Comment by Glyptodon
4 days ago
There's a big difference between someone with an IEP (usually massive trauma and mental illness also) doing things and a "regular" student doing them. Expelling a kid usually just means they move to a different school, and all expulsion is doing is moving the burden down the chain, usually from more affluent places where parents are equipped to complain, to less affluent ones. Particularly if the room destroying-violence kiddo's family don't have lawyers.
A big difference to whom?
When I judge an educational institution I could not care less why some child being significantly disruptive is tolerated, even slightly. That institution simply becomes a non starter for a place I might send my children.
Of course parents who don't care about such things, or don't have the luxury of being able to choose, would accept such things. As would those who themselves have 'problem children.' Now think about what this does to the quality of that institution over time.
I do think it's totally fair to put pressure on the school to reduce mainstreaming of kids with major behavior issues. But it's really not about "tolerating" or "not tolerating"- you're witness a system failure and responding by making the problems worse for everyone but the wealthy in a society where governance is premised on the population at large being well educated.
* Tossing around hot potato kids doesn't resolve things in a good for society way.
* Concentrating the proportion of kids interfering with normal income families by removing all the high-income kids from the school doesn't resolve things in a good for society way.
* Letting people choose to send their kids to charters while all the kids of low-involvement parents are still stuck in a situation with a concentrated proportion of problems doesn't either.
Unfortunately there are a several things at play:
* Increased availability of specialized, non-mainstream resources for moderate+ (moderate is pretty severe most of the time IMO) kiddos, gen pop behavior interventions, etc.
* Better general welfare for parents (often unstable/low income ones).
* More push back from districts when parents w/ lawyers demand stuff that's bad for the rest of the classroom.
* Teachers quality needs improving. (Many reasons.)
IMO institutional quality is purposefully damaged by people who hate paying taxes or supporting the general welfare - public schools are basically being purposefully doomed in much the same way that Republicans say "government always bad" and then set out to make it fail on purpose to prove their point, only with a wider variety of motives at play. "I'm sending my kids to private school, why should I pay taxes for public schools?" is not an uncommon strain of thought.
It's a doom loop leading to societal regression into a stratified society unable to properly self-govern IMO.
Kids with major behavioral issues should be getting a bootcamp-style education, where their tendencies can be held in check by adequate physical supervision. This is not about denying anyone an education - if anything, it's doing the exact opposite and addressing their unique educational needs in the most effective way.
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It hardly matters to other students WHY a particular student is making it very hard for them to learn and using up all the teacher's time. Only that they ARE.