By Nadra Nittle

As evidence mounts that punitive discipline makes students more likely to go to prison than to college, school districts in greater Los Angeles, such as Long Beach Unified and Lynwood Unified, are shifting away from suspending students or citing them for truancy. Instead, they’re making greater use of restorative justice programs, as is the juvenile division of the Orange County Superior Court.

While student advocates support the focus on restorative justice, they point out that schools still need to make headway in how they discipline youth. Racial disparities persist in suspensions and some schools routinely remove students from class without formally suspending them, they say, making suspension rates appear lower than they actually are. Los Angeles Unified School District has faced similar accusations as it works to reduce suspension rates.

During the 2014-15 school year, LAUSD’s suspension rate was just 0.9 percent, with 6,184 students suspended. The year before the suspension rate was 1.3 percent, with 8,864 students suspended in the district of roughly 680,000.

LAUSD announced a groundbreaking ban on willful defiance suspension in May 2013. The next year the district stopped citing students for minor infractions, such as fighting and vandalism. The Chronicle of Social Change reported on the impact of LAUSD’s new discipline policies in November.

School districts throughout California are taking steps to reduce suspensions as well. Suspensions dropped statewide by 12.8 percent during the 2014-15 school year to 243,603 from 279,383 the previous school year. And they’ve fallen by 33.6 percent since the 2011-12 academic year, when 366,629 students were suspended.

“We’re finally noticing the pendulum swinging the other way to address really good programming for children and families,” said Orange County Superior Court Judge Maria Hernandez.

She presides over the juvenile court, where she overhauled the truancy program in 2012 because she objected to how it penalized youth and their families. That year, L.A. County also closed its 13 Informal Juvenile and Traffic Courts, which served truants. Officials said truancy citations weren’t a good use of the courts’ time. And LAUSD even introduced a truancy diversion program that led to the end of truancy sweeps and ticket task forces during the first 90 minutes of school.

Hernandez took issue with Orange County Superior Court’s truancy program because she felt “it wasn’t consistent with evidence-based approaches,” she said. “It was very punitive and not really serving its purpose.”

Many of the truant children came from dysfunctional homes, wracked by substance abuse, domestic violence and mental illness. Ordering such children out of class to attend court hearings and fining their families didn’t lower the number of truancy filings, but establishing a truancy response team with social workers, probation officers and others to meet the needs of families did.

Truancy filings in Orange County dropped from 256 in 2012 to 56 in 2015.

“If I can keep these kids out of the system, their outcomes are going to be a lot better,” Hernandez said. The judge sits on the steering committee of California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye’s Keeping Kids in School and Out of Court initiative (KKIS) to reduce student absenteeism.

Percentage of K-12 public school students missing more than 30 minutes of instruction without an excuse three or more times during the school year. Data Source: California Dept. of Education, DataQuest (Jul. 2015). (Credit: Kidsdata.org)

Why truancy rates are rising statewide

While truancy filings have dropped in courts statewide, the school truancy rate actually rose slightly—from 29.28 percent during the 2012-13 school year, with 1,902,509 truant students, to 31.14 percent during the 2013-14 school year, with 1,995,055. Students who have missed more than 30 minutes of school three different times without an excuse are considered truant.

The California Attorney General’s Office posits that the uptick in the state truancy rate likely stems from schools improving how they monitor student attendance. It points to Long Beach Unified as a district that managed to lower its chronic absence rate, even as truancies rose.

LBUSD lowered its chronic absence rate from 26.18 percent in the 2013-14 school year to 9.6 percent the following year. The district of nearly 80,000 students credits the drop in chronic absences to parent outreach and to school officials scrutinizing district data to pinpoint the schools with the most absences.

“There were about 30 elementary schools with pretty poor attendance rates and high truancy rates,” said Erin Simon, director of LBUSD’s student support services division. “I spoke with the school staff and most importantly with the parents and the families about high chronic absence and chronic truancy.”

Simon discussed with families the consequences of truancy in kindergarten and first grade, including how it results in 83 percent of students being unable to read on grade level by third grade, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

Long Beach Unified also expanded the reach of its School Attendance Review Board (SARB), a group made up of school officials and community members to curb absenteeism. The district was named a 2015 Model SARB district for its efforts to reduce school absences.

