Kicking Kansas City kids out of school ‘a cycle that they too often don’t get out of’
The Kansas City Public School District’s board is set to vote Wednesday on a plan that would halt suspensions and expulsions for pre-K and elementary school children unless their behavior is a danger to themselves or others.
They should approve that plan, because as we’ve known for a long time, suspensions and expulsions are ineffective as discipline — a literal waste of time.
Students who are removed from school for misbehavior are more likely to drop out and to engage in violence. They are at higher risk of ending up in alternative disciplinary schools or, in a worst-case scenario, in prison.
Kicking kids out of school as discipline does nothing about whatever is causing them to act out, and in some cases sends the child back to the source of the problem. The cause could be some issue in the home, some mental or emotional challenge. Sometimes, the child is hungry or not sleeping. Taking children out of school does nothing to give students the skills to control their behavior in the future. And isn’t that what education is all about, preparing kids to successfully navigate the future?
As soon as Superintendent Mark Bedell got to KCPS in 2016, he started talking about reducing the number of suspensions and expulsions. “The truth is a lot of the time students are just crying out for help.”
Nationally, more school districts are moving away from suspensions and expulsions in favor of in-school counseling, conflict resolution and other more productive solutions.
The bottom line, says Nate Hogan, who chairs the KCPS board: “We know that when kids are not in school they are not learning. I do not support suspending young children and I would even like to see the same consideration given for middle and high school students eventually. ”
We agree.
More2, a social justice organization in Kansas City, has been working with the district for more than a year in an effort to move away from suspensions and expulsions.
Ron Carter, a member of the More2 board of directors, said he’s particularly concerned about suspending children in third grade. “It is a crucial time for students,” he said. “Putting a child at that grade level out starts them on a cycle that too often they don’t get out of.”
Banning suspensions and expulsions also is a move toward gaining more equity in schools, Carter said.
A report by ProPublica, using data from the National Center for Education Statistics, found that Black and Hispanic students in Missouri are more than four times more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than their white peers. In Kansas, those students are five times more likely to be disciplined with suspension or expulsion.
KCPS has been working to reduce the number of suspensions for several years. Last year, even with so many students learning remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic, 245 students were suspended from Kansas City public schools, according to Missouri education department statistics.
The district suspension rate was 1.7%, down dramatically from 2015, when 1,050 students were suspended and the rate was 7.4%. It was in 2015 that the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the Civil Rights Project at UCLA revealed that Missouri suspended Black elementary students at a higher rate than any other state in the 2011-12 school year.
If the school board approves the change, it’s going to take about a year for KCPS to set up a framework of counseling and other behavioral intervention methods to support the no suspension policy, Hogan said.
How well that’s done will be crucial, and we hope will encourage other districts in the area to follow suit.
