayectorias académicas de los estudiantes. California tiene una de las tasas de expulsión más bajas del país.

Cambiar de escuela, sea cual sea el motivo, suele ser malo para los niños, ya que perjudica su desarrollo, altera sus relaciones y, lo que es más grave y constante, reduce sus resultados en los exámenes y sus probabilidades de graduarse.

En el caso de Ricky, va más retrasado en Options for Youth y apenas acumula créditos. Pasó más de la mitad del año escolar completando paquetes en su mayoría de forma independiente — y la familia está explorando un diploma de GED como un objetivo alternativo.

Ni el Distrito Escolar Unificado de Bonita ni Options for Youth comentaron su situación.

“Cualquier interrupción en el programa educativo de un niño es un problema”, dijo Helena, de Neighborhood Legal Services. “Especialmente siguiendo dos años de interrupción catastrófica en la educación de los niños”.

Relacionado: ​​Por qué los estudiantes blancos tienen 250% más probabilidad de graduación en universidades públicas en comparación a los estudiantes afroamericanos   

En los 23 distritos que proporcionaron datos, las cifras de traslados variaron mucho.

Por ejemplo, el distrito unificado de San Diego, con 114.500 alumnos, el segundo más grande del estado, expulsó a 335 estudiantes, trasladó a 288 por razones disciplinarias específicas y envió a 94 a escuelas alternativas.

Pero Sacramento City Unified, que atiende a casi 44.000 alumnos, expulsó a 52, trasladó a 511 por razones disciplinarias específicas y registró 3.281 traslados a escuelas alternativas.

Stephan Brown, director de audiencias y colocación de alumnos en Sacramento City Unified, dijo que las familias suelen apoyar los traslados.

La mayoría de las transferencias a escuelas alternativas en Sacramento City Unified son por razones distintas de la disciplina, como estar atrasado en las clases, dijo. El distrito se ha asociado con organizaciones comunitarias que ayudan a mediar en los conflictos y a minimizar la necesidad de aplicar medidas como la exclusión. Brown considera que los traslados son una alternativa positiva a la expulsión.

Los administradores de Riverside Unified y San Bernardino City Unified también describieron sus escuelas alternativas como opciones educativas complementarias y de apoyo para los estudiantes que han tenido dificultades en las escuelas tradicionales.

Los datos de transferencia no son claros para el Unificado de Los Ángeles, que ha pasado años trabajando para reducir el número de expulsiones. El distrito superó al estado por casi una década en la prohibición de las suspensiones por rebeldía intencionada, incluidas acciones como mascar chicle, jugar con el teléfono, dar golpecitos con los pies y quedarse dormido en clase.

A pesar de sus iniciativas de reforma disciplinaria, el mayor distrito no parece seguir las instrucciones del estado para registrar sus traslados.

En los datos que L.A. Unified presentó al estado, obtenidos a través de una solicitud de registros públicos, el distrito registró cero transferencias por razones disciplinarias y cero transferencias a escuelas alternativas en los años académicos de 2016-17 a 2020-21.

El distrito opera un programa que llama “transferencias de oportunidad” para estudiantes que son trasladados a una nueva escuela “para abordar la mala conducta de los estudiantes después de que las intervenciones anteriores han fallado”. El distrito registra dichas transferencias internamente.

“Cualquier interrupción en el programa educativo de un niño es un problema. Especialmente siguiendo dos años de interrupción catastrófica en la educación de los niños”.

Chelsea Helena, abogada, Neighborhood Legal Services del Condado de Los Ángeles.

Un portavoz del distrito describió por escrito los traslados de oportunidad como una respuesta menos rígida a un problema de mala conducta que no llega a justificar la expulsión. Estos traslados suelen ser voluntarios, es decir, propuestos por la escuela o el distrito pero aceptados por la familia del alumno. Los padres pueden apelar el traslado, y la decisión del comité de apelaciones es definitiva.

