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Introduction to zero tolerance in schools essays
Zero Tolerance Policies in Schools
Zero tolerance policy in american schools
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Tim Funk In schools, teachers need to find a way to create and maintain a safe learning environment. Schools have a duty to keep students safe. Teachers find it challenging to maintain this environment when some students do not follow rules that are designed to keep both the teachers and students safe. In an effort to keep students safe, a policy of zero tolerance has has tried to help maintain this environment. Zero Tolerance is a policy in which it does not matter why a rule was broken or what the story was just that the rule was broken. This is thought to keep students safe, because the student breaking the rule will be punished and can be removed from the school so that the safe learning environment of the school is maintained. Many schools …show more content…
Punishment is consistent for each and every student for every single policy violation. All that matters is that the rule was broken. It does not matter who the student is or why the violation occurred. Punishment can be more consistent. All students will receive identical punishment for identical infractions. Students will be prepared for the real world. When a law is broken, people are punished for their crime and not for the reason they committed the crime. The punishment will always be fair and equal for every student that breaks the rule, regardless of the …show more content…
This allows teachers to focus much more on teaching and to focus less on maintaining classroom control. This gives teachers the ability to focus on meeting the individual needs students instead of trying to correct the behavior of individual students. Zero Tolerance punishments are fair and consistent. The punishment will ideally match the infraction committed. Harsh punishments may discourage students from breaking school rules. On the other hand, the harsh punishments such as suspension and expulsion have resulted in greater dropout rates. Zero Tolerance policies are not always fair and consistent. This is especially true in the African American and Hispanic communities. Minorities are more likely to get expelled and suspended than non minority students. Zero Tolerance policies have created an opposite effect than their original intent by preventing the creation a safe learning environment. The policies tend to create a less conducive environment to learning the more they are implemented. Some mentally disabled students have experienced legal troubles for minor offenses, when they can not control how they act. Both relaxed policies and Zero Tolerance policies are not good, but schools need to decide for themselves how they are going to keep students safe and create a conducive learning
These kids don’t misbehave in the classroom for no reason. They are probably releasing those emotions that are bottled up from them at home in school. Not coming from a stable background can have quite the effect on trying to learn in a classroom. The problems that need to be fixed are trying to make schools feel more like a “safe haven” rather than a prison. Afterschool programs need to be put into place, to allow kids to stay at school for long so they don’t get involved in street life, or so they can just not have to deal with the outside problems of the world for a little bit longer. Also, school need to change. They need to try and make learning more fun, and more integrated with the children they are teaching. An easy an example of this is teaching these kids about their history, so they have many people to look up to besides just Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks. Only teaching black and Latino kids about people that don’t even look like them or go through anything they have gone through, makes them bored and uneager to learn. Also, more rewards in to be into place to make kids feel more welcomed and wanting to do good in class. Even though it may seem out of the ordinary for some, suspension needs to stop. Allowing these kids to take a break from somewhere they already don’t want to be is ushering them towards a life of hating school. Suspension not only hurt the school district but also hurt the
He makes some very valid points pertaining to the zero tolerance policy practiced by schools and how it has a negative effect on children in our school systems and essentially pushes them into our juvenile and prison systems. I am a firm believer that the zero tolerance does nothing good for students in school. In my mind it completely goes against everything our schools supposedly stand for. We tell kids to go to school to learn, but the first time they break a rule we suspend them and send them home or even worse we expel them for the entire year. I just don’t see how that isn’t setting kids up for failure down the road and neglecting them of a quality education. One statistic the author presented that really caught me off guard was when they said that when someone is suspended or expelled even once in their entire time in school their chances of ending up behind bars is increased at a rate of five times than that of someone who doesn’t get suspended or expelled. This made me really reflect on how many friends I had in high school that were suspended and ultimately flunked out. It made me wonder if the system truly wasn’t there for them to help them get an
A new policy is needed and most certainly should start out with holding schools to handle their own discipline situations, rather than relying on school security and police (Wilson, 2014). School administrators must be able to differentiate between what is a true discipline situation and when a student simply made a mistake. The rate of school suspensions have skyrocketed over the last thirty years from 1.7 million nationwide to 3.1 million and growing today (ACLU, n.d.). Each school needs to create policies of when to get school security involved and what the school’s security job involves. Unless there is a true threat to the safety of the school and/or its student’s law enforcement should never be called (Wison, 2014). The instinct to dial 911 at every infraction has to stop. Furthermore the schools must develop a gender and racial fairness; black children should not be receiving harsher punishments for similar infractions of white students (Wilson,
...e, however in support of changing the honor code system in terms of the expulsion penalty at all times as well as the tolerance portion of the penalty. I feel that there are many circumstances in which expulsion is extreme and unnecessary especially when it has to do with tolerance of an honor code violation.
