Data drives new discipline code at Syracuse

On Board Online • May 2, 2016

By Gayle Simidian
Research Analyst

Arriving late to school a lot, running in the hallways and smoking are all behaviors that got Syracuse City School District students suspended before the district's 2014 school discipline policy took effect, according to district officials.

Students also got in trouble for "the Ds" - being perceived by a teacher as disrespectful, disobedient, disorderly, disruptive or defiant. Amid concerns that black students were being punished disproportionately, the district revamped its discipline policy between 2012 and 2014.

The approach worked. Recent figures, provided by district officials, show the district's suspensions dropped by 4,902 from 2011 to 2014. Superintendent Sharon Contreras, who spoke at the National School Boards Association's (NSBA) Conference earlier this month, describes the effort as a work-in-progress, though.

Community feedback about the new policy is mixed, according to the district. Some parents of minority students like the change because they think it's "fairer than the previous code," but some teachers have "struggled" with its execution, district officials said.

According to the district, support and training are needed for teachers to effectively manage student behavior. , , taught teachers how to be more "culturally proficient" and not misinterpret behavior they didn't understand as threatening or hostile.

For instance, a teacher might be baffled by a black teenage girl who slaps her hip, according to district officials who spoke at the NSBA conference. That's probably just a girl expressing passion and emphasis, according to Derrick Dorsey, vice president of the school board.

A recent report by a division of the Education Development Center (EDC), a Boston-based nonprofit focused on education research and policy, described how the use of data and research informed the transition to the new school policy.

The district's decision to revise its discipline policy was driven, in part, by an analysis that revealed high suspension rates in the district. Around the same time, the district also was featured in local news reports about a national report on school districts with high suspension rates. The state attorney general made a formal inquiry to the district because statistics showed minority students got suspended more than their white peers.

The combination of the data and the focus of public attention on the problem prompted Syracuse to create a new discipline policy, the Code of Conduct, Character and Support. This easy-to-read and colorful document, which is available in PDF form on the district website, outlines four levels of offenses and describes a range of consequences for each.

Today, many student behaviors that previously would have triggered disciplinary penalties are either managed in the classroom or through a support system that includes administrators. For instance, students in some schools now can remove themselves from the classroom to go to another room staffed by social workers and other professionals.

Syracuse is among a growing number of school districts that are revamping their school discipline policies in response to high suspension rates. The release of national data on the use of suspensions by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights and a 2014 guidance publication from the U.S. departments of education and justice have prompted many school districts across the country to examine their discipline policies.

It wasn't just the high number of suspensions that set off alarm bells in Syracuse. District analyses revealed sharp disparities in suspensions by race.

The Department of Education's latest Civil Rights Data Collection published in spring 2014 shows that, nationally, black students are suspended three times more frequently (16 percent) than their white peers (5 percent), and students with disabilities get suspended at more than double the rate (13 percent) of their non-disabled peers (6 percent). Ninety-eight percent of U.S. school districts participated in the study, which was based on 2011-12 data.

Mississippi's Greenville Public School District also redesigned its code of conduct to curtail the disciplinary use of suspensions, according to a July 2015 District Administration article. In 2012, Greenville ranked as one of the highest in the U.S. for suspensions. According to the Jackson Free Press, the district's 2011-12 suspension rate was 59 percent. Now, the newspaper reports the district rate is about 19 percent.

For Syracuse, strategic planning for the new discipline policy began in late 2012. The school board approved a 5-year plan to update the policy before the conclusion of the 2013-14 academic year. The district hired a researcher to analyze suspension data by building and race.

The researcher, along with school staff, presented the Syracuse suspension data alongside national data to the school board. These comparisons showed that the district suspended more students (30.8 percent) than the national average (11.3 percent). The district also suspended black (38.2 percent), Hispanic (29.5 percent) and disabled students (44.1 percent) at higher rates than white students (19.1 percent).

Additional analyses presented to the board showed that "serious or dangerous incidents" only accounted for about 20 percent of out-of-school suspensions at the district. One possible reason for this was that the old policy had vague terminology for transgressions such as "defiant," and "insubordinate." To develop the new policy, the Syracuse school board convened a 50-member task force made up of diverse stakeholders including educators, students, principals, school leaders and local community leaders. The task force recommended changing the disciplinary focus from one influenced by zero tolerance - a specific behavior, no matter what the context, receives a specific punishment - to one based on a concept known as restorative justice, which focuses on conflict resolution.

Under the new policy, only middle-school and high-school students can receive out-of-school suspensions. Suspensions are reserved for only the most severe misbehaviors, which are categorized under the highest two levels of a four-level violation system. The task force also came up with more detailed definitions of misbehaviors and consequences for those misbehaviors.

For example, an attack on a student causing serious bodily injury, with or without provocation (hitting, kicking, or punching), is a level-four violation that warrants a suspension, according to the EDC report.

Syracuse ushered in additional changes to effectively execute the new policy, such as:

• Modifying school counselor job descriptions to include work in the classroom with teachers.
• Ensuring that school staff take part in professional development on the new policy and restorative justice techniques.
• Buying new data software to track suspension rates and evaluate the effectiveness of the new discipline policy.

For information on Syracuse's code of conduct, go togoo.gl/FRDTxf . To view the EDC report, go to goo.gl/0n6nxj .