Los registros internos de L.A. Unified muestran que realizó 138 transferencias de oportunidad desde el año escolar 2017-18 hasta 2021-22.

El distrito registra las transferencias de oportunidad con el estado como “transferencias regulares, no disciplinarias” porque son voluntarias, dijo el portavoz. Pero tal clasificación entra en conflicto con la propia definición del distrito relacionada con la disciplina y con la política estatal.

L.A. Unified sirvió a casi 35,000 estudiantes a través de 53 de sus escuelas alternativas en 2021-22, según los datos de inscripción del estado. Los funcionarios no contestaron preguntas sobre cómo se registran las transferencias a las escuelas alternativas.

Relacionado: Cuando el castigo es el mismo que el delito: Suspendido por faltar a clase

Los esfuerzos disciplinarios se han centrado en ampliar los programas que fomentan el comportamiento positivo de los estudiantes y mejoran la cultura escolar, incluido un enfoque diario en la atención plena y las prácticas informadas sobre traumas.

“Realmente tenemos una serie de prácticas que están trabajando para abordar el clima escolar y la cultura positiva en todas las escuelas”, dijo Pia Escudero, director ejecutivo del distrito de salud estudiantil y servicios humanos.

Megan Stanton-Trehan, directora de la Clínica de Educación sobre Justicia Juvenil de la Facultad de Derecho de Loyola, reconoce que el Distrito Escolar Unificado de Los Ángeles ha tomado medidas para reducir la disciplina excluyente, pero cuestiona la exactitud de los datos sobre traslados comunicados por el distrito.

Sin una distinción clara entre los traslados que están relacionados con la disciplina y los que no lo están, “se hace difícil para la comunidad entender cuáles son los verdaderos problemas”, dijo Stanton-Trehan. “¿Se trata realmente de disciplina? ¿Se trata de asistencia? ¿Necesita el alumno educación especial u otro tipo de apoyo que no está recibiendo?”.

En octubre de 2021, Neighborhood Legal Services del condado de Los Ángeles demandó al Departamento de Educación de California, alegando que los estudiantes afroamericanos y latinos se ven desproporcionadamente perjudicados por las políticas disciplinarias de algunos distritos y que el estado no ha supervisado ni tomado medidas contra los traslados que funcionan como disciplina excluyente.

El estado está violando el derecho a la igualdad de protección de los estudiantes al no salvaguardar su derecho a una educación igualitaria, alega la demanda. Los abogados se preparan para ir a juicio.

Ha habido otros llamados a la acción legislativa, incluida la exigencia de información pública clara de las transferencias relacionadas con la disciplina y de las categorías que identifican por qué un estudiante es transferido. La senadora estatal Nancy Skinner (demócrata de Berkeley), que ha presentado una serie de medidas sobre disciplina escolar, dijo que está estudiando cómo podría actuar la legislatura tras conocer las conclusiones del Hechinger Report.

El Departamento de Educación de California está trabajando en una guía para asesorar a los distritos sobre el uso de los traslados disciplinarios, dijo un portavoz.

El reciente impulso para abordar las transferencias se produce cuando las escuelas han informado de problemas más graves con el comportamiento de los estudiantes desde la pandemia.

Los expertos afirman que los distritos deben ser proactivos, lo que exige capacitar a los profesores en desarrollo infantil y adolescente, establecimiento de relaciones y gestión del comportamiento, así como dotar a los centros de un número adecuado de orientadores y trabajadores sociales.

Aun así, los responsables de los centros escolares se enfrentan a lo que pueden parecer prioridades contrapuestas: atender a todos los alumnos, incluidos los que se portan mal y requieren disciplina, y mantener un entorno ordenado. Los defensores dicen que entender los traslados es clave para comprender cómo se está imponiendo la disciplina a los estudiantes de California.

Cuando Ricky habla de su situación, se le escapa decir que fue expulsado.

“Podría ser [una expulsión]”, dice. “No puedo regresar”.