Racial disparities in suspensions

Long Beach Unified not only cut its chronic absence rate but also slashed its suspension rate from 4.4 percent during the 2013-14 school year, with 3,742 students suspended, to 3.5 percent the following year, with 2,939 students suspended.

Black students, however, are most likely to be suspended from Long Beach schools. They comprised 14 percent of LBUSD students during the 2014-15 school year but more than a third of students suspended. This pattern can be found both state and nationwide.

In California, African Americans make up six percent of public school students statewide but 16.4 percent of students suspended.

“One intervention is to actually have some training [in schools] on what implicit racial bias is,” said Angelica Salazar, a senior policy associate with the Children’s Defense Fund in California. “We need to address this racial disparity and invest in some kind of intervention that has a racial lens.”

But Salazar applauds LBUSD for lowering its number of willful defiance suspensions, long criticized as the most subjective form of suspension. Defiance suspensions can include behaviors such as “talking back” to teachers, profanity or not following instructions.

Percentage of public school students in grades 7, 9, and 11, and non-traditional students reporting the number of times they had skipped school or cut class in the past 12 months, by race/ethnicity. Data Source: California Department of Education, California Healthy Kids Survey and California Student Survey (WestEd). (Credit: Kidsdata.org)

“We’ve seen a lot of progress in the numbers,” Salazar said. “In 2012-13, there were 5,647 suspensions [in Long Beach] for willful defiance and the latest data shows there were less than 1,000 during the past school year.”

Why students continue to be removed from class

Christopher Covington, a community activist who has worked with the Every Student Matters campaign to reduce school suspensions in LBUSD, suggested the reported numbers of willful defiance suspensions may not fully reflect reality. Some Long Beach high schools don’t formally suspend students for willful defiance but regularly remove disruptive students from class, he said.

“It’s considered like a detention,” Covington said. “They’re not being suspended off campus, but if a student walks into class and is defiant, the teacher calls an aide, and they’re suspended for that period. The environment is similar to a confined waiting room. They either have to sit on the floor and stare at the desk or stare at a wall.”

When asked about informal suspensions in LBUSD, Simon, said the district uses progressive discipline, whenever possible, to address inappropriate behavior.

“The district’s ultimate goal is to reduce the recurrence of the negative behavior by helping students learn from their mistakes,” she said. But in some cases, students are temporarily removed from class, so administrators or other school officials can step in to address their behavior, she said.

“Interventions have become an integral part of LBUSD’s efforts to foster positive behavior, promote progressive discipline practices and keep students in school,” Simon said.

Overall, LBUSD reports just 909 willful defiance suspensions for the 2014-15 school year, down from 1,379 the previous school year.

How Lynwood is reducing suspensions and truancy

Long Beach is hardly the only district in the greater Los Angeles area to slash such suspensions. The Antelope Valley Union High School District nearly cut its number of willful defiance suspensions in half—lowering such suspensions from 3,030 in the 2013-14 school year to 1,712 the following year. During the same timeframe, Lynwood Unified, in South L.A., reduced its willful defiance suspensions from 543 to 183.

Number of suspensions of K-12 public school students.
Data Source: California Dept. of Education, DataQuest (Jul. 2015). (Credit: Kidsdata.org)

Lynwood Unified Superintendent Paul Gothold said that he simply doesn’t believe suspensions are effective discipline strategies.

“When a kid is suspended that does nothing to change behavior,” he said. Rather than using suspension as the first line of defense for bad behavior, the district gives students chances to correct their behavior, Gothold said. Troubled students also receive mental health services, and school staffers receive cultural proficiency training to better grasp the challenges community members face.

The district also takes measures to reduce incidences of truancy. During the 2013-14 school year, the truancy rate was 13.22 percent, less than half of the state rate. Gothold said that home visits and truancy sweeps have been successful for the district.

“We just at random have police cars patrol the streets, and if a student gets picked up, they’re brought back to school,” he explained.

Like Judge Hernandez, however, Gothold doesn’t support penalizing truant students with fines and court hearings.

Instead, he said, “Let’s find out what the real issue is and develop a plan of support. That’s 100 times more effective.”

Nadra Nittle is a Los Angeles-based journalist. This article was published in partnership with The Chronicle of Social Change.

