Judging School Discipline

Ask Americans what worries them most about the public schools, and the answer might surprise you: discipline. Ask parents of homeschooled children why they choose to teach their sons and daughters at home, again, the answer might surprise you: discipline. For several decades now, poll after poll shows it topping the list of parents' concerns. Recent news stories from the Columbine massacre to Jesse Jackson's protests against the expulsion of six brawling Decatur, Illinois, high school students guarantee that the issue won't go away soon.

Though fortunately only a small percentage of schools will ever experience serious violence, the public's sense is that something has gone very wrong with school discipline. Steinhardt School of Education Associate Professor Richard Arum demonstrates in his new book, Judging School Discipline: The Crisis of Moral Authority (Harvard University Press), how over the past 30 years, the courts and the federal government have hacked away at the power of educators to maintain a safe and civil school environment.

Arum argues that before 1965, there was only a handful of legal challenges in which schools were taken to court over their disciplinary procedures. Since then, there have been more than 1,500 cases in which a school's right to discipline students was contested and considered in U.S. appellate courts. This dramatic turnaround has made school discipline more difficult than ever before and, in fact, has undermined the quality of public education.

At the end of the 20th century, approximately 30 students per year died of homicides committed on school grounds, Arum notes. Ten percent of all public school teachers were threatened with injury by students and 4 percent of teachers were physically attacked in the course of the year.

In his book Arum and his colleagues examine every court case involving student discipline through 1992. Through an analysis of both court cases and several decades of nationally representative data on students and schools, Arum shows a striking relationship among court decisions, disciplinary practices, and student behavior. Judging School Discipline represents the first significant empirical study of the impact of legal cases on these aspects of education.

When Americans think about what is wrong with contemporary public schooling, they are struck by the failure of public schools to provide institutional encouragement for the proper socialization of youth, Arum said. When middle class parents remove their kids from public schools and place them in private schools, they are often as much concerned with how public schools fail to provide school climates conducive to socialization as they are troubled by the rate of learning that occurs there.

Arum lays much of the responsibility at the doors of the Supreme Court, of other judges who thought they understood education better than the educators, and of the idealistic "liberal advocacy lawyers" who pushed for students' rights to challenge school discipline beginning in the 1960s. Such well-intentioned "adversarial legalism" has, Arum writes, led to "the intimidation of school personnel faced with an ambiguous legal terrain, and an undermining of the school's moral authority," all to the detriment of "the ability of public schools to socialize youth for productive roles in society." These trends were not "an inevitable byproduct of change in cultural mores" or demographics, Arum adds in Judging School Discipline. Rather, "liberal public school advocates" must face the reality that liberal judicial decisions unique to the United States have made our schools uniquely disorderly.

Clearly, just the threat of lawsuits restrains teachers and administrators from taking charge in their classrooms and schools, said Arum. Rather than reaffirming civil liberties, litigation has prevented schools from enhancing educational opportunities for all.

In addition, Arum observes, schools are responsible for more than the cognitive development of their students. They also play a critical role in shaping individuals attitudes and social dispositions.

Arum argues in a recent op-ed piece that "schools need to address student alienation and disorder by becoming more responsive and active in their disciplinary approach, more intimate in structuring educational involvement and more relevant in curriculum design."

Arum is not alone with his scathing report. Philip K. Howard, the Founder and Chair of of the Common Good, states "The people in education have been incapacitated by the organization of it. We have taken away the human foundation of education, and wonder why the house is toppling down." 

Common Good's EdWatch includes a collection of recent news stories and commentary illustrating how litigation, due process and other regulatory requirements are affecting public education. Educators will probably find them most interesting.