Este artículo acerca de expulsión escolar fue producido por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente sin fines de lucro enfocada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación. Lea sus otros artículos en español.

The post ¿Expulsiones disfrazadas? Las escuelas expulsan a los alumnos, pero dicen que son ‘traslados’ appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Editor’s note: This story led off the Early Childhood newsletter, which is delivered free to subscribers’ inboxes every other Wednesday with trends and top stories about early learning. Subscribe today!

I spent the last year trying to find out how often students are transferred to a new school as a form of discipline, a practice that allows districts to effectively hide expulsions under a gentler name. Most people I spoke with described the process as an issue affecting adolescents. But toward the end of my reporting, I spoke with a researcher who said the practice is rampant in preschool.

J. Luke Wood, a professor at San Diego State University, and a team of his fellow researchers interviewed parents of young Black children for a project unrelated to transfers, but the issue kept coming up. Parents of preschoolers kept telling the team they had been counseled to switch their child’s school to avoid a disciplinary record, but were assured this was not an expulsion

“It seemed like they were using voluntary strategies to make families think [the schools] were doing them a favor, when really they were doing the exact opposite,” Wood said.

Experts and early childhood advocates have long argued that discipline for the littlest learners is opaque. What information is available suggests that small children are routinely punished in school: A 2005 study by Yale researchers found preschoolers are more likely to be expelled than students of any other age group. And Black preschoolers are disproportionately represented among those kicked out.

Wood now calls transfers a significant issue. “We talk a lot about suspensions, expulsions,” he said, “but the dark part of this conversation is voluntary and involuntary transfers.”

In 2021, the team published “Suspending Our Future: How inequitable disciplinary practices disenfranchise Black kids in California’s public schools,” calling for transfers to be treated like other forms of exclusionary discipline and require clear public reporting.

In California, the state department of education asks schools to log every student transfer, but the categories for transfers overlap and none of the data is published online.

Public reporting, like that recommended by Wood’s team, would help clarify disciplinary transfers for many students. But more would be needed to document what happens in largely private childcare settings to the millions of children under the age of 4.

The Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C., published a report last week advocating for more and better data in that area.

The CLASP report calls for federal and state programs, including Head Start, to collect discipline data on publicly funded centers and track disparities by race and ethnicity. The report also suggests the creation of a federal office tasked with protecting the civil rights of the youngest children to respond when protected groups are disproportionately punished by teachers. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights already does this for older students.

This push for more discipline data comes after years of nationwide pressure to reduce suspensions and expulsions. Now, as overstretched schools struggle to respond to challenging student behavior in the wake of the COVID pandemic, experts across California say they are resorting to transferring more students. 

That may soon change. Following a lawsuit brought by Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County as well as questions posed by The Hechinger Report, the California Department of Education announced a new tip line for reporting districts that are effectively masking expulsions as transfers. The department is also preparing official guidance to manage district use of disciplinary transfers.

If your child or someone you know has been transferred as a disciplinary response, email me at tara@hechingerreport.org. I’d love to hear your story.

This story about preschool expulsion was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post Backdoor expulsion: Some preschools pressure or force children to transfer as punishment appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Twice a week Ricky Carmona, 16, leaves his La Verne home to attend school in makeshift classrooms a few doors down from the Boot Barn at a nearby strip mall.

He ended up at Options for Youth charter school in Upland after he was suspended at the start of the 2022-23 school year from Bonita High for vaping in the bathroom. Less than a week after the suspension, Stephanie Carmona, Ricky’s aunt and guardian, received a letter: The principal had recommended Ricky for an “involuntary transfer” out of Bonita.

He wasn’t technically being expelled. But to Ricky, it sure felt like it.

“A transfer is, like, something you do voluntarily,” Ricky said.

Transfers like Ricky’s represent a large yet hidden share of California’s exclusionary discipline, blocking students from attending their own schools and pushing them onto new campuses or into smaller, alternative schools, according to an investigation by The Hechinger Report.

