Homeroom Security

School Discipline in an Age of Fear

Aaron Kupchik

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780814748459
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildungspolitik

Police officers, armed security guards, surveillance cameras, and metal detectors are common features of the disturbing new landscape at many of today’s high schools. You will also find new and harsher disciplinary practices: zero-tolerance policies, random searches with drug-sniffing dogs, and mandatory suspensions, expulsions, and arrests, despite the fact that school crime and violence have been decreasing nationally for the past two decades. While most educators, students, and parents accept these harsh policing and punishment strategies based on the assumption that they keep children safe, Aaron Kupchik argues that we need to think more carefully about how we protect and punish students.

In Homeroom Security, Kupchik shows that these policies lead schools to prioritize the rules instead of students, so that students’ real problems—often the very reasons for their misbehavior—get ignored. Based on years of impressive field research, Kupchik demonstrates that the policies we have zealously adopted in schools across the country are the opposite of the strategies that are known to successfully reduce student misbehavior and violence. As a result, contemporary school discipline is often unhelpful, and can be hurtful to students in ways likely to make schools more violent places. Furthermore, those students who are most at-risk of problems in schools and dropping out are the ones who are most affected by these counterproductive policies. Our schools and our students can and should be safe, and Homeroom Security offers real strategies for making them so.

1 A NEW REGIME

with Nicole L. Bracy

The following appeared in a recent op-ed piece published in the Boston Globe:

A 13-year-old girl was handcuffed and arrested at Brocton [Massachusetts] High School last June for wearing a T-shirt. The T-shirt, which she was asked by school officials to remove, bore the image of her ex-boyfriend, 14-year-old Marvin Constant, who had recently been killed in a Boston area shooting. The girl refused to remove the memorial shirt and was arrested for “causing a disturbance.”

In Texas, 14-year-old high school freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, was sentenced to seven years in prison. Her crime was pushing a hall monitor out of the way when she was stopped from entering a school building. The official charge was “assault on a public servant.”

While extreme, these cases are not unusual. In Massachusetts and across the country, an increasing number of incidents that traditionally have been handled in schools by trips to the principal’s office are being dealt with by law enforcement officials and judges in the juvenile justice system. Countless school children, particularly children of color in poverty-stricken zip codes, are being pushed out of schools and into juvenile correctional facilities for minor misconduct.¹

This is the new homeroom security. Public schools today look very different than those of just a generation ago; they have undergone a host of changes over the past fifteen years as concerns about security and safety have permeated American consciousness. These changes have been twofold: first, schools have ratcheted up their punishment policies, clarifying what are and are not acceptable behaviors and enforcing these rules with tougher penalties for students who violate them; and second, schools have introduced security forces (such as security guards and law enforcement officers) and surveillance technologies (such as metal detectors and security cameras) to deter students from misbehavior and catch those who do misbehave. In the effort to protect our youth, schools have borrowed a variety of policies and practices from the criminal justice system.²

Zero-tolerance policies, which require schools to suspend or expel any student caught violating a rule, are a significant part of this new regime. Such policies are controversial because they establish categories of offenses that are met with set punishments and often don’t allow for extenuating circumstances or exceptions. A student who forgot that he left a pocket knife in his backpack after a weekend camping may be given the same punishment as a student who brings a gun to school. Zero-tolerance policies are important because they can lead to serious consequences for student misbehavior, but also because of their symbolic value; as the name implies, a zero-tolerance policy communicates that “tolerance,” once a value we wanted to teach our children, is now out of the question when it comes to certain categories of misbehaviors or crimes.

Another way that schools have demonstrated their commitment to safety is by making law enforcement officers part of their school staffs. Currently, the most common type of law enforcement officer found in schools is the school resource officer (SRO), a sworn, armed, uniformed police officer placed in a public school. Although law enforcement is the primary responsibility of SROs, their role is not entirely law enforcement–related. The National Sheriffs’ Association describes the responsibilities of an SRO as including “law enforcement, problem solving, teaching, counseling, and crisis management.”³ It is common for such officers to counsel students, organize extracurricular activities for them, and teach law-related courses.

