The role of Expulsion

June 14, 2004

Expulsion--or exclusion, as it's called in some parts--plays a very important role in the management of a K-12 school, but is a misunderstood concept.

The old-fashioned meaning of expulsion was simple: do something bad enough and you'll be kicked out of school for a year, if not permanently.

But today, there is much hand-wringing over the subject, such that some schools voluntarily don't expel children ("where are the poor dears to go if we throw them out on the street?") whereas other schools have been warned by their legal counsel not to do it to avoid lawsuits.

And while some schools have unreasonable zero-tolerance policies (which we explained earlier), here we'll focus on more sane--if misguided--policies on expulsion.

This week we learn from Brian Micklethwait that "Leicestershire schools to be fined for excluding a child." The proposal comes from city and school bureaucrats, and would not only force a school which excludes (expels) a student to pay back the money it received to educate him, but it will also be fined up to £10,000 per child (about $18,000).

If a school receives tuition in a lump sum at the start of the school year to educate a child, and then kicks that child out midyear, it seems reasonable for the school to refund the remaining tuition, pro-rated. No harm, no foul. But to fine a school such a large amount essentially amounts to a ban on expulsion.

Brian writes:

[If teachers] are forbidden to expel or exclude, they are simply at the mercy of any pupil . . . or consortium of pupils which decides to misbehave, as are all the pupils at the school who actually want to do some learning.

Teachers and students "at the mercy" of miscreants is a common theme in schools where discipline has gone wayward, and this plan is clearly a recipe for disaster.

Early in our school career we taught in a poorly-run inner-city middle school, where chaos was the plan of the day. One day a child set fire to a desk in the art room (while art class was in session!) and fortunately no one was hurt, for it could have quickly turned ugly, with all the paper and dry combustibles. District policy stated the child be expelled for one year, for it was a clear case of arson.

The school's response? The principal gave the kid a one-week vacation suspension, after which he returned to class as if nothing happened. But something had happened, and everyone knew it.

Thus the child's pose upon returning to that same art room was a triumphant swagger, both fists raised high. He'd clearly won.

Obligation to Not Expel
The Leicestershire bureaucrats probably aren't bad people, but they clearly don't understand the role of expulsion in maintaining school discipline.

So why do school officials decide to stop expelling students? It all stems from a misguided sense of obligation.

In Leicestershire, leaders express concern that "the money has to come from somewhere" to educate expelled children. In other words, even though a student chose to behave so intolerably so as to be kicked out of the local school district, they're still feeling obliged to service that child!

It's yet another failing of the socialist mentality: to treat everyone as wards of the state.

What will soon happen if the Leicestershire plan is approved is that students will behave more and more egregiously. It doesn't take kids long to figure out when there are no limits on their behavior. If anything goes, you can be sure anything will.

Voluntary Moratorium
The edict to not expel children doesn't have to come from above, sometimes it comes from within.

We've worked at a number of charter schools in Philadelphia where the prevailing attitude was "we can't just put this child out, for where will he go?" Believe it or not, sometimes these sentiments were expressed in front of the student. Thus Rotten Johnny continues his rotten ways, for he knows there are officially no limits to his actions.

It then becomes open season on the endangered species known as "civil classroom decorum."

The Myth of the Trivial Expulsion
There's another misunderstood aspect of expelling children from school. Some folks (especially critics of vouchers) hold the view that the schools that do expel (such as private schools and well-run public schools) boot out students willy-nilly, for little or no reason at all.

This is patently false.

Just because a school has expulsion in its bag of tricks for use when disciplining children doesn't mean that it is used frequently, or even at all. A few months ago we wrote of "The Ladder" for dealing with serious school misbehavior. In the case of the 5-step ladder, if a student continues to disrupt the learning environment in nontrivial ways, that student moves up the ladder, step by step. Each step has a new consequence, but the fifth and final step is expulsion.

Some folks think that a school using this ladder would be expelling children right and left, but they're forgetting one important aspect of school discipline: the choices made by the individual child.

Expulsion Done Right
In a school that responsibly uses expulsion, students quickly figure out that they can't play the system for long, or they'll be out of the system entirely. Sure, a kid may continue to test his boundaries (which is only natural), but when faced with the prospect of being expelled for continued serious misconduct, most children change their behavior.

A subtle example of schools using expulsion effectively is the KIPP academies. KIPP schools are open-enrollment public schools (in other words, they can't choose their student body) and most are in "distressed" urban neighborhoods. They're famous for having incredible success--both academically and behaviorally--with their young charges.

Yet they rarely expel students.

Just because they rarely expel, doesn't mean that it isn't an option. You can bet that it's on the table when having a serious conversation with a severely-misbehaving child and his family. From the track record of KIPP schools, they seem to be so well run (and level-headed in terms of discipline) they clearly encourage children to behave at their best, so there is little need for expulsion to take place.

The Big Picture
Ultimately school discipline is about two things: maintaining a civil environment where learning can flourish, and encouraging students to accept responsibility for their behavior--which leads directly to students behaving ever more responsibly.

The bottom line is that schools must have some sort of authority over students--whether it chooses to exercise it or not--otherwise the students will ultimately be in charge.

And that's no way to run a school.