While some educators defend transfers as a gentler alternative to expulsion, critics say these moves have limited or no due process protections and can carry the same problems associated with expulsion by disrupting a child’s education.

Despite policies that require California school districts to report the number of students transferred, the Department of Education’s overlapping and vague data reporting requirements mean it’s often unclear why a student changed schools.

State officials declined to provide any statewide data about transfers, saying a database in which they maintain the information is exempt from disclosure because it contains identifying information about students.

Related: Civil rights at stake: Black, Hispanic students blocked from class for missing class

A Hechinger Report analysis of district-level reports — obtained through public records requests to 23 of the state’s largest districts — revealed deeper insights into local transfer practices that take place with little public accountability or clear disclosure.

Over five academic years spanning 2016-17 to 2020-21, these districts recorded 5,800 transfers in a category for “specific discipline reasons.” As many as 3,700 of these could be expulsions. School districts are required to report expulsions to the state and to the public. But the category also includes involuntary transfers such as Ricky’s and court-mandated transfers to juvenile justice facilities’ schools.

The districts – which serve more than 1 million, or 17 percent, of the state’s 5.9 million students – also recorded more than 16,300 additional transfers to alternative schools, another transfer category. Student advocates and educators say these moves frequently follow behavior problems. But the state does not require districts to specify the reason a student is transferred to an alternative school.

Students can enroll in alternative schools to better meet their needs — smaller campuses, behavioral or academic supports, a more flexible school day. Educators and others say it can be beneficial for some students to change schools and get a fresh start.

But advocates say transparency is needed in state data to ensure that districts are not hiding disciplinary transfers to alternative schools, especially when those campuses can also have lower academic rigor and graduation rates, and higher chronic absenteeism.

“Transfers are being used as a back-door way of removing kids from school,” said Chelsea Helena, an education attorney for Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County. “And it’s impacting Black and brown kids more.”

Related: Some kids have returned to in-person learning only to be kicked right back out

In the majority of districts, including San Bernardino City Unified, Long Beach Unified and Oakland Unified, Black students were disproportionately represented among students transferred for discipline reasons or to alternative schools, according to the district data. While Latino students were not overrepresented in most districts, their sizable share of enrollment means they were most frequently transferred.

Even more disciplinary transfers likely occur when students are counseled to voluntarily switch from one traditional school to another. Victor Leung, director of education equity for the ACLU of Southern California, says that these types of transfers are “one of the most common and insidious problems” his education team sees. Parents are often pressured to agree to the voluntary transfer to avoid a formal expulsion, even though the expulsion carries due process and appeals rights, Leung said. An additional layer of oversight requires school board approval of expulsions.

Unlike expulsions – generally assigned for serious physical injury or possession of drugs or weapons – transfers are largely unregulated. Districts develop their own policies with varying rules – if any – to appeal moves.

In 2014, a state law prohibited districts from forcing students to transfer if they were recommended for expulsion but won their expulsion hearing. Yet a loophole remains that allows districts to transfer a student instead of expelling them and face minimal scrutiny.

Following a reporter’s inquiries to the Department of Education about its transfer process oversight and reporting rules, state Supt. Tony Thurmond in a press release acknowledged “that some districts have pushed families toward voluntary or involuntary transfer to avoid reporting expulsions.”

Last month he announced the creation of a public tip line to identify districts doing exactly this. “School districts trying to hide actual discipline rates through practices such as masking expulsions as transfers will not be tolerated,” Thurmond said.

Ricky has a history of behavior problems in school, leading to detentions, Saturday school and occasional suspensions. But he said the forced transfer came as a shock, especially as it was handed down just days into the new school year.

“I was not on my last chance at all, or nothing like that,” Ricky said. “When I got the letter, I cannot lie, I didn’t believe it was happening at all.”

In a letter shared by Carmona, Ricky’s aunt, the district described the involuntary transfer as a generous alternative to expulsion. Ricky’s family doesn’t see it that way.

