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Suspension policies fuel high dropout rates

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Staff

Rochelle Williams

North Carolina’s education officials say they will raise high school graduation rates by supporting proven methods for promoting achievement, things like increasing access to pre-kindergarten programs and bringing new, qualified teachers to poor and rural schools.

They spend less time talking about how they will re-engage and nurture the millions of young people who are already failing, the ones whose personal and emotional problems have exacerbated academic ones.

The problem is that at least some officials are unsympathetic toward students who they view as trouble makers so they willfully ignore the direct link between North Carolina’s dropout rate and statewide suspension numbers that are rising.

During the 2006-07 school year, one out of 10 students or 308,010 of them received an out-of-school short-term suspension, up 2.1 percent from the previous school year. Long-term suspensions, those that last for 11 days or more, increased 2.7 percent to 4,682.

Unfortunately, the number of alternative learning programs that serve suspended students is not rising at the same clip, because too many local school districts do not believe they have a responsibility to educate rule-breakers while they are punishing them. State law encourages schools to provide continued education for suspended students but stops short of mandating it.

State legislation requires that, unless granted a waiver by the State Board of Education, every district must have an alternative program or have an agreement with another school district to refer suspended, expelled and at-risk students to its program. Still, in most school districts, alternative programs are small initiatives that do not serve all grade levels. Many are filled to capacity or have selective admission policies.

So every year, thousands of suspended and expelled students are left to their own devices where they become more at-risk of academic failure and more likely to engage in high-risk or delinquent behaviors.

Recently, at a meeting of the Joint Legislative Commission on Dropout Prevention and High School Graduation, a representative from the state Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention spoke about that department’s efforts to highlight the disproportionate number of long and short -term suspensions awarded to minority students. Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is doing important intervention work with students and school districts in an effort to reduce the number of suspensions across the state. But it will take many years for those increased efforts to stem the growing tide of suspensions across the state.

In the meantime, legislators and education officials who say they are committed to lowering dropout
rates and boosting retention must stop allowing school districts to withhold education as a form of punishment. Until the legislature requires every school district to meet the educational needs of students who are most at risk of failing, North Carolina cannot say it is seriously committed to helping all students reach their full potential.

Rochelle Williams is an Education Policy Analyst at the N.C. Education and Law Project of the N.C. Justice Center.

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