Education

Suspensions Do More Harm Than Good

The research is clear, so why do schools continue to suspend struggling students?

It was one of the worst days of my parenting life

It was probably one of the worst days of my son’s young life too.

We were both crying as I drove him home from school, having been called to pick him up because he had a meltdown in his second grade classroom.

“Why did you do that?” I asked him through tears (a stupid question, I now realize, because he surely did not know).

My poor 6-year-old boy cried harder, saying,

“I don’t know! I’m just a bad kid who does bad things!”

My heart has never ached more for him than it did that day. My sweet little boy thought he was the problem. He wasn’t.

Yes, he had (and has) struggles, and his behaviour was very challenging at that time. Certainly, it was stressful for us as parents, the staff at his school, and for our son as well. No one is to blame for the fact that he was born with a differently wired brain and that he struggles with emotional dysregulation and impulsivity.

No one is to blame. That includes my son.

What the school is responsible for is how they mistreated him and how they mishandled every single challenging situation. When he was in first grade and new to the school, not yet diagnosed, I was much more understanding. I had no idea what was going on for my little boy and neither did they. We were all learning. The school staff needed time to get to know him, build relationships, and learn how to best support him.

By the end of that first year, however, they had everything they could possibly have needed and more. They had an amazing child-centred clinical team providing them with excellent recommendations and support, they had a parent — me — who was 100% on board, willing to work collaboratively and cooperatively with the school team in order to benefit my son.

I reduced my workload and spent much of my time attending appointments and meetings, and made myself available to pick my son up if he was having a rough day. I read every single book on ADHD, neurodiversity, parenting, and emotional regulation that I could get my hands on — my spouse and I spent thousands of dollars in that one year alone to educate ourselves and to provide every possible support for our son.

“I’m just a bad kid who does bad things!”

At only six years old, my poor little guy had already internalized the negative messages the school had continued to send him through both actions and words. This was only October of grade two.

Despite being provided with a wealth of information, resources, and recommendations to proactively set my son up for success, the school had done absolutely nothing but set him up to fail.

It’s no wonder my son thought he was a bad kid because apparently, his school did too.

Suffice it to say, he is no longer attending that school.

Suspensions Change Nothing

“Our traditional discipline policies and protocols have been reactive and reflexive, focusing primarily on consequences.”

— Lori L. Desautels

When school administrators suspend students who exhibit concerning behaviours, they are simply sending the perceived “problem” away temporarily. The child who is struggling comes back with the same difficulties, returning to the same environment that was clearly not working for them in the first place.

Students are constantly removed from school without a backup plan. They return, and we end up repeating the same punitive procedures that exhaust everyone involved without yielding any real solutions (Desautels, 2020).

Punishments do not teach skills, they teach blame, guilt, and shame.

“The misguided intention to help these kids “make good choices” often results in us big people responding in ways that can be even more harmful. We’re punishing them for the lack of skill they don’t yet have, or for a psychological injury that has yet to be healed.” — Dr. Jody Carrington

I will acknowledge that some form of suspension or change of environment may, on rare occasions, be necessary when student behaviours are unsafe and the school staff needs time to regroup.

That said, what must be understood is that research has shown teachers and students who endorse zero-tolerance policies in schools actually have a lower feeling of safety at school (Huang & Cornell, 2021). Seeing students and peers be suspended does not make anyone genuinely safer, nor help them feel safer.

The adults need to meet to identify the expectations that the student is having difficulty meeting, identify the skills the student is lacking, and develop a plan for how the family and school will work together to help that student learn those skills (Greene, 2021).

Any time this is done, however, there must be a follow-up with the student, the family, and the school staff in order to repair the relationships. The adults need to work with the child on problem-solving, to support the child in making amends for the harm their behaviour may have caused, and to support others in making amends to that child for the harm that has been done to them in this process.

It must be understood and acknowledged that removing the student from the classroom is a form of segregation, isolation, and rejection. If, and only if, absolutely necessary for safety, it must be just the first step of many.

The entire team, both adults and the student must learn from the concerning incident and move forward with the goal of preventing future unsafe situations. This is done through a multi-disciplinary approach, including (not limited to):

• Adapting the environment to better support the student, to set them up for success, and to meet their needs.
• Providing support and training to school staff.
• Using Dr. Ross Greene’s Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (CPS) approach with the student and family to identify concerns and work together to come up with mutually agreeable solutions.

This approach has been shown to reduce rates of teacher stress, discipline referrals, and suspensions in schools that have implemented the CPS model with their students (Pollastri et al., 2013).