Attorneys from the Children’s Rights Clinic at Southwestern Law School offered to help him fight the transfer, but district officials at Bonita Unified held firm.

Jenny Rodriguez-Fee, director of the clinic, said the district's response to their appeal cited internal policy.

"But they don’t cite any laws," Rodriguez-Fee said, "because there is no law."

Over a five-year time period, Sacramento City Unified expelled 42 students, but it transferred 511 for specific discipline reasons and logged 3,281 transfers to alternative schools.

One reason expulsions have come under attack in California and nationwide is because of the disruption they cause in students’ lives and their academic trajectories. California has one of the lowest expulsion rates in the country.

But discipline-related transfers can bring the same consequences. Switching schools, whatever the reason, tends to be bad for kids, harming their development, disrupting their relationships and, most severely and consistently, suppressing their test scores and likelihood of graduation.

In Ricky’s case, he is further behind at Options for Youth and is barely accumulating credits. He spent more than half the school year completing packets mostly independently — and the family is exploring a GED diploma as an alternative goal.

Neither the Bonita Unified School District nor Options for Youth commented on his situation.

“Any disruption to a child’s education program is a problem,” said Helena, of Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County. “Especially coming off of two years of catastrophic disruption to kids’ education.”

In the 23 districts that provided data, transfer numbers varied widely.

For example, the 114,500-student San Diego Unified, the second-largest in the state, expelled 335 students, transferred 288 for specific discipline reasons and sent 94 to alternative schools.

But Sacramento City Unified, which serves nearly 44,000 students, expelled 52, transferred 511 for specific discipline reasons and logged 3,281 transfers to alternative schools.

One of the hundreds of Sacramento City Unified students transferred so far this school year is a 15-year-old named Kyla, who asked that her last name be withheld due to privacy concerns. She was forced to change schools as a punishment for bringing to school knives and pepper spray that she considered protection against off-campus threats.

According to the district, Capital City School — her destination — is “a voluntary K-12 independent study school characterized by its friendly, nurturing and safe environment.” At first, Kyla would go in on Tuesdays to interact with teachers in person, but those meetings have been moved to Zoom; Kyla said they last no more than 20 minutes. The rest of the week, she’s on her own, working from her bedroom. Kyla said she can go entire days with nothing to do while she waits for teachers to send assignments.

“It’s really lonely,” she said.

Kyla only has three courses right now — English, writing and journaling, her elective. No math or science, subjects in which she is behind.

Related: ‘State-sanctioned violence:’ Inside one of the thousands of schools that still paddle students

Stephan Brown, director of student hearing and placement in Sacramento City Unified, said families often support transfers as a fresh start for their children.

Brown said the majority of transfers to alternative schools in Sacramento City Unified are for reasons other than discipline, such as being behind on coursework. The district has partnered with community organizations that help mediate conflicts and minimize the need for exclusionary discipline. Brown considers transfers to be a positive alternative to expulsion, rather than a shadow of the same process.

Administrators in Riverside Unified and San Bernardino City Unified school districts also described their alternative schools as supportive, complementary educational options for students who struggled in traditional schools.

Transfer data is unclear in Los Angeles Unified, which has spent years working to reduce exclusionary discipline. The district, which serves more than 400,000 students, beat the state by almost a decade in banning suspensions for willful defiance, including for actions such as chewing gum, playing with a phone, tapping feet and napping.

Despite its discipline reform initiatives, California’s largest district does not appear to follow the state’s instructions for logging its transfers.

In data LAUSD submitted to the state, obtained from the district through a public records request, the district reported zero transfers for discipline reasons and zero transfers to alternative schools from the 2016-17 through 2020-21 school years.

The district operates a program it calls “opportunity transfers” for students who are moved to a new school “to address student misconduct after prior interventions have failed.”

A district spokesperson, in writing, described opportunity transfers as a response to less egregious student misbehavior that falls short of an expulsion. They tend to be voluntary, proposed by the school or district, but agreed upon by a student’s family. Parents can appeal the transfer and the decision of the appeal committee is final.

