Editor’s note: This commentary is by Alyssa Chen, a career educator who recently made the transition to education advocate and community organizer. She is a bi-racial (Chinese/Jewish) woman who grew up colorblind and thinking she was white in Rutland County. She became a racial justice advocate after teaching in a jail in the Bay Area. She realized she wasn’t white after moving back to Vermont and having a traumatic personal experience with racism.
[O]ver the past two years, Vermont Legal Aid has brought much-needed attention to the issue of disproportionate suspension, the practice by which certain students get suspended at rates exceeding those of others. Legal Aid formed the Dignity in Schools Coalition to fight for statewide policy change. Bolstered by the findings of the Kicked Out Report (January 2015), the coalition succeeded in passing the H.490 bill to ensure the state analyzes school discipline data.
Recently, the coalition introduced a bill to limit the use of suspensions (S.194) to the Senate Education Committee. Currently, schools have local control to create behavioral guidelines for suspensions. Under S.194, suspensions could only be used when students posed a risk of harm or when non-exclusionary discipline has repeatedly failed. While the bill is well-intentioned, it lacks input from those it is designed to serve. Most significantly, there is not a single teacher or parent of color on the Dignity in Schools Coalition. Additionally, disproportionate discipline is a symptom of deeper societal problems, mainly racism and classism. Addressing the symptoms only obscures the root of the problem.
Policy changes should have meaningful input by people they impact the most. Disenfranchised students and their parents are most affected by disproportionate discipline (According to a recent state report, students that are most impacted in order of disproportionality are: free and reduced lunch recipients, students with disabilities, and students of color). As for teachers, they deal directly with student behavior. They will be ill-served – and likely to resent – a requirement that comes without training and resources to better equip them to provide alternatives to suspension (no surprise NEA does not support this bill). Many nonprofit coalitions, like Dignity in Schools, often fail to include the voices and needs of impacted people because of grant imposed deadlines and outcomes.
The bill will likely be ineffective because it lacks both measures to ensure enforcement or incentives to encourage change. In 2014, a new law mandated all police departments collect traffic stop race data. Here we are two years later, and none of the agencies have even compiled the raw traffic stop data. Without accountability and support, this discipline bill will likely meet the same fate.
Many parents of color have told me stories of over-suspension and racial harassment of their children. When they tried to go through the traditional grievance procedures, their requests were ignored. People of color organizers are calling for regional equity committees made up of impacted people and allies where their grievances can be heard if the traditional complaint route fails to meet their needs.
As an honors student at Rutland High School over a decade ago, I was treated with inequitable privilege. I was a compulsively talkative student, who was clearly from a higher-class family and did very well in school. No matter how disruptive my behavior, teachers pleaded, “Please behave! We don’t suspend honors students!”
We called the general classes “stupid classes”; kids taking those classes were “dirt bags” and “ghetto kids” (read “poor kids”). Teachers and school leaders condoned this language, never questioning that it might have hurt people. Most schools in Vermont are built to serve the needs of college educated middle/upper class parents. Until we embed equity in the structure, we won’t see a real change in disproportionate discipline. Equity means doing what it takes to get all students to the same successful endpoint (prepare them to thrive in life!) and stands in contrast with equality; the belief that all students should be treated exactly the same.
People of color organizers are calling for regional equity committees made up of impacted people and allies where their grievances can be heard if the traditional complaint route fails to meet their needs.
Also, the bill doesn’t get at the root of why so many poor students and students of color are disciplined for acting out in class. Students from lower-income families and families of color in Vermont are much more likely to experience trauma than their peers (Vermont Department of Public Health, 2012). Trauma creates behavioral and other problems that can persist into adulthood if not properly addressed.
Over the past two decades, we have made great strides in our scientific understanding of trauma. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study (Felitti et al., 1998) assessed the collective impact of various traumatic childhood experiences such as homelessness, abuse, food insecurity, etc. The study found that ACEs were essentially a measure of toxic stress. Large doses of toxic stress “can have damaging effects on learning, behavior, and health across the lifespan” (Center on Developing Child, Harvard University). A 2011-2012 Vermont Department of Public Health Study found that children with three or more Adverse Family Experiences were less likely to engage in school, exhibit resilience, and flourish. Additionally, their families were more likely to be contacted by the school about their children’s behavioral problems.
When a traumatized brain perceives danger, whether the threat is real or not, the brain goes into a fight or flight response (this is why we see some traumatized students shutting down and others acting out). A part of our brain, which provides inhibitory control, shuts down. Therefore, a student acting out of trauma is literally out of control. If the goal of discipline is to encourage positive behavior punishing traumatized students is completely counterproductive, because punishing students for acting out of trauma literally re-traumatizes them.
I have repeatedly heard similar versions of a story that demonstrates both our illogical use of suspensions and the ugliness of racism in our schools. A black student is continually bullied and harassed. As a result, that student acts out violently or aggressively and is consequently suspended or expelled. Barbara Miller, a black grandmother from Morrisville, told me a story of her learning disabled grandson continually being called racially-charged names such as “porch monkey” and “nigger.” One time he retaliated by shoving a white bully up against a locker and was punished for it.
Research indicates that schools can reduce the negative impact of childhood trauma. The best way for children to overcome trauma is consistent, caring relationships with adults (reference). As shown in the film “Paper Tigers,” when Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, Washington, adopted a trauma-informed discipline strategy, their suspensions dropped 85 percent.
In 2005, Massachusetts launched a policy agenda called Helping Traumatized Children Learn. I suggest we learn from the successes and challenges of our neighboring state. Addressing trauma in schools will likely have the long-term impact of improving public health outcomes and reducing crime. The time is ripe to move from a punitive to a preventative approach to student discipline.
If we are fighting to undo racism and classism in schools, we need to recognize that it will be a long, hard, unpopular battle won only through deep, deliberate building of people power. To address this problem we need sustained focus and adequate resources. Vermont children deserve a bill that limits exclusionary discipline, creates regional equity committees, provides statewide training to transform school discipline systems, and redistributes money from corrections to low-income/high diversity schools.
If you want to join the movement, please come out for a March to End Racism in Vermont Schools at 1 p.m. in downtown St. Albans Saturday, Feb. 27. Additionally, community members are working to build a statewide coalition led by students, parents, teachers and concerned community members in partnership with advocacy organizations. Together, we will build education equity in Vermont. We would love any Dignity in Schools Coalition members to join! The march is being organized by Black Lives Matter VT. Contact lyssa.chen@gmail.com founder of www.racetoequityvt.org to get involved.
