Whereas 1,300,000 students leave high school prior to
graduating each year in the United States, depriving such students of reaching
their full potential and rendering them without meaningful access or
opportunity to thrive socially, politically, or economically;
Whereas millions of students attend public schools
characterized by conditions that harm education, including corporal punishment,
low academic expectations, overcrowded and unwelcoming school environments,
overemphasis on high stakes testing without appropriate academic or fiscal
support and that limits the ability to focus on the whole child, lack of
parent, student, and community participation in school decisionmaking, poor or
limited teacher training and support, inadequate screening and instruction of
students with disabilities, and racial and socioeconomic isolation;
Whereas these practices disengage students from learning
and remove them from the classroom, furthering a national crisis that is more
accurately described as push out
, as opposed to drop
out
, as children and youth are effectively pushed out of school;
Whereas school pushout impacts all students, but
disproportionately impacts historically disenfranchised youth, including
students of color, students from low-income families, students with
developmental, physical, emotional, and mental disabilities, students who are
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered, English language learners, youth in
State facilities and foster care, pregnant and parenting teens, and students in
the juvenile justice system and alternative schools;
Whereas school pushout is dangerously evident in the
quickly growing rates of suspension, expulsion, and school arrests under
zero tolerance
discipline policies employed in many of our
Nation’s schools;
Whereas rather than improve school safety, the American
Psychological Association has found that suspension and expulsion negatively
impact school-wide achievement and increase the risk that excluded students
fall behind academically, become alienated from school, drop out, and become
involved in the juvenile and criminal justice systems;
Whereas according to the Secretary of Education, over
3,300,000 students are suspended and over 100,000 students are expelled at
least once each school year, often for actions that do not merit
exclusion;
Whereas a first-time arrest doubles the odds of dropout,
and hundreds of thousands of students are being arrested in schools, often for
incidents once considered youthful misbehavior to be handled by school
disciplinarians;
Whereas thousands of public schools are adopting proven
and promising approaches to preventive and positive classroom behavior
management and school discipline such as school-wide positive behavioral
interventions and supports (PBIS) and restorative practices, and are witnessing
positive results, including a reduction of disciplinary incidents, for students
and teachers alike;
Whereas local educational agencies in the Southeast are
collaborating with juvenile courts, law enforcement, mental health agencies,
and community organizations to reduce unnecessary school-based arrests through
school offense protocols
, and the graduation rate of one local
educational agency in Georgia climbed by 20 percent after adopting its
protocol; and
Whereas there are proven approaches to improving parent
engagement with schools, and the positive impact that school-based efforts to
engage parents can have is most profound for students from low-income families
and is critical for closing the achievement gap: Now, therefore, be it
That the House of Representatives—
(1)promotes a
heightened awareness on the part of educators and the general public about the
spectrum of policies and practices that lead to school pushout;
(2)commits to working
to reduce or eliminate school suspensions (especially out-of-school
suspensions), expulsions, arrests, corporal punishment, and placements in
disciplinary alternative schools by partnering with States, local education
agencies, and schools to adopt and implement evidence-based and promising
approaches to improve student engagement and school safety, and recognizes the
need for effective technical assistance as well as flexibility in supporting
the accurate and durable implementation of these practices;
(3)understands that
proper behavior is not implicit but should be taught explicitly starting from
an early age and practiced, supervised, and recognized throughout the
pre-kindergarten through graduation school experience;
(4)acknowledges that
educators and school leaders need effective, efficient, and relevant continuous
professional development, training, and support to effectively teach,
encourage, and sustain those social skills and behaviors that characterize
effective teaching and learning environments for students of all
backgrounds;
(5)recognizes—
(A)the need to
streamline and enhance school climate and disciplinary data collection;
and
(B)that such data
should be used in analyzing and revising school discipline policies, behavioral
practices, and systems to produce better outcomes for students and teachers;
and
(6)supports community
collaborations and meaningful parental involvement to ensure that schools are
safe, respectful, responsible, and effective teaching and learning environments
that reduce—
(A)the likelihood of
violent school behavior; and
(B)the use of
reactive, compliance, and punishment-oriented school policies and
practices.