Category: discipline

Newer Discipline Practices and School Safety in Wake County

In September 2017, two students were stabbed, and one was murdered at a public school in New York City. Some have blamed the school’s ineffective alternative discipline practices—practices that were adopted in response to guidance from the Mayor’s office to avoid major discipline referrals and suspensions. NC public schools are also developing and implementing alternatives to suspensions and expulsions. Could it happen here in Wake County? Over the past decade, public schools in the state of North Carolina have been actively encouraged to replace more traditional methods of applying discipline—typically, punishments for misbehavior—with Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS), which is often referred to as “School-Wide Positive Behavior Supports,” or SWPBS. We discussed PBIS in our previous piece on this topic. The NC Dept. of […]

Read more

Do Newer Discipline Practices Erode School Safety?

Max Eden of the Manhattan Institute think-tank has written something of an exposé for The74Million, a website devoted to news about American public schools. Eden writes that he had been doing research into “the unintended consequences and dangers of discipline reform” in public schools when he read about a knife attack at a public high school in New York. The details of the attack are gruesome: it was allegedly committed by a student who said he was being bullied; it occurred during class; it critically injured a 16-year-old student; and it killed his 15-year old friend. After interviewing current and former students and teachers at the school, Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation, Eden concludes that it was “a once safe and supportive school that fell […]

Read more