When The Punishment Doesn't Fit
Advocates question school suspension policies
[By Cara Solomon in the Courant.]
http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/hc-suspension0421.artapr21.story
Anthony Henry doesn't like it when people get too close to him.
He feels threatened. He gets agitated. He starts an argument.
This is textbook behavior for some children such as Anthony with
autism. When it happens at home, Brenetta Henry talks with her 11-year-old
son until he calms down.
When it happens at school, she said, they suspend him.
"They really are not equipped to handle this type of child," said
Henry, whose son attends Hartford Transitional Learning Academy. "And the
child is losing out."
In the zero-tolerance climate of today's schools, children with
disabilities are being punished at a rate that far exceeds their numbers in
the state. Though they make up only 13 percent of the population, special
education students received 24 percent of the suspensions recorded in the
1998-1999 school year, the latest state data shows. That figure has
surprised state officials who say they are now keeping close tabs on the
trend and warning certain school districts when they show a high number of
special education suspensions.
"It's clearly a concern that we're paying attention to," said George
Dowaliby, bureau chief of special education and pupil services for the state
Department of Education.
Suspensions have become a hot issue recently, with the release of a
state report in February that described school disciplinary policies as
excessive and not necessarily useful. The Governor's Prevention Partnership,
which formed a task force to study alternatives to suspension and
expulsions, said 141,434 students were suspended or expelled in 1999-2000,
13 percent more than the 125,185 suspensions and expulsions in 1998-99.
The task force pushed schools to focus more on early intervention for
children with behavior problems, recommending more teacher training, a
graduated system of discipline, and a closer connection among schools,
parents and mental health providers, the report said.
Children with special needs - many of whom act first and think later -
are particularly vulnerable to harsh school policies, advocates say. Some
have problems with impulse control and resolving conflicts. Others struggle
in group settings, and the agitation is made worse when other children
target them for teasing.
"I do absolutely believe kids who are in special education are the
obvious choice [for blame] if there's an incident," said Nancy Prescott,
director of the Connecticut Parent Advocacy Center, a statewide advocacy
group that works on disability issues. "They're the scapegoats a lot of the
time."
This year for the first time, the state offered grants to school
administrators who wanted to study the high rate of special education
suspensions and develop alternatives to out-of-school suspensions for those
students. At Keigwin Annex School in Middletown - where special education
students account for 32 percent of the suspensions but only 15 percent of
the overall population - the state grant will help establish an in-house
suspension program with a full time social worker.
"They're going to have an opportunity to look at behavior that got
them into the problem, and look at how to prevent it in the future," said
Patricia Charles, Keigwin's principal.
Like any child who acts out, a special education student who disobeys
orders in the classroom creates a problem for teachers, said Ann Lohrand,
president of Middletown's teachers union. And while teachers try their best
to work through problems with special education students, using suspension
only as a last resort, that preferential treatment sometimes seems unfair to
other children whose misbehavior may be sanctioned more severely.
"To be fair to the teachers, it's a sticky situation sometimes," said
Lohrand. "Our teachers do the best they can with what they have."
But the high suspension rate is proof, advocates say, that ultimately
teachers are too quick to punish a child they do not understand or know how
to help. In the years since the federal Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act was passed, thousands more special education students have
been moved into regular classrooms. But schools have not necessarily kept
pace with the change, advocates say. Few regular education teachers are
trained to identify and handle the behavioral problems that come with some
children's disabilities.
And the problem extends to special education teachers as well, said
Merva Jackson, director of African Caribbean American Parents of Children
with Disabilities, a Hartford advocacy group.
"The bottom line is, a lot of these teachers are not coming out
prepared, knowing the law and understanding the disabilities," she said.
"Over the years, it hasn't been a focus for a lot of higher institutions of
learning."
The lack of teacher training means that special education students are
often labeled troublemakers, advocates say. They are watched more closely
and, as a consequence, they are caught acting out more frequently than the
average student, said Linda Rammler, a special education consultant. And
when children with disabilities act out, she said, teachers mistakenly
believe that they can be disciplined like any other disobedient student.
"Teachers don't realize that when they give a certain look, or raise
their voice, they've lost the kid," said Rammler, the parent of two children
with disabilities. "The kid is not thinking."
The state education department is looking at the rate of suspension,
whether some educators are punishing children for behavior related to their
disabilities, which in some cases is illegal. The Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act, limits the number of days a special education
student can be suspended before educators and parents meet to discuss a
change of placement. A change of placement is essential for some special
education students whose behavior depends on the environment.
Several parents of special education students said that the
suspensions had frustrated their children, made them more aggressive and
taken a serious toll on their self-esteem. In some cases, the children did
not understand why they were being punished.
Such was the situation with Anthony Henry, who was suspended a number
of times before being transferred. His behavior has worsened.
"He had a disability, not a behavior problem," said Henry, whose son
was sent to a school for children with serious emotional problems. "Now he
has a disability and a behavior problem.">>