Self-Concept

We should be teaching students that they are not bad, they are simply lacking skills — skills the adults are there to teach them. When we suspend students we put the focus and blame on their behaviour and character, rather than seeing the whole picture, and how the environment is also contributing to the child’s struggles.

Schools can and should be safe spaces for children, not institutions that increase stress, fear, and anxiety, and exacerbate feelings of alienation. This is especially true for children who don’t have a safe place at home or in their own neighbourhoods.

Students who continually experience behavioural challenges and punishment begin to adopt a “bad kid” identity and slowly gravitate to any group where they feel social acceptance and family privilege (Desautels, 2020).

“When students are removed, they lose learning, fall further behind, and over time, become alienated and disenfranchised.”

— Dr. Ross Greene

I don’t blame them. Why would anyone want to be somewhere they feel unwanted or unwelcome?

Our focus and effort need to be aimed at identifying the underlying difficulties and causes, then working with students to solve problems instead of working against them. We tell children that we are on their side, that we are there to help them, yet our actions often prove otherwise.

Stigma and stress

Not only does a child who is repeatedly suspended start to view themselves as a “bad” kid, their peers and school staff also start to view them through that lens. The student develops a reputation, accumulates labels, and their future behaviours are interpreted with these biases in mind.

Suspensions harm the trust and relationship between the student and the school, relationships that are necessary for any child to succeed. Suspensions convey the message to the child that they are not wanted, that they are the problem, so they are being sent away.

“Suspensions and expulsions are pushing out the very kids who need connection the most.” — Dr. Jody Carrington

When children are blamed, shamed, and stigmatized, this greatly increases their stress and anxiety. They’re not being taught the skills they need to do better, yet they’re being punished for not doing better, so the cycle continues — in fact, it doesn’t just go around in circles, it gradually worsens.

“Traditional discipline can inadvertently escalate negative behaviours because survival brains cannot process rewards, consequences, or reason.”

— Lori L. Desautels

Retribution is hypocritical

We tell children various iterations of phrases such as, “Two wrongs don’t make a right” and, “Do unto others as you would have done to you”.

If one child hits another, then that child hits back, what do we usually tell them? Something along the lines of it’s not okay to hit back, use your words, or ask for an adult to help.

We encourage children to use problem-solving skills with their peers, yet adults often don’t use them in their interactions with children.

We send the message that it’s not okay for children to use the “eye for an eye” philosophy of dealing with unwanted behaviours, yet it’s okay for adults to do so.

“The tit-for-tat rule views human encounters through a lens of distrust throws us into a survival mode where our goal is to protect and defend.”

— Lori L. Desautels

Using a retributive and punitive system for dealing with unwanted behaviours does not teach children any new skills, nor does this role-model the behaviours we want them to emulate. Children need to see behaviours in action before they can learn to use them in their own lives.

Where’s the Upside?

Suspending struggling students does not teach them how to do better, it stigmatizes and shames children, increases stress, and is hypocritical.

I’ve worked in schools, I’ve met amazing teachers and school staff, and I’ve seen how hard many of these caring, dedicated professionals work to meet the needs of their students. I know that our public schools are terribly underfunded, understaffed, and under-resourced. Teachers and support staff are under-appreciated, overworked, and underpaid.

The solution is not to expect significant changes from teachers or school staff without providing additional training and resources. These important changes need to start at the top, but that’s a story for another day.

Challenging behaviour is hard on everyone, but most especially on the child who is struggling and suffering the consequences. It’s up to the adults to know better and to do better.

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References

Carrington, J. (2020). Kids These Days: A game plan for (re)connecting with those we teach, lead, and love. IMPress Books.

Desautels, L. (2020). Connections Over Compliance: Rewiring our perceptions of discipline. Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing.

Greene, Ross, W. (2021). Lost & Found: Unlocking collaboration and compassion to help our most vulnerable, misunderstood students, and all the rest. (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Huang, F. L., & Cornell, D. G. (2021). Teacher Support for Zero Tolerance Is Associated With Higher Suspension Rates and Lower Feelings of Safety. School Psychology Review, 50:2–3, 388–405. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2020.1832865.

Lacoe, J., & Steinberg, M. P. (2019). Do Suspensions Affect Student Outcomes? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 41(1), 34–62. https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373718794897.

Pollastri, A. R., Epstein, L. D., Heath, G. H., & Ablon, J. S. (2013). The Collaborative Problem Solving approach: outcomes across settings. Harvard review of psychiatry, 21(4), 188–199. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24651507.