school discipline

for a number of years, the aps and unm collaborated on an annual survey of aps teachers. the purpose of the survey was to objectively measure a number of influences on educational efficiency. there was an item that had to do with the effect of student disruption on education.

the results indicated that teachers found chronically disruptive students to be a significant problem.

the problem is no longer quantified because the item is no longer on the survey. when I asked why it had been removed, I was told that it was removed because the numbers never really changed much. ??

unless policy has changed, administrators are responsible for administering discipline policies in the aps.

and under their administration, discipline policies are not being enforced. there are students in charge at every school in the aps; by the following logic.

in a situation where there is a conflict of wills; the person who's will is finally done; is in charge.

if the principal tells students that they cannot sag, and students sag anyway, openly and blatantly; then sagging students are in charge at that school.

this is not about sagging; it is about openly permitting prohibited behavior. it is about allowing students to defy adults openly and without consequence.

any situation where students are in charge at school is educationally counterproductive.

teachers, despite their lack of power and resources necessary to change the behavior of chronically disruptive students; have been given the responsibility to do just that by administrators who don't want to deal with the problem themselves and because, at the risk of indelicacy, shit rolls downhill.

and because of administrators who have better things to do; like jockey for position in the uptown administrative retirement complex.

teachers are used best when they are teaching groups of students. the least effective use of a teacher is to spend them fecklessly on one chronically disruptive student at a time. additionally there is the wasted time of students who are waiting for the attention of their teacher.

the leadership of the aps is ignoring an administrative responsibility to deal with the issue of student discipline; both individually and district wide.

so far they have met that responsibility by publishing the student behavior handbook. it was written at the 14th grade reading level and at great expense by lawyers, for lawyers.

as further evidence of the administrative lack of a grasp on the issue of student discipline, I submit the district's discipline philosophy. at least I would if there actually was one.

which aps senior administrator is responsible for the failure to provide philosophical guidance to disciplinary policy making? is it the same administrator who decided to remove the survey item because the issue of chronically disruptive students wasn't getting any better?

a discipline philosophy describes commonly held beliefs about what is true with respect to the issue of discipline; and serves as the foundation for sound policy making. for example; a discipline philosophy statement might read, a student who deliberately misbehaves should experience some unpleasant consequence.

given that foundation, a school can then write its own discipline policy statement which might read, students who refuse to obey an adult will attend a conference with their parents and an administrator in order to determine an appropriate unpleasant consequence for their deliberate disobedience.

then if a parent questions the appropriety of an unpleasant consequece, it can be defended philosophically. in the absence of that philosophical foundation, the decision to consequence a student can be defended only by, "because I said so."

it is a pathetically inadequate defense for a teacher charged with enforcing an arbitrary discipline policy, with no power, no resources, and no philosophical foundation to stand on.

so far it hasn't worked. there is no reason to expect that it ever will.

the failure to address the issue of a district wide student discipline problems is the result of administrative corruption or incompetence. that failure will not be addressed by a system which is not transparently accountable to some meaningful standard of conduct.

and (some) students will remain in charge at school, against the interests of other students and their teachers.