Attorney General Kamala Harris (photo by KNX)

California Attorney General Kamala Harris appeared at LA Unfiied’s Malabar Elementary School today to highlight a report on truancy released by her office this week that shows a high correlation between attendance problems and both income and race.

But the argument she’s using to bring attention to the issue is curious: the report notes the high rates of absenteeism “interfere with students’ right to an education under the California Constitution.”

Sound familiar? You may remember that students’ rights argument from the Vergara case, in which a judge struck down California’s teacher tenure and dismissal laws based on findings that the laws interfered with students’ right to a quality education protected under the California constitution.

But Harris apparently didn’t buy it – late last month she joined the teachers union to fight that ruling by filing an appeal on behalf of the state, putting her at odds with recent public polling on the issue.

Meanwhile, back to the report. It found a high correlating between truancy and race: 37 percent of African American elementary students sampled were truant, the highest of any subgroup (including homeless students) and 15 percentage points higher than the rate for all students. African American elementary school students are also chronically truant at nearly four times the rate of all students.
The report could not pinpoint the exact reasons for the stark difference without better tracking and data. It noted that, “African American children experience many of the most common barriers to attendance – including health issues, poverty, transportation problems, homelessness, and trauma – in greater concentration than most other populations.”

Harris has crafted legislation – now awaiting the signature of Governor Jerry Brown – which she says will help address some of the issues. Among the proposed fixes are beefing up student support systems and streamlining how the state shares and tracks student absences.

Truancy ticketing in LA Unified dropped by nearly 80 percent between 2010 and 2012, and citations across all categories are down by half for the same period. So far this year, district officials report LA school police have issued 77 citations. In contrast, school police were issuing an average of 110 tickets a month in 2010.

That’s a significant reduction for the district, which has the largest school police force in the country, and just last year had the distinction of issuing more citations to students than any other in the nation.

The district attributes this steady decline to a new truancy policy that is more proactive rather than reactive.

“Students who are truant are now directed to a non-court, district-sponsored, diversion program,” the District said in a press release. “A youngster is no longer ticketed when close to the campus as the first bell rings; late, yes; talked to, yes; intervention and support at the school, consequences definitely; but no citation.”

But a new report by the Community Rights Campaign contends that minority students continue to receive a higher concentration of citations, most of which are issued for “disturbing the peace,” a catch-all for fighting, smoking and drinking and tagging.

The two-year study found high ticketing patterns in South LA, Boyle Heights and San Fernando Valley, where the majority of students are Latino and African American.

Manuel Criollo, an organizer with Community Rights Campaign, told LA School Report that his organization applauds the reduction in truancy citations. But he insisted that the district has more to do to ensure that reductions are permanent and to stem citations for other reasons, which are not mentioned in the press release.

“What we think this example shows us is that when there are formal protocols, we can begin to reverse the culture that has existed for a long time in LAUSD,” Criollo said.

Criollo credits a collaboration between of members of the community and district leadership with fewer citations. And the school board’s adoption in May of the “School Climate Bill of Rights,” banning out-of-school “willful defiance” suspensions.

“We helped conceptualize the idea that the city and schools should work together to change the structure and find alternatives, and we feel very proud of that,” he said. “We recognize that a lot of that leadership came from [school board member] Monica Garcia and [LAUSD police chief] Steven Zipperman.”

The Community Rights Campaign’s recently released report and executive summary on structural proposals to end the school-to-prison pipeline is available here.

Chase Niesner contributed to this report.

Previous Posts: Dignity in Schools Campaign: Week of Action Against School ‘Pushout’; LAUSD Proposal Includes Truancy in School Ratings; Truancy Series Wins National Journalism Award.

What many call the “drop out crisis,” the Dignity in Schools Campaign is calling the “push out crisis.”

The nationwide coalition of students and activists is undertaking a National Week of Action, and various rallies, press conferences, even art installations will be held across Los Angeles this week to address what the group sees as the over-reliance on law enforcement in the nation’s public schools.

The group is demanding positive approaches to addressing behavior problems instead of the zero tolerance discipline policies and other punitive practices that tend to push students out of school for good, fueling a “school-to-prison” pipeline.

According to a Dignity in Schools press release, California public schools issue more than 700,000 suspensions annually and the state maintains the highest dropout rate in the nation.

