We Don't Have Any Large-Scale Data About Behavior in Schools
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder points out that schools lack reliable large-scale data on student behavior, relying instead on consequence data that only tells part of the story.
Key Takeaways
- We measure consequences, not behavior - Discipline data tracks what schools did, not what students actually did
- This data gap is a huge problem - Without accurate behavior data, schools can't make informed policy decisions
- Consequence data is easily gamed - When schools stop reporting, the data improves even if behavior doesn't
Transcript
So do we have good data about whether discipline in schools is getting better or worse?
Do we have good evidence about whether behavior is deteriorating or improving?
The answer to that is no.
There has never been any large-scale data collection about student behavior in schools.
Now there has always been, you know, for as long as I can remember, data reporting requirements about consequences, right?
When schools give a consequence like out of school suspension, they do typically have to report that.
But for more minor consequences, no, they don't report that.
And for just the incidence of behavior, there's no data collection at all.
And this can be a little bit hard to figure out, especially if you're reading research on school discipline, because I've read some studies that say they have behavior data and they compare that with the consequence data.
But what they really have is incident data and incidents are only recorded when there is a consequence.
So I'm getting a little bit technical here, but the short answer is that there is no data about school behavior you know sometimes districts conduct school climate surveys annually often when things start to get ugly they stop reporting that data or they stop collecting that data so we have a big data vacuum when it comes to school climate when it comes to student behavior we don't really have any systematic data on student behavior And of course, that is somewhat intentional when things are getting worse, and it makes it very difficult to identify changes that are having a negative impact.
So let me know what questions you have about school behavior data.