“Transfers are being used as a back-door way of removing kids from school. And it’s impacting Black and brown kids more.”

Chelsea Helena, education attorney at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County

LAUSD's internal records show the district made 138 opportunity transfers districtwide from the 2017-18 school year through the 2021-22 school year.

The district logs opportunity transfers with the state as “regular, nondisciplinary transfers” because they are voluntary, the spokesperson said. But such a classification conflicts with its own discipline-related definition and state guidance.

LAUSD served almost 35,000 students across 53 of its alternative schools during the 2021-22 school year, according to state enrollment data. Officials did not answer questions about how students come to be enrolled in alternative schools or how their transfers to alternative schools are recorded.

The district’s discipline efforts have focused on expanding programs nurturing positive student behavior and improving school culture, including with a daily focus on mindfulness and trauma-informed practices.

“We truly have an array of practices that are working to address school climate and positive culture in all schools,” said Pia Escudero, the district’s executive director of student health and human services.

Megan Stanton-Trehan, director of the Youth Justice Education Clinic at Los Angeles’ Loyola Law School, credits LAUSD for taking steps to reduce exclusionary discipline, but she said she and others question the accuracy of the district’s reported transfer data.

“If it’s not clear the different categories of transfers that are happening, it becomes difficult for the community to understand what the real problems are,” she said. “Is it really discipline? Is it attendance? Does the student need special education or other supports that they’re not receiving?”

In October 2021, Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County filed suit against the California Department of Education, alleging Black and Latino students are disproportionately harmed by some districts’ disciplinary policies and the state’s failure to monitor and take action againsttransfers that function as exclusionary discipline.

The state is violating the right of equal protection for students by failing to safeguard their right to an equal education, the suit alleges. Attorneys are currently preparing to go to trial.

The 38,000-student Sweetwater Union High School District expelled just 23 students over the five-year time period it transferred 626 for specific discipline reasons and logged another 4,583 transfers to alternative schools.

There have been other calls for legislative action, including requiring clear public reporting of discipline-related transfers with categories that identify why a student transferred.

State Sen. Nancy Skinner, who has introduced a series of measures on school discipline, said she is considering how the legislature might take action after learning of the Hechinger Report’s findings.

The California Department of Education is working on guidance that would advise districts on their use of disciplinary transfers, a spokesperson said.

Related: When the punishment is the same as the crime: Suspended for missing class

Recent momentum to address transfers comes as schools have reported more severe problems with student behavior since the pandemic.

Experts say school districts must be proactive, which requires training teachers in child and adolescent development, relationship building and behavior management as well as staffing schools with adequate numbers of counselors and social workers.

Santa Ana Unified maintains its low expulsion and transfer numbers with the help of an increasingly popular disciplinary approach called restorative practices. Under the model, teachers and school leaders prioritize building positive relationships with all students, laying the foundation for fewer behavior problems. They also intervene proactively when students start having trouble, attempting to solve behavior problems before they get serious.

“Any disruption to a child’s education program is a problem. Especially coming off of two years of catastrophic disruption to kids’ education.”

Chelsea Helena, education attorney at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County

When students act out in ways that demand more traditional discipline, "restorative" practices like "re-entry circles" aim to smooth the path back to class, repairing relationships damaged by misbehavior in hopes of breaking vicious cycles. “We repeat what we don't repair,” a quote on the district's Restorative Practices website, offers a guiding mantra for educators.

Still, school leaders face what can seem like competing priorities: serving all students, including those who misbehave and require discipline, and maintaining an orderly school environment. Advocates say understanding transfers is key to understanding how discipline is being meted out to California students.

When Ricky talks about his situation, he slips into saying he was expelled.

“It might as well be [an expulsion],” he said. “I can’t go back.”

This story about exclusionary discipline practices was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post Hidden expulsions? Schools kick students out but call it a ‘transfer’ appeared first on The Hechinger Report.