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The ability of teachers to remove disruptive students from the classroom is under review by two House legislative committees. The House Committee on Corrections and Committee on Juvenile Justice and Family Issues are jointly studying an interim charge relating to student referrals to disciplinary alternative education programs (DAEPs), juvenile justice alternative education programs (JJAEPs), in-school suspension, etc., and held a lengthy meeting on Thursday, April 17, to hear from invited witnesses. There was no opportunity for public testimony, and no classroom teachers were included on the expert panels.
The Texas Appleseed Project, a nonprofit law organization, was featured prominently at the hearing, with a presentation on the organization’s recent report and a spot on one of the panels. The report, “Texas School-to-Prison Pipeline, Dropout to Incarceration: The Impact of School Dicipline and Zero Tolerance,” examines the connections between disciplinary referrals and later criminal behavior. The report’s emphasis on these connections seems to propose a cause-and-effect relationship. It also focuses on statistics indicating that minority and special education students are disproportionately referred to AEPs (it does not appear that socioeconomic status was similarly analyzed in the report). The implication throughout seems to be that the problems lie more in the referral process than in student behavior.
TCTA has been keeping a close eye on the group’s work in this area. Among the policy recommendations from the report are proposals to place a cap on suspensions, as well as ISS and DAEP placements, and to notify districts that have disciplinary referrals – either of which could have a direct chilling effect on teachers’ ability to remove disruptive students.
We were gratified by the questions and comments of legislators during the hearing. Several committee members remarked on the lack of evidence pointing to a causal connection between discipline referrals and later criminal behavior, and a later discussion noted that, if appropriate education is taking place at an AEP, referral is not necessarily a “bad” thing for the student.
The focus of the hearing shifted to the quality of AEPs (with regard both to education and to behavior rehabilitation). Committee members heard from a variety of program providers and state agency staff who gave more information on what’s happening in AEPs across the state. Legislators are clearly concerned about whether students are receiving a quality education in AEPs (and TCTA will be reminding lawmakers throughout these discussions that programs must be adequately funded in order to ensure that this goal is achievable). There is considerable interest in refining the state data reporting systems to allow better monitoring of AEPs and to gauge the quality of the education provided in those programs.
Some committee members were concerned about the progression of students from DAEPs to JJAEPs, particularly in situations where the student has not committed a criminal offense. However, even then, such a progression isn’t necessarily harmful if the student cannot be served in the traditional school setting and is receiving an adequate education.
TCTA will be communicating with legislators to express our concerns about any attempt to limit teacher referrals and our support for additional resources for alternative education programs.
Posted: 04/18/08