Today, the Inglewood-based Dignity in Schools member organzation Youth Justice Coalition is conducting a survey of students’ transportation struggles to and from school, with a special emphasis given to their experiences with law enforcement on public transportation.

In light of recent reports of a California truancy “crisis,” organization spokeswoman Zoë Rawson said she hopes the survey will eventually lead to a free-student bus pass to address some of the attendance issues facing the city’s schools. According to Rawson, fare evasion tickets are given at the highest rate, representing 27 percent of all tickets given to the city’s youth.

On Thursday, the campaign will host a showcase of alternative restorative justice models at FREE L.A. High School in Inglewood and at Augustus Hawkins High School in south Los Angeles. The site tours of both schools will seek to reframe the question of school safety without campus police or security.

“Restorative or transformative justice at the FREE LA School attempts to restore a safe school environment and facilitate what we call ‘restorative circles,'” Rawson told LA School Report. “Ultimately these circles of communication will allow the actors to better understand their own situation and find their own solutions amongst their teachers and peers within the school setting.”

The Dignity in Schools L.A. campaign also includes the ACLU of Southern California, the Children’s Defense Fund-California, and the labor/Community Strategy Center’s Community Rights Campaign.

Previous Posts: LAUSD Suspensions: Not Great, but Not the Worst; Why Galatzan Opposed End to “Willful Defiance” Suspensions.

Eric Garcetti Avoids Schoolyard Tussle With Wendy Greuel
On the heels of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa calling on the two mayoral candidates to step up and communicate their education platforms during his State of the City address Tuesday night, Wendy Greuel stepped up with a challenge to Eric Garcetti. KPCC
See also: LA School Report, Annenberg News, LA Times

LAUSD Superintendent Fires Lemon Teachers
The speed with which Deasy moves and speaks is well documented. He brings an uncomfortable impatience to the LAUSD supe’s job as he moves to increase the types of schools available to students (known as School Choice), raise achievement on test scores and graduation rates, and require accountability from L.A.’s more than 20,000 tenured-for-life teachers. LA Weekly

Education Coalition Wants to Stay Course in L.A. Unified
A coalition of groups, including the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, has launched an effort to put education at the center of the mayoral race and civic attention. LA Times
See also: LA School Report

Operation Back in School Sweeps up Truant Kids
Operation Back in School, a multi-agency task force in the Harbor area Wednesday to sweep up truant kids who should be in school. No citations were issued in a friendlier approach to the problem that offered counseling for kids and parents. Daily Breeze

Parents Choose Unique School Takeover Model in ‘Trigger’ Vote
In the latest test of California’s controversial “parent trigger” law, South Los Angeles parents have voted to transform their struggling neighborhood school into a charter school hybrid beginning this fall, organizers announced Wednesday. Hechinger Report
See also: LA Times, LA School Report

Garcetti and Greuel Trade Barbs on Union Support on Eve of Debate
Greuel has argued that her record as controller proves her judgment will not be swayed by campaign contributors. Appearing with school board member Garcia at a high school in Garcetti’s district, the controller contended that it is her former council colleague who is in the thrall of a union — United Teachers Los Angeles — which is supporting his bid for mayor. LA Times

Gates’ Warning on Test Scores
In a recent op-ed article, he cautions against overusing students’ standardized test scores in evaluating how well teachers are doing their jobs. LA Times Editorial

Here’s Why Students in Los Angeles Aren’t Going to College
The stakes just got higher for high-schoolers in Los Angeles—but will they be prepared? TakePart

Qualified Math Teachers Elusive for Struggling Students, Studies Find
In many schools in the United States, students struggling the most in mathematics at the start of high school have the worst odds of getting a qualified teacher in the subject, new research finds. EdWeek

When a Teacher Is 2 Feet Tall
This year, robots will be teaching everything from math to vocabulary to nutrition inside classrooms in California and New York, a move the researchers call a first in American education. WSJ

Alemany Enjoys Unified State at Championship Assembly
When Alemany celebrated the school’s first state championship last year, the boys basketball program had the spotlight all to itself. LA Daily News

Bullies Shoot 8th Grade Student With BB Gun in Class, Victim Says
LA school district police plan to investigate a shooting incident at a Carson middle school where a BB gun injured a 13-year-old student. NBC LA