Many public schools have installed security cameras throughout the interiors and exteriors of school buildings. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, during the 2005–2006 school year nearly 70% of public high schools used security cameras to monitor the school. By comparison, just six years earlier (the 1999–2000 school year) only 26% of public high schools had security cameras.⁴

It is also increasingly common for schools to use drug-sniffing dogs around campus; 41% of middle schools and 61% of high schools used drug-sniffing dogs at least once over the 2005–2006 school year. Other security measures that exist on school campuses, but are somewhat less common, include metal detectors and bans on student backpacks. Approximately 5% of all schools and 11% of public high schools in 2005–2006 report using metal detectors to randomly check students for weapons as they enter the school building in the morning, and 6% of schools either required that all student backpacks be transparent (clear plastic) or prohibited students from bringing backpacks to school at all.⁵

Not surprisingly, considering these new security measures, the numbers of students being suspended and expelled from public schools have increased dramatically. In a 2001 report from the Justice Policy Institute, the authors find that school suspensions and expulsions nearly doubled from 1974 to 1998 while rates of student victimization remained stable, leading them to conclude that suspensions and expulsions are not the result of increasingly high levels of victimization at school.⁶ The additional suspensions are largely a response to non-violent misbehavior, not serious incidents such as violence, as schools have become tougher on less serious offenses than in years past.⁷

Despite common rhetoric about the growing dangers inside schools, school crime has been declining over the past two decades.⁸ In 1992, the rate of crime against students (both violent and non-violent combined) at school was 144 incidents per 1,000 students. By 2005, the rate had dropped to 57 per 1,000 students.⁹ In fact, schools are among the safest places for youth to be; students are much more likely to be affected by violent crime outside of school than inside.¹⁰ In 1996, the Centers for Disease Control reported that there was less than a one in a million chance that a student would be killed or commit suicide in or around school.¹¹ By 1999 this rate had decreased to one in 2 million, and by 2006 the chances of a student dying at school by suicide or homicide was one in 3.2 million.¹² Not only is crime in schools down, but students also report feeling safer in schools today than they did a decade ago. The percentage of students between the ages of twelve and eighteen who report being afraid of getting attacked or harmed at school declined from 12% in 1995 to 6% in 2005.¹³

It might be tempting to assume that the decreases in school violence are due to the changes in school discipline, but the existing evidence suggests that this assumption is false. Several researchers have investigated the types of strategies that best prevent crime and violence in schools. Though these researchers have used a variety of different methodologies for studying this question and conducted their studies in different locations, their results converge on a set of conclusions about what schools can do to reduce rates of student misbehavior; criminologist Denise C. Gottfredson offers a comprehensive review of this research in her book Schools and Delinquency, from which I borrow in the following paragraphs. One of the most consistent findings is that schools must impose firm, clear, and consistent rules. Students must be punished for misbehaving, the punishment must be sufficiently firm that students understand their rule violations are serious, and everyone must know what kind of punishment to expect when they break school rules. This means that the rules and punishments must be effectively communicated to students and school staff, and that the punishments for breaking the rules must be consistently applied.¹⁴

A second consistent theme in this research is that schools can reduce student misbehavior by creating an inclusive, democratic, or positive psychosocial climate for students.¹⁵ Schools with the following characteristics are shown to have lower rates of student misbehavior than other schools:

• Students perceive that they have the ability to shape school policies;¹⁶

• Students perceive the rules to be fair and clear;¹⁷

• Schools reward students’ positive behavior, not just punish them for misbehavior;¹⁸

• Schools enhance students’ behavioral problem-solving skills (modeled after approaches to problem-solving policing);¹⁹

• Schools are communally organized, whereby there is a system of shared values and a pattern of caring relationships among students and staff.²⁰

A number of studies conclude that when schools are able to create a climate that rewards positive behaviors, allows students a voice in their treatment and in school governance, maintains a sense of fairness among students, and treats students with respect and care, student misbehavior is reduced. As Gottfredson states: “Delinquent youth cultures flourish in schools that do not or cannot establish and maintain a ‘communal’ social organization. Communal schools are characterized by a system of shared values among members of the organization, particularly relating to the purposes of the institution, expectations for learning and behavior, and expectations for student achievement; meaningful social interactions among school members; and a distinctive pattern of social relations embodying an ‘ethos of caring’ and involving collegial relations among adults in the institution.”²¹

The research consistently shows that firm and consistent rules are important but insufficient. Schools also need to pay attention to how they enforce rules and how adults and children interact within the schools. By creating a climate in which students learn positive behaviors and problem-solving skills, in which they have meaningful interactions with adults, and in which they feel fairly treated, schools can reduce student misbehaviors.

