Developing Trauma-Responsive Approaches to Student Discipline

A Guide to Trauma-Informed Practice in PreK-12 Schools

Kirk Eggleston, Erinn J. Green, Shawn Abel, Stephanie Poe, Charol Shakeshaft

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000389180
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Behavioural Management

Building on comprehensive research conducted in US schools, this accessible volume offers an effective model of school leadership to develop and implement school-wide, trauma-responsive approaches to student discipline.

Recognizing that challenging student behaviours are often rooted in early experiences of trauma, the volume builds on a model from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to walk readers through the processes of realizing, recognizing, responding to, and resisting the impacts of trauma in school contexts. Research and interviews model an educational reform process and explain how a range of differentiated interventions including Positive Behaviour Interventions and Supports (PBIS), social-emotional learning (SEL), restorative justice, and family engagement can be used to boost student resilience and pro-social behaviour. Practical steps are supported by current theory, resources, and stories of implementation from superintendents, principals, and teachers.

This text will benefit school leaders, teachers, and counsellors with an interest in restorative student discipline, emotional and behavioural difficulties in young people, and PreK-12 education more broadly. Those interested in school psychology, trauma studies, and trauma counselling with children and adolescents will also benefit from the volume.

Part I

Understanding the Need for Trauma-Responsive Discipline Reform

1 Identifying the Problems of Exclusionary Discipline

According to the National Clearinghouse on Supportive School Discipline, exclusionary discipline is any form of school disciplinary action “that removes or excludes a student from his or her usual educational setting” (Exclusionary Discipline, 2018). Exclusionary discipline ranges from an hour in the principal’s office, to several hours of in-school suspension, to a day or more suspended out of school, to an entire year of expulsion from school. Over the last 30 years, exclusionary discipline has been widely practiced in schools throughout the United States in accordance with zero-tolerance policies. These policies mandate predetermined consequences for specific offenses under the presumption that strict enforcement of rules is an effective deterrent to breaking them (Lhamon et al., 2019).

Originally intended to reduce violence in schools, zero-tolerance policies have extended the use of exclusionary discipline “to an ever-widening range of infractions, including serious incidents (e.g., weapons, fighting) to lesser infractions (e.g., wearing hats, failing to complete homework)” (Lhamon et al., 2019, p. 28). As early as 2001, the American Bar Association condemned zero-tolerance policies for being “a one-size-fits-all solution to all the problems that schools confront,” redefining “students as criminals,” eliminating “the common sense that comes with discretion,” and doing “little to improve school safety” (National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 2018). Despite such criticism, zero-tolerance policies have continued to justify a system of student discipline that is punitive, racially biased, poverty sustaining, and contributing to childhood trauma.

Exclusionary Discipline is a Punitive System

In Virginia, where four of us serve as principals, zero-tolerance policies have until recently been the norm, and out-of-school forms of discipline are the penalty principals have practiced most commonly (Langberg & Ciolfi, 2016; Woolard, 2017). In May 2016, Legal Aid Justice Center first published Suspended Progress, an annual review of discipline data reported by local Virginia school divisions to the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE). The report identified approximately 70,000 individual students who had been issued over 126,000 out-of-school suspensions (OSS) as punishment for code of conduct violations during the 2014–2015 school year (Langberg & Ciolfi, 2016). Suspended Progress broke down the data further by school levels, school divisions, types of offenses, and demographics as follows:

Over 20% of suspensions were issued to elementary school students, including 16,000 suspensions to students in pre-kindergarten through third grade. Over 10% of ninth grade students were suspended at least once. In seven divisions, more than 15% of all students were suspended at least once. The majority of suspensions were issued for non-violent, relatively minor misbehavior. In fact, approximately half of suspensions were for cell phone use, disruption, defiance, insubordination, and disrespect. Perhaps counterintuitively, 670 suspensions were issued for attendance. In other words, students were suspended from school for skipping class or not coming to school. (Langberg & Ciolfi, 2016, para 2–3)

Legal Aid Justice Center has provided updates annually since the original report. In 2016–2017, the most recent data available, suspensions and expulsions for all students amounted to 586,280 school days of instruction lost (Woolard, 2017)!

We use Virginia as a microcosm of a nationwide problem of exclusionary discipline. According to the Civil Rights Data Collection (2020), in 2015–2016, of the 50.5 million students enrolled in US public schools, 2,557,072 students were suspended one or more times, totaling 11,392,474 days missed due to out-of-school suspensions. Figure 1.1 compares Virginia with five other states and the US average as a percent of all students suspended one or more times in 2015–2016. Virginia is equal with the US rate of suspensions of 5.3% (Civil Rights Data Collection, 2020).

Figure 1.1 Percentage of Students Suspended One or More Times in 2015–2016
(Civil Rights Data Collection, 2020)

When this data is broken down by race, Black students are suspended at more than twice the rate nationally and in each of the six states. Figure 1.2 shows Virginia is below the US rate of Black student suspensions of 11.2% (Civil Rights Data Collection, 2020).

Figure 1.2 Percentage of Black Male Students Suspended in 2015–2016
(Civil Rights Data Collection, 2020)

Black males with disabilities are suspended at more than three times the overall rate across the board. Figure 1.3 shows Virginia nearly equal with the national rate of 15.9% (Civil Rights Data Collection, 2020).

