NPR Ed – Anya Kamenetz
“When students get suspended from school for a few days, they may not be the only ones who miss out. A report released today by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project tries for the first time to quantify the full social cost of so-called “exclusionary discipline.”…The authors calculate that suspensions in just one year of school — 10th grade — contributed to 67,000 students eventually dropping out of high school. And that, they conclude, generates total costs to the nation of more than $35 billion…The study concludes that in-school suspensions are just as bad when it comes to their impact on dropout rates. And in places like LA Unified, teachers have complained that class disruptions go up when they don’t have the power to remove certain students. What works instead, says the report, are evidence-based practices like restorative justice and social and emotional skill-building, where educators actively help teenagers resolve conflicts and manage tough emotions to get at the roots of misbehavior.”(more)