Avoid simple solutions and quick fixes: Lessons learned from a comprehensive districtwide approach to improving student behavior and school safety

Abstract

Urban schools are often viewed as disorderly and unsafe and often have poor conditions for learning that affect student attendance, behavior, achievement, and safety. These conditions include the experience of emotional and physical safety, connectedness to and support from caring adults and peers, peer social and emotional competence, and academic engagement and challenge. Although connectedness and appropriate mental health services can improve safety as well as conditions for learning, many school districts focus on control through hardware and security officers. This paper examines the Cleveland Metropolitan School District's (CMSD) systematic efforts during the past four years that incorporated regular use of school-level data to improve safety, order, and the conditions for learning. These districtwide approaches included implementing (1) an empirically validated social and emotional learning program that helps students in elementary grades to understand, regulate, and express emotions (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies, or PATHS); (2) student support teams, a widely used planning model for students who exhibit early warning signs (including those related to attendance and behavior) with a referral process to respond to student needs in a timely, coordinated, and effective manner; and (3) planning centers, which replaced punitive in-school suspension with a learner-centered approach to discipline that focuses on student needs and helps students learn self-discipline, and aligns with the student support teams and CMSD's focus on social and emotional learning. Five sets of findings illustrate the importance of CMSD's efforts between 2008-09 and 2010-11 (and, in one case, 2010-12): • Improved conditions for learning for students in Grades 5-12. • Improved teacher ratings of student social competence and attentiveness, but not in aggression, for students K-5 during the 2010-12 academic years. • Improved student attendance districtwide, which increased 1.5 percentage points. • Improved student behavior - the average number of reported suspendable behavioral incidents per school declined from 233.1 to 132.4, including reductions in: ○ Disobedient/disruptive behavior (from 131.8 to 73.9). ○ Fighting/violence (from 54.5 to 36.4). ○ Harassment/intimidation (from 12.8 to 5.6). ○ Serious bodily injury (from 13.3 to 5.8). • Reduced use of school removal: ○ Out-of-school suspensions decreased districtwide by 58.8%. Our analyses suggest the importance of implementation quality for PATHS, student support teams, and planning centers. Implementation quality, as reported by CMSD staff, was related to changes in behavior and conditions for learning. For example: • Disciplinary incidents decreased more in schools with "medium" or "high" implementation of PATHS (35.9%), student support teams (49.1%), and planning centers (51.4%). • Perceptions of safety increased more where these three interventions were rated higher in terms of their implementation quality. Although our data suggest that the rate of suspension and expulsion decreased, disparities may remain. Our analyses of Office for Civil Rights (OCR) data for the one year available (2009-10) determined that the relative risk of experiencing suspension or expulsion for male and female Black and Latino students with or without disabilities was higher than for their White peers. In addition, the relative risk increased as disciplinary actions moved from less serious to more serious responses (ie, from in-school suspension to one out-of-school suspension, more than one out-of-school suspension, and expulsion). Improved conditions for learning as well as student support interventions can reduce reliance on suspension and expulsion while fostering safer, more productive school communities. They are also important for turning schools around and improving academic performance. An analyses of CFL data from 2008-9 to 2012-13, found the Performance Index of the schools to be highly associated with the student perceptions of the conditions for learning, accounting for 63% of the variability, grades 2-4; 60% of the variability, grades 5-8, and 79% of the variability in high schools. The paper concludes with six recommendations to improve conditions for learning, provide effective student support, and reduce discipline-related disparities: (1) External audits of conditions for learning and disparities in school discipline and safety. (2) Use of conditions for learning data to inform improvement effort (3) Three-tiered approaches to prevention and addressing mental health challenges, including those related to trauma. (4) Evidence-based social and emotional learning programming. (5) Broadened incentives for investing in student support (6) Improved implementation quality of interventions and greater cultural competence of school staff. Transforming the conditions contributing to exclusionary discipline will often require a sustained, multiyear effort. This should begin with an understanding that a culture of change, unlike "quick fixes" like metal detectors, requires an extended period of time to engage stakeholders, cultivate their buy-in, and develop and implement an effective plan.