Figure 1.3 Percentage of Black Males with Disabilities Suspended in 2015–2016
(Civil Rights Data Collection, 2020)

By the examples of these states and many others, exclusionary discipline is a punitive system administered indiscriminately and unfairly across the United States. Research demonstrates exclusionary discipline is racially biased (Cartledge & Kourea, 2008; Gregory & Mosely, 2010; Simmons-Reed & Cartledge, 2014; Skiba et al., 2002; Staats, 2016; Welsh & Little, 2018).

Exclusionary Discipline is Racially Biased

The National Education Association (NEA) defines culture as “the everyday experiences, people, events, smells, sounds, and habits of behavior [that shape] a person’s sense of who he or she is and where he or she fits in the family, community, and society” (National Education Association, 2018, para. 3). Culture also shapes a student’s sense of where he or she fits in the classroom, an identity that a teacher can either alienate or engage. According to Cartledge and Kourea (2008), “Punitive and control measures are the least effective ways to help students become more adaptive in their behavior” (p. 352). By contrast, “Teachers who understand culturally different behaviors respond in ways that appropriately and proactively accept or redirect students’ behaviors when necessary” (Cartledge & Kourea, 2008, p. 353). These teachers have cultural competence, “the ability to successfully teach students who come from a culture or cultures other than our own” (National Education Association, 2018, para. 1).

Cultural competence cannot be taught in a single workshop or professional development session. It is a conscious and continuous process of acceptance, respect, and responsiveness that becomes acquired and demonstrated in the policies, structures, practices, attitudes, expectations, and hiring practices of an organization (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2014). For teachers, cultural competence means valuing and adapting to diversity, being culturally self-aware, understanding the dynamics of difference, and acquiring knowledge of students’ culture (National Education Association, 2018). According to researchers at Brown University, culturally responsive teaching is characterized by student-centered instruction that facilitates learning within a positive and relevant context of culture, holds positive perspectives with parents and families, and communicates consistently high expectations for students of every culture (National Education Association, 2018). According to Skiba, Michael, Nardo, and Peterson (2002), “teacher training in appropriate and culturally competent methods of classroom management is likely to be the most pressing need in addressing racial disparities in school discipline” (p. 336).

When lacking cultural competence, teachers or administrators may act on implicit biases that interfere with equitable student instruction and discipline (Staats, 2016). Implicit biases are pervasive, unconscious attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions (Staats, 2016). All humans have implicit biases, “and they can challenge even the most well-intentioned and egalitarian-minded individuals, resulting in actions and outcomes that do not necessarily align with explicit intentions” (Staats, 2016, p. 29). Implicit biases function on an emotional level as automatic associations of social judgment (Bergland, 2013). Individuals are most likely to rely on these associations in situations that involve ambiguous or incomplete information, time constraints, and fatigue (Staats, 2016). “Given that teachers encounter many, if not all, of these conditions through the course of a school day, it is unsurprising that implicit biases may be contributing to teachers’ actions and decisions” (Staats, 2016, p. 30).

According to Dr. Ivory Toldson, CEO and President of Quality Education for Minorities Network:

There are more than six million teachers in the United States; nearly 80% of public school teachers are White, 9.3% are Black, 7.4% are Hispanic, 2.3% are Asian, and 1.2% are another race. The US has one White female teacher for every 15 students and one Black male teacher for every 534 students. (2018)

Such disparity can create a “diversity gap” in which a large number of students do not relate with their teachers, and vice versa, which “creates conditions for cultural discontinuities” (Skiba et al., 2002, p 101). Cultural discontinuities can include “deficit thinking,” wherein White teachers have lower academic expectations for Black students, especially males and students with disabilities (SWD) (Cartledge & Kourea, 2008). These students may internalize their low standing in the classroom and can become academically unmotivated and disruptive (Cartledge & Kourea, 2008). Conversely, Good and Nichols (2001) determined “Black students—especially boys—and to a lesser extent other children who come from low income homes, may find their academic scores improperly lowered because of classroom conduct” (p. 121).

Gregory and Mosely (2010) found that an achievement gap for Black students is correlated with a discipline gap. In other words, many Black students are trapped in a cycle of failure and defiance. Gregory and Weinstein (2008) measured “defiance” as a descriptor in office discipline referrals (ODRs) and found Black students were overrepresented by a small number of White teachers. Surveying students who were most often referred, the authors found these students were more likely to be defiant when they perceived their teacher as untrustworthy. The authors concluded these teachers had reacted to norm-violating versus maladaptive behaviors and suggested the teachers were actually provoking the defiance. Welsh and Little (2018) concluded the same:

Educational settings that subscribe to societal norms generate backlash from students who are unable or unwilling to act outside of their normative behaviors. Teachers view these behaviors as inappropriate, thus warranting some form of consequence. Likewise, students view these teachers as an untrustworthy authoritarian. The dynamic produces a culture of control that impedes the success of [students]. (p. 766)

A culture of control in the classroom can lead to ODRs. Skiba et al. (2002) observed that ODRs disproportionately ...