The Students We Forget About When We Debate Whether Consequences Work

Do consequences work when it comes to behavior in schools?

One thing we're hearing a lot lately is the idea that consequences don't really work for changing behavior.

And I was thinking about why we think that why people tend to think the consequences don't work.

And it occurred to me that if we're looking at the kids who are continuing to have struggles with behavior, right, the kids who get in trouble over and over and over again, we're Well, obviously nothing has worked for them, or they wouldn't be having problems, right?

The behaviors would have stopped if anything that we have done has worked.

So it's easy to look at cases on the most extreme end and say, well, consequences don't work, so why are we even doing consequences?

And maybe consequences have negative correlations with other outcomes.

Maybe we're actually making things worse with consequences.

And I I think that's a fair set of questions to ask.

But when we're considering the answer to that set of questions, we have to consider who we've stopped thinking about.

And when we're thinking about discipline and consequences, and especially the idea of deterrence, one group that's easy to forget about is all of the kids whose behavior is great or whose behavior has improved, especially the kids whose behavior has improved.

I don't really expect consequences to completely solve the issues of the students who have the greatest needs.

You know, often it's well outside our scope as educators.

It's well outside the school environment, you know, as far as what's contributing to that behavior.

But we have a lot of kids who are kind of on the fence and really depend on a well-run school environment.

to keep it together.

And if we do a good job, if we keep it together, if we have a supportive and an encouraging environment, if we have appropriate boundaries in place, those kids can do fine.

But if we let things fall apart, if we don't have good consequences in place, those are the kids who maybe because they're kind of marginal, they're going to slip into, you know, getting into fights, you know, not exercising the self-control that they need to, not focusing.

And If those kids are behaving, we have to make sure not to forget about them when we're evaluating whether something works, right?

So if we think, well, this kid over here who has the very extreme behaviors, you know, getting in trouble did not do anything for them.

They're continuing to engage in those behaviors.

Does that mean that the whole idea of rules and consequences doesn't work, period?

Well, no.

only if we only look at those most extreme cases.

If we forget about everybody else, then yes, it's going to seem like it doesn't make any difference.

But if we remember that all of the kids who are behaving and always have benefited from the deterrent effect of those consequences, and if we remember that all of the kids who maybe have struggled with their behavior and got a consequence and then made a change to their behavior, like if we factor them in, we realize that consequences do work.

They do make a difference.

So we'll talk more about this on Thursday's webinar, principalcenter.com slash progressive.

We're talking about progressive discipline.

You can register.

Everything's free and I'll see you there.