Editor's note: This is the fourth entry in our forum on charter school discipline practices. Earlier posts can be found here, here, and here.
Secretary John King’s remarks at the national charter school conference last week encouraging charters to rethink discipline were fair and balanced. But the assumptions that often attend them are not. Charter school leaders, authorizers, and advocates should pay heed to King’s words but should not uncritically submit to the subtext.
King said,
Discipline is a nuanced and complicated issue….I am not here to offer any hard-and-fast rules or directives; but I believe the goal for all schools should be to create a school culture that motivates students to want to do their best, to support their classmates and to give back to their community, and to communicate to our students and educators in ways big and small that their potential is unlimited."
These words were measured and responsible, but the public debate on school discipline has been anything but. To many reporters, wonks, and staffers in King’s Office for Civil Rights, the issue is fairly straightforward: Too many students are being suspended, in both public and charter schools, and we must do something about it.
Many education reformers are passionately committed to this narrative. But for the sake of provoking debate, let’s do a little thought experiment and examine some opposing claims:
- The public has no legitimate interest in decreasing school suspensions.
- Charter schools suspend too few children compared to public schools.
- All schools would be better off if they suspended more students.
Does this counter-narrative hold up to scrutiny? Perhaps not entirely. But it’s worth examining the logical leaps implicit in these claims. Doing so helps to reveal unwarranted assumptions in the commonly accepted narrative.
- The public clearly has a legitimate interest in schools that are orderly and safe. Teachers have a responsibility to balance the rights and interests of their students, and they often view suspensions as their best option. There should be a high burden of proof for the assertion that a tool used by teachers to enforce order does, on balance, more harm than good. Reasonable minds may disagree as to whether that burden has been met by the research.
- The media narrative that charter schools are more likely to suspend their students than public schools isn’t borne out by the evidence. As researcher Nat Malkus demonstrates, 83 percent of charters suspend students at a similar or lower rate than their neighboring public schools. Of course, the fact that more charter schools suspend fewer students doesn’t actually support the contention that they suspend too few. There’s a vast chasm from the empirical fact to that moral claim.
- It’s rather arrogant to say that charters should suspend more students. Spreadsheets don’t tell you what actually goes on in a classroom, and they don’t give insight into the judgments that teachers have to make every day. It takes some brass to second-guess a teacher who thought she could serve her students best without suspending the troublemaker in her class.
The humility of accepting that we don’t fully know what makes for the best school—and of consequently trusting educators to do what they think is best—was one of the driving impetuses behind the charter movement. Reformers vowed that charter schools would not be beholden to politicians and bureaucrats. Instead, they would be accountable to the parents they served, and so long as students were learning, their authorizers would have the humility not to overrule them.
That humility and trust stands in striking contrast to the attitude on display from the Office for Civil Rights. They’ve told America’s public schools that they may lose federal funding for neutral discipline policies that are “administered in an evenhanded manner” if they exact a “disparate impact.” OCR has been more than happy to use spreadsheets to second-guess teachers and force sea changes in school discipline. They’ve never actually had to withdraw federal funds; the implied threat has been enough.
Charter authorizers should not follow in the footsteps of OCR, no matter how carefully they wish to tread. Authorizers can try to say, “We think there’s something wrong with your discipline rates, but we’re not telling you what to do about it.” But given their life-or-death power over charter schools, it will be hard to avoid the impression of an implied threat, and many charters may feel compelled to take the same leap that major urban districts did under OCR pressure.
It’s a leap into the dark.
There is evidence from Chicago that school climate worsens when suspensions are reduced. But on the whole, we know very little about what happens when a school changes its disciplinary methods under external pressure. We just don’t have enough systematic school climate data to determine whether kids get into more fight, whether teachers feel like they aren’t in control, or whether parents worry when they send their kids to school.
Knowing the answers to these questions is essential to making a responsible decision. But very few districts have the information they need. This is where charter schools can and should lead by adopting sound measures of school climate. Companies like Panorama Education offer reliable school surveys; these tools are gaining adoption in schools across the country, and the charter sector could implement them to great effect.
Secretary King is right to say that “the goal for all schools should be to create a school culture that motivates students to want to do their best.” Charters can and should lead the way in that realm.
But they should not do so by being nudged (or shoved) into accepting the premise that suspensions are wrong. Rather, they should use their autonomy to double down on school climate and culture by adopting the tools necessary to build intentional communities of excellence. They should compete not only on standardized tests, but also on offering safe, respectful learning environments. Unlike public schools, which are beholden to politicians and public opinion, charters should be accountable solely to the families they serve.
Max Eden is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
