Different Consequences for the Same Behavior? Here's Why That Can Backfire

How do you decide when to suspend a student?

I saw this question come up in a discussion among administrators today, and most people, 99% of people gave the correct answer, but there was one incorrect answer that I thought was so interesting that I just had to say something about it.

This incorrect answer said you give students, essentially, you give students the...

least disruptive to their education a consequence that will change the behavior you figure out what will change the behavior and give a consequence that will be the least impactful on their education and that sounds really really nice and it sounds very intuitive it sounds very reasonable and compassionate and it sounds like it would promote equity but that's actually a wrong answer the correct answer to that question how do you decide when to suspend a student is to follow policy and 99 of the comments had that correct answer you follow policy your discipline matrix your board policy your state law whatever code of conduct, student handbook, you follow policy in determining which behaviors warrant suspension.

And there will always be discretion and professional judgment involved based on the severity of the situation.

So it's never just clear-cut automatic consequence.

But for a given situation, your professional judgment should be in applying that policy clearly and fairly.

We can't base our discipline decisions on speculation about what will change the individual student's behavior, because in the first place, it might be that nothing will change the behavior.

We don't have control over that, and we don't really have the ability to intelligently speculate about what will change any given child's behavior.

Sometimes behavior comes from factors that are completely outside our control in the school environment, and behavior is just inherently unpredictable.

This idea that we can just kind of forecast what level of consequence will change the behavior is just incorrect.

We have to be very careful as administrators not to put on an amateur psychologist hat.

We have to be very careful not to engage in behavioral therapy when we're doing school discipline.

School discipline and behavioral therapy are very different fields.

They're very different professions.

And you as a school administrator, you are not licensed to be a behavioral therapist.

And if you are, great.

But your job as a school administrator is to apply policy fairly.

And that's actually a legal requirement.

Under the 14th Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause says that you have to give students equal protection under the law.

And if you go around saying, well, at our school, we give different consequences for the same behaviors based on our assumptions about what's going to change student behavior.

Like you're going to get yourself sued very, very quickly.

Your legal counsel is not going to back you.

Your board is not going to back you.

You have to start with fairness.

You have to say we treat everyone fairly.

We follow our discipline policy fairly.

And that's not always easy because every situation involves professional judgment.

But you have to have that as your baseline.

You have to say, we follow policy when making disciplined decisions.

And your professional judgment is layered on top of that policy.

But we can't engage in this speculation about what is going to change the behavior because we can't know that and we're not psychologists.

Let me know what you think.