Massachusetts education officials say more than 30 schools and districts across the state suspend students more than they should. A publicly released list shows a number of those cited are in western Massachusetts. And some administrators from these communities say the numbers don’t tell the whole story.
A 2014 state law requires heightened reporting of suspensions by school districts. and it calls on regulators to identify, and assist those with high rates of suspensions, either across the board or of a particular demographic.
“This law and the department’s interest is in insuring that kids are in class, in school as much as possible so that they can learn and achieve,” says Cliff Chuang with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
In Westfield, the city’s high school was called-out by the state: A third of its Hispanic and Latino students faced some sort of discipline, and half of those received suspensions. Superintendent Suzanne Scallion says she’s troubled by the state’s decision to release the numbers. They’re from the 2014-15 school year, and she says the school and district have made strides since then.
“I don’t know the purpose of embarrassing districts or schools,” Scallion says. “I think the data should have been scrutinized much more deeply before this report went out.”
Scallion says Westfield has worked to identify and help at-risk students sooner, opened an alternative school and looked for ways to avoid using suspensions. She also says Westfield sees a high number of young people placed at group homes or as foster children in the city and those students often find themselves in trouble at school. Scallion says the schools are trying to work with child welfare officials to find out more about these new arrivals ahead of time, to help keep them out of the principal’s office.
“The more information that we can get up-front, the more successful that student is going to be because we can put in place services from the beginning, instead of going on a failure model, where that child is falling through the cracks,” Scallion says.
Another district facing challenges in this area: Pittsfield. The state says the Berkshire County district suspends African American male students on types of special education plans at a high rate. Superintendent Jason McCandless, who acknowledged the disparity to the school committee this month, says the district will continue to work on the problem.
“We have to look at ourselves first, look at our own practices and attitudes first,” McCandless says. “Then we really have to look at what could we be doing better in the schools to support students and how can we be more creative.”
But if schools fail to address disparities, fail to keep more kids in class, what “stick,” if you will, does the state hold? McCandless says it’s not clear to him the state can do anything but use public pressure.
“I don’t know that there’s really a penalty for this other than the state’s threat to make it public, ‘And you know we’re going to send out a press release,’ and that’s all well and good,” McCandless says.
For McCandless and other superintendents, there’s another source of frustration: What exactly counts as a suspension? State law says any time a student is removed from from regular classroom activities, but not from the school, that counts as an in-school suspension, even if they continue to receive direct instruction from a teacher. The state’s Cliff Chuang acknowledges the definitions still need work.
“We obviously have rules and specifications around what would qualify in our data handbooks,” Chuang says. “I think there’s a lot more nuance and context, and that’s part of what we want to learn.”
And learning, for regulators, districts and students, that’s what this is all about. Both superintendents, Scallion and McCandless, say they’d be happy to implement more programs and find other solutions, if the state would be willing to help fund them.
