School Discipline

Regarding the Aug. 22 front-page article "Call 911, or just the principal? Stricter schools under scrutiny": As a former teacher in the Aldine Independent School District in the Houston area (as well as in Fairfax County), which was cited in the article, I found the piece overly sympathetic to those students being given misdemeanor tickets. Whether dousing each other in milk or perfume or demanding to use the restroom every few minutes, such students are choosing to create an environment where no learning can take place.

The Fairfax County School Board has officially approved veteran Texan educator Karen Garza to be the next superintendent, and Garza flew in to accept the new role in person. Board members had voted last week to offer Garza the job , but Thursday's unanimous decision made it official. "I am very excited to have Dr. Garza as our next superintendent," said board Chairman Ilryong Moon (At Large). "It's not just her experience and the things she has been able to achieve in various school districts, it's her...

State education leaders will make changes to a set of proposals designed to shift student discipline practices in Maryland toward a more "rehabilitative" approach that would reduce suspensions, keep students in school and teach positive behavior. The Maryland State Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday to withdraw proposed regulations and amend them in a way that officials said would not alter the spirit of the reforms but would address some complaints voiced in recent months.

An 8-year-old boy in Prince William County pointed his finger like a gun in a school hallway after a friend pretended to shoot him with a bow and arrow. The class had been studying Native American culture and had just learned a deer-hunting song. "It was playing — it was cowboys and Indians," said the second-grader's father. The imaginary crossfire on Feb. 8 produced real-life fallout two months after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The boy was suspended for...

The Fairfax County school system would seek to cut in half the number of days that students are out of school awaiting decisions in their discipline cases, according to an expanded proposal to revamp policies that was presented to the School Board on Monday. The new standard, presented by Superintendent Jack D. Dale at the board's second session on discipline issues, would reduce waits from an average of 20 school days to 10 or fewer for initial decisions. The current 20-day waits are "too long," Dale said.

It is openly conceded that the student discipline process within the Fairfax County Public Schools needs an overhaul. Last week, District Superintendent Jack D. Dale presented several proposals for reform . His plan includes speeding up the process, recording hearings , providing better support during suspensions, giving more options to school principals, developing better data collection and analysis, and reinforcing staff training. If implemented fully, these steps would be a good start.

In the aftermath of suicides by two students caught up in the Fairfax County schools disciplinary system, School Superintendent Jack D. Dale this week announced changes to district policies that include efforts to speed up the process [" Fairfax proposes changes to discipline ," front page, March 31].  But it is not how fast the school takes action on students' misbehavior that matters. It is how effective the school is in helping students realize the wrong they've done, who was hurt by the wrong, how they...

An 8-year-old boy in Prince William County pointed his finger like a gun in a school hallway after a friend pretended to shoot him with a bow and arrow. The class had been studying Native American culture and had just learned a deer-hunting song. "It was playing — it was cowboys and Indians," said the second-grader's father. The imaginary crossfire on Feb. 8 produced real-life fallout two months after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The boy was suspended for...

The Fairfax County School Board has officially approved veteran Texan educator Karen Garza to be the next superintendent, and Garza flew in to accept the new role in person. Board members had voted last week to offer Garza the job , but Thursday's unanimous decision made it official. "I am very excited to have Dr. Garza as our next superintendent," said board Chairman Ilryong Moon (At Large). "It's not just her experience and the things she has been able to achieve in various school...

GREENVILLE, N.C. Steve Teske doesn't hold back. He's a Southern judge, with the boom and flair of a preacher, who has risen to national prominence arguing that too many students get arrested or kicked out of school for minor trouble. "Zero tolerance is zero intelligence," he likes to say. His plea for common sense follows two decades of increased police presence at schools across the country, including in the Washington region, and coincides with a growing concern...

State education leaders will make changes to a set of proposals designed to shift student discipline practices in Maryland toward a more "rehabilitative" approach that would reduce suspensions, keep students in school and teach positive behavior. The Maryland State Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday to withdraw proposed regulations and amend them in a way that officials said would not alter the spirit of the reforms but would address some complaints voiced in recent months.

Several months after federal officials filed suit against authorities in Meridian, Miss., for operating a "school-to-prison pipeline," a new report cites harsh school discipline practices across the state that it contends have steered students into the justice system. The report, which four civil rights groups plan to release Thursday, comes after proposals from both the Obama administration and Mississippi leaders to provide more funding for police in schools, which...

The search was a surprise. The high school lacrosse team in Easton, Md., had boarded its bus when the principal and other administrators arrived, announcing that gear bags would be checked. A tip had come in about athletes carrying alcohol. Near the front of the bus, Graham Dennis, then a 17-year-old junior, asked whether he should remove the pocketknife he always used to cut and tighten strings on his lacrosse stick. It was tucked inside his oversized duffel bag, along with cleats, pads,...

Federal officials are investigating racial disparities in school discipline in Anne Arundel County, where the issue has been a longtime concern for African American leaders. The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights will probe allegations made in a complaint filed by the Anne Arundel branch of the NAACP that African American students are treated unequally in school discipline referrals and suspensions. The NAACP raised similar issues in a 2004 federal...

Maryland education leaders unveiled a major reform effort Tuesday that could largely end the use of school suspensions for nonviolent offenses and require that the state's 24 districts create plans to address racial disparities in discipline . Saying thousands of students lose time in class for nonviolent offenses and that punishment falls hardest on minorities and special-education students, James H. DeGraffenreidt Jr., president of...

Regarding the Dec. 29 front-page news story "Wide gaps in school discipline" on the disparities between the rate of suspensions of African American and white students across the region: There is another gap that needs to be narrowed and that could go a long way toward eliminating any gap in suspensions and other educational outcomes along race, income or other lines. In my 34 years in public education, I have observed that students who were well connected to their schools typically behave better than...

Nearly two decades after a zero-tolerance culture took hold in American schools, a growing number of educators and elected leaders are scaling back discipline policies that led to lengthy suspensions and ousters for such mistakes as carrying toy guns or Advil. This rethinking has come in North Carolina and Denver, in Baltimore and Los Angeles — part of a phenomenon driven by high suspension rates, community pressure, legal action and research findings. In the Washington region, Fairfax County is considering policy...

A STUDENT MISBEHAVES and gets sent to the principal and then home. It's a scenario that gets played out in countless classrooms every day; so commonplace is the practice that it's generally seen as no big deal. But as a new report on school discipline in Virginia makes clear, the effects of lost school time can be devastating and — contrary to conventional thinking — do little to improve student behavior or make schools safer. A study released this month by the JustChildren Program of the Legal...

Across the Washington area, black students are suspended and expelled two to five times as often as white students, creating disparities in discipline that experts say reflect a growing national problem. An analysis by The Washington Post shows the phenomenon both in the suburbs and in the city, from the far reaches of Southern Maryland to the subdivisions of Fairfax , Prince George's and Montgomery counties. Last year, for example, one in seven...

A STUDENT MISBEHAVES and gets sent to the principal and then home. It's a scenario that gets played out in countless classrooms every day; so commonplace is the practice that it's generally seen as no big deal. But as a new report on school discipline in Virginia makes clear, the effects of lost school time can be devastating and — contrary to conventional thinking — do little to improve student behavior or make schools safer. A study released this month by the JustChildren Program of the Legal...