California public schools are on the cusp of initiating a new state-wide law that will ban schools from suspending students for antisocial, disruptive behavior.
The absolutely worst part of this initiative is that California doesn’t need to wait to find out the results of what will happen. This exact program was initiated in Miami-Dade and Broward County Florida schools with disastrous and deadly consequences.
SACRAMENTO (KRON) — New laws taking effect in 2020 will impact schools across California.
Starting next school year, it will be illegal for public schools in the state to suspend students in first through fifth grade for willfully defying teachers or administrators.
Then, from 2021 through 2025, it will be temporarily extended to kids in grades six through eight.
Supporters say suspensions for willful defiance are disproportionately used against students of color. (read more)
What is being described here is exactly the same as the “Promise Program” tried out in Broward County and “My Brother’s Keeper” program tried-out in Miami-Dade countysince 2010. Both counties initiated diversionary programs for anti-social behavior that focused on keeping offending students in the school.
After several years of attempting the alternate disciplinary programs the result was abject chaos in both school systems; systemic educational failure in all affected schools; and eventually the culmination of all that progressive effort resulted in the 2018 deaths of 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida.
It might seem like a good idea, most emotional progressive policies always do, but the prior educational results were exceptionally damaging.
Parents in California should strongly look at the results of where these types of programs were attempted before. There is no need to take a wait-and-see approach for the consequences. This approach has already been tested over the course of almost ten years.
In an effort to keep badly behaving students attending school the only thing that happens is teachers spend the majority of their time attempting to control those very same students. The school administrators then have to start initiating internal programs to protect good students from the bad ones while being forced to keep them together in the same classrooms. The result is an absolute mess.
Good students suffer because the quality of education drops almost immediately. Bad students don’t improve and there is no actionable consequence for even violent anti-social behavior.
Parents end up stuck in the middle with few options…. until eventually it all boils over and either: (A) a formerly stable student, who has now been initiated to years of bullying, comes to school with a weapon to fend off the emotional or physical violence; or (B) one of the willfully-defiant students, like Nikolas Cruz, comes to school with a weapon to complete their mission.
In the lead-up to this guaranteed outcome, as increasing violence becomes unacceptable to the parents, reactionary school districts will try to find a way to stay compliant with the law while retaining student safety…. Ergo schools will start hiring security officers in an attempt to be proactive; metal detectors will become visible; school lockers will be eliminated as a source of potential contraband… which shifts the concern to backpacks etc. etc… It’s a never ending cascade of unintended consequences.
Over time, within this state-wide educational jungle, each district will then start debating the acceptable number of violent assaults, rapes, drug offenses and other crimes that will have to be navigated in order to meet all the legal compliance demands.
A multi-tiered process of loosely defined school regulations will result… every individual decision will become opaque based on the situational crisis and the people placed in untenable situations. The negative impacts will disproportionately be felt in the minority neighborhoods who already have educational challenges.
California school bus drivers, now forced to transport violent offenders, will request protective cages on their buses. Some districts will reimburse teachers for bullet proof clothing. School administrative offices will spend millions on security, CCTV, steel reinforced doors and armed security; all of this collective effort is used to manage an increasingly defiant group of students. However, all of this effort amounts to a focus that is entirely detached from teaching anything.
Schools will turn to law enforcement for help. Arrests will replace suspensions…. then there will be a backlash to the number of students getting arrested… the same progressive thought leaders who initiated the “non suspension” policy for willful defiance, will now propose juvenile justice reform that will lower “student arrests”…. and so the cycle will go until eventually the entire educational system is based on Safari Rules.
Loosely defined, Safari Rules say: don’t get out of your car or it’s your own fault for being eaten by the animals. Translated into context: sending your kids to public schools is the same as pushing them out the car door.
California doesn’t need to wait to see the outcome, it has already been tried.