These research findings follow directly from one of today’s most popular and influential criminological theories: control theory. Though the roots of this theory extend back to Thomas Hobbes and the enlightenment era, its modern version is usually attributed to the criminologist Travis Hirschi’s social bond theory. Hirschi noted that if youths are bonded to social institutions like schools—if they internalize the norms of the schools, feel they have something to lose if they violate the school’s rules, and use their time constructively in school activities—then they are less likely to break school rules or criminal laws.²² When schools build a positive, communal school climate, they improve students’ bonds to the schools and thus reduce misbehavior.

This research result is also consistent with a separate body of work on procedural justice that shows that if citizens are treated fairly when confronted with an authority, they are more likely to perceive the authority to be legitimate and, subsequently, to abide by rules. For example, people have greater confidence in the police and courts when they believe these officials act fairly, and as a result they are more likely to perceive laws as legitimate and abide by them. The theory has been repeatedly tested and validated, often in the context of police-citizen interactions; the research consistently finds that citizens’ views of justice are shaped at least as much by how they are treated (e.g., whether an officer treats them respectfully and listens to them) as by whether they are arrested.²³

The extension of the theory to schools is clear. If schools treat students respectfully and fairly, students are more likely to perceive the school’s authority as legitimate and to follow school rules. As Gottfredson states, “By modeling appropriate behavior and establishing a fair and just discipline system, school staff enhances student beliefs in the validity of rules and laws.”²⁴ Unfortunately, the reality of school discipline often directly contradicts this understanding.²⁵ Schools often enforce discipline in ways that fail to respect students, that erode a communal climate, that increase students’ powerlessness and alienation, and that are likely to undermine students’ perceptions of legitimate school authority. This explains why prior studies suggest that tougher rules, more suspensions, and increased security have little or no effect on student misbehavior. In fact, several studies now show not only that zero-tolerance policies don’t work, but that they can actually make things worse, as students may rebel against punitive disciplinary policies that they perceive to be unfair.²⁶ Rigid school disciplinary policies can alienate students by creating an adversarial relationship between students and adults who work in schools, making students feel uncomfortable going to teachers/staff when they have a problem.²⁷ Moreover, some students may face real psychological harm if subjected to intrusive security and discipline measures like strip searches or corporal punishment.²⁸

Contemporary school discipline may also be ineffective because often it is unfair. Several existing studies very clearly, consistently, and convincingly illustrate how strict discipline policies disproportionately affect students of color and poor students.²⁹ One early and well-cited study finds that black students are twice as likely to be suspended as white students and, independent of race, being poor also increases a student’s probability of being suspended.³⁰ Other research concludes that black students’ disproportionate likelihood of receiving school punishment is influenced by the fact that they receive lower grades, are perceived as less well-behaved, and have been disproportionately sanctioned at school in the past.³¹ Evidence also suggests that students of color are more likely to be referred for discipline because teachers and other school staff perceive their behavior to be more threatening, disrespectful, and inappropriate compared to the behavior of white students.³² As educational researcher Russell Skiba and colleagues state, “In the absence of a plausible alternative hypothesis, it becomes likely that highly consistent statistical discrepancies in school punishment for black and white students indicate a systematic and prevalent bias in the practice of school discipline.”³³

In addition to being ineffective (and possibly counterproductive) at deterring misbehavior and being inequitably applied, the new regime of school punishments may harm students’ academic chances as well. Students who are suspended or expelled are more likely to drop out of school altogether, thereby reducing their opportunities for employment and other successes later in life.³⁴

Critics of these modern school policies also cite increasingly obvious parallels between schools and the criminal justice system, and the increasing likelihood that youth punished for school misbehavior are sent to the juvenile or criminal justice system. By relying on police officers, ramping up punishments for misbehavior, and subjecting students to invasive surveillance (such as cameras, metal detectors, searches by drug-sniffing dogs, and the like), schools have created what some call a “school-to-prison pipeline.”³⁵ Student behaviors that once were dealt with by teachers, administrators, and counselors—such as minor fights between students, disruptive classroom behavior, or truancy—are now outsourced to be dealt with by criminal justice agencies.³⁶ What’s more, the risks of criminal justice involvement are not equally distributed, as students of color are most likely to be arrested as a result of a school-based incident and funneled into the criminal justice system.³⁷ In light of these consequences, organizations like the American Bar Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency have publicly denounced the use of zero-tolerance policies in schools.

Critics of the ...