Why Do So Many People Think Suspension Is Bad for Students?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder examines why the narrative that suspension harms students has become so widespread despite weak evidence.
Key Takeaways
- The narrative is appealing but misleading - The idea that suspension harms students resonates emotionally but isn't well-supported by causal evidence
- Correlation drives the belief - People see that suspended students have worse outcomes and assume suspension caused those outcomes
- The real question is different - Instead of 'does suspension help the suspended student?' we should ask 'does it protect the school community?'
Transcript
Why do people think suspension doesn't work and is bad for students?
I keep encountering this belief that's out there that there are all these studies that show that suspension doesn't work and suspension harms students.
And there aren't, but there is this belief out there that the research says that.
And I think a lot of it comes down to a kind of selection bias, right?
Like if you look at anybody whose life has not turned out well, right?
Like somebody who gets convicted of a crime and serves time in jail and then struggles with employment and things like that.
If you look back on that person's history in school, more likely than not, they're going to have gotten in trouble in school.
And that means that getting in trouble in school is somewhat predictive of those negative outcomes later in life.
But where people get confused is they think that getting in trouble in school, like the consequence of getting in trouble in school, is what caused all of those negative outcomes.
And I don't think anybody really believes that.
obviously getting in trouble at school because of your behavior predicts getting in trouble in life because of your behavior, because behavior that gets you in trouble in one place gets you in trouble in other contexts as well.
So like this should not be surprising at all that there is that predictive power to school discipline.
And it's not a hundred percent, right?
Like lots of people who get in trouble as adults did find like, behaviorally did fine in school.
And sometimes people who commit terrible crimes as adults were A students, you know, it's like, it's not a hundred percent correlation, but it shouldn't surprise us.
And it shouldn't make us think that there is some kind of causality going on here where the consequence that a student gets like suspension is what caused them to go down a bad path in life, to make bad decisions, to have all these terrible things happen to them.
And people look at statistics and they forget that.
They look at statistics that say, well, the more you're suspended, the more likely you are to get in trouble.
And people, some people get suspended over and over again.
Here's what the statistics actually say.
If you get suspended, there is a 50% chance that you will never get suspended again.
And I have the citation on my website for that.
If you get suspended a second time, there is a 50% chance that you will never get suspended a third time.
If you look at the kids who have gotten suspended like 10 or more times, 20 or more days, if you look at the people who are the most extreme cases, yes, they do have a much higher chance of having negative life outcomes.
And I don't know exactly what we can do for kids who are going down that path, for kids who are just because of their lives outside of school, maybe facing some major challenges, Obviously, suspension is not going to fix those challenges, but we have to ask ourselves, what job is suspension supposed to do?
It is supposed to encourage kids to make good choices in school and ensure that if they don't, at least it doesn't continue to affect everybody else so much.
If a kid is being unsafe, if they're bullying, if they're causing fights, whatever they're doing, we interrupt that behavior in the school environment to keep the school environment safe, to keep everyone else safe.
And when we give up on that responsibility because we think we can protect students from the consequences of their own actions by not giving them our own consequences, like this just does not work.
It just causes schools to become unsafe, to become disorderly, and to no longer be places where learning takes place.
And if you want to help kids have better outcomes in life, here's a wild idea.
Give them a good education.
Give them opportunity that comes from learning.
And this idea that we can just like remove consequences and let any old behavior fly.
And even if learning suffers, that's not a big deal because the suspension correlates with negative outcomes.
We've got this completely backwards.
Let me know what you think.