Common Sense Reform for School Discipline from The Children’s Agenda

Local advocacy organization The Children’s Agenda published a brief on school discipline reform. Using statewide data, the brief highlights the relationship between restricting punitive disciplinary practices and improved student achievement and graduation rates. Based on their analysis, The Children’s Agenda recommends a concrete policy change: limiting suspensions to 20 days. 

Approachable and informative, the report uses both facts and figures to lay out the deficiencies of current policy and the inequities of suspensions and expulsions.  A particularly helpful table on page 11 illustrates how far behind New York State is on restricting early-grade suspensions compared to other states. According to the table, Ohio has a 10-day limit on suspensions, California has a 20-day limit, and Wisconsin has a 15-day limit. 

The Children’s Agenda brief urges us to face local (and regional) expulsion and suspension policies. It is also an opportunity to think about our communities and what it would take to make this policy change successful for children and our schools.

To learn more about the Solutions Not Suspensions bill in pursuit of the recommended reforms, go to https://www.solutionsnotsuspensionsny.org/sns-bill.