Obama Budget Would Allocate $75 Billion Over Next Decade to Preschool
In an ambitious and highly anticipated budget plan, President Barack Obama called Wednesday for allocating $75 billion over the next 10 years to expand public preschool by raising the federal tax on tobacco products. EdSource

Via Education Writers Association

“Punishing Numbers” — a widely-noted investigative series depicting harsh school discipline rules in California schools — has won the top investigative journalism prize for medium-sized newsrooms in the 2012 National Awards for Education Reporting. The series was a joint reporting effort shared by Vanessa Romo at Los Angeles public radio station KPCC, Krissy Clark at San Francisco public radio station KQED, and Susan Ferriss at the Center for Public Integrity. You can read the stories in the “Punishing Numbers” series here.

Push for a Downtown Charter School Includes Big Fundraiser This Week Los Angeles Downtown News: Downtown Parents Aim to Secure Approvals and Raise $250,000 for Local Elementary School.

Prop 38 sponsor says ed initiative will upset polls Ed Source: Confident that Californians will tax themselves to send more money to their local schools, Molly Munger is preparing for “a big air war” – extensive TV advertising to persuade voters to pass Proposition 38.

Taking care of truants LA Times Editorial: L.A. Unified’s new, gentler plan emphasizes counseling over handing out tickets.

Controller: Teachers retirement fund failed to investigate possible pension abuses KPCC: A report issued by California’s Controller on Wednesday says that the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) failed to investigate possible abuses beginning in June 2011 and lasting over two years.

CA spending, outcome in special ed well below national averages SI&A Report: California spends substantially less than other states on special education services, and the academic outcomes for students in those programs is well below the national average, according to a new report unveiled Wednesday.

Struggling CA schools seek relief from fed’s parent notice rule SI&A Report: Fallout from this summer’s mini scandal over student testing in some Southern California districts has prompted the California Department of Education to consider asking federal officials for more time to comply with the parental notice requirements for schools newly designated as failing under the No Child Left Behind Act.

• California Teachers Association, a powerful force in Sacramento: The LA Times goes long on the power and influence of the CTA:

The union views itself as “the co-equal fourth branch of government,” said Oakland Democrat Don Perata, a former teacher who crossed swords with the group when he was state Senate leader.

The article is highly recommended. LA Times

• Charter school group’s chief blamed for 2010 cheating scandal: Two separate investigations have concluded that John Allen, founder and head of Crescendo schools, asked principals and teachers to show students the state standardized tests before taking them. The Times calls it “one of the most brazen cheating scandals in the nation.” LA Times

• Mayor hopes his Partnership for Schools survives his exit from office: Antonio Villaraigosa’s tenure as mayor is almost at a close, just as his set of schools ends its first five-year term. He hopes the schools will be made permanent, and be overseen by the next Mayor. UTLA President Warren Fletcher isn’t so sure. Daily News

• Teachers on the defensive: A Frank Bruni column in the New York Times focusing on school reform and the upcoming film, “Won’t Back Down,” is mediocre but redeems itself with two good quotes, the first by Mayor Villaraigosa about the unions: “The notion that seniority drives every decision — assignments, promotions, layoffs — is unsustainable.” The second is by AFT President Randi Weingarten about the recent antipathy towards teachers unions: “We bear a lot of responsibility for this… We were focused — as unions are — on fairness and not as much on quality.” New York Times

• How to keep good teachers from leaving: Grand View Elementary teacher Sujata Bhatt writes, in an LA Times op-ed, that good teachers need to be brought into leadership roles within schools in order to get them to stay. The Times neglects to disclose that Bhatt is on the design team for Steve Barr’s new group of pilot schools, which aims to do just what Bhatt is advocating. LA Times

• Long Beach charter could close after “fun” curriculum leads to lackluster test scores: Note that the fun is in quotes. KPCC

• Alahambra Unified helps students make a fresh start: A nice profile on the “Fresh Start” program, a three-hour-a-day summer course that prepares students for high school. KPCC

• LAUSD truancy-diversion program keeps violators out of the courts: A new program will, according to Barbara Jones, “shift the focus from punishing troubled students to resolving the problems that result in them frequently skipping school.” Daily News