Following the Columbine tragedy in 1999, “school systems across the nation introduced the zero-tolerance policies aimed at the curtailment of harmful student behaviors” (Noll, 2014, p. 295). The original focus of the policies was to eliminate the use/carrying of weapons but soon after spread to restricting drugs and medication (2014). By 2006 95% of the U.S. public schools had adopted the zero-tolerance policies and more than half of them reported taking significant action against students, many of which resulted in expulsion (2014). While the zero-tolerance polices were originally welcomed by all members of a community as a means of promoting and keeping a safer environment-- as of late many individuals are questioning the relevance of some actions and some school officials (2014).
The zero tolerance policy has become a national controversy in regards to the solid proven facts that it criminalizes children and seems to catch kids who have no intention of doing harm. Although, there has been substantial evidence to prove that the policies enforced in many schools have gone far beyond the extreme to convict children of their wrongdoing. The punishments for the act of misconduct have reached a devastating high, and have pointed students in the wrong direction. Despite the opinions of administrators and parents, as well as evidence that zero tolerance policies have deterred violence in many public and private schools, the rules of conviction and punishment are unreasonable and should be modified.
In all grades of education, from kindergarten to college, there is a form of discipline known as a zero tolerance policy. While the exact wording is different from school to school, basically a zero tolerance policy means that a student is immediately suspended, asked to attend an alternative school, or expelled if they are suspected or caught doing certain things. These policies are in place to hopefully deter students from doing drugs or being violent, but the ethics behind them are questionable. Some research has shown that these policies may not even work, and other forms of discipline would be better suited to help students. The three main activities that result in the zero tolerance policy are being caught with drugs or alcohol, being caught with a weapon, and bullying.
Another major reason why juveniles are ending up in the juvenile justice system is because many schools have incorporate the zero tolerance policy and other extreme school disciplinary rules. In response to violent incidents in schools, such as the Columbine High School massacre, school disciplinary policies have become increasingly grave. These policies have been enacted at the school, district and state levels with the hopes of ensuring the safety of students and educators. These policies all rely on the zero tolerance policy. While it is understandable that protecting children and teachers is a priority, it is not clear that these strict policies are succeeding in improving the safety in schools.
If the zero tolerance program is installed in the educational system, schools must decide when and how it should be enforced. This is a very complex issue and when open to debate you see three approaches to it. First, advocates of zero tolerance policies concentrate on positive changes in school security, ways of punishment, and change in student behavior. Those who oppose the policies argue that zero tolerance should be eliminated due to its lack of rationale and logic. Finally, the opposing viewpoint criticizes the zero tolerance policy for being too extreme and inappropriate for schools.
Schools inevitably must deal with disciplinary action when it comes to misconduct in students. However, at what point should the courts and law enforcement intervene? “Zero tolerance” policies started as a trend in the school setting during the 1990s in “response to the widespread perception that juvenile violence was increasing and school officials needed to take desperate measures to address the problem” (Aull 2012:182-183). However, national statistics indicated a decrease in juvenile’s share of crime during the influx of zero tolerance policies in schools (National Crime Justice Reference Service 2005).
Martinez, S. (2009). A system gone berserk: How are zero-tolerance policies really …..affecting schools? Preventing School Failure, 53(3), 153-157. Retrieved from …..http://search.proquest.com.ezproxylocal.library.nova.edu/docview/228530113?acco…..untid=6579
Students who are disruptive in class and refused to do their work were sent down to discipline where they received the consequences for their actions. More often than not, in school suspension was the end result. The concept of in school suspension was new to me because it was not something that I had seen when I was growing up.
...of deciding whether or not there should be enforcement of a policy or taking part of the rules that are to be implemented could decrease the number of students that are against the policy. Now ask yourselves this, how American and just are these uniform policies?
Consider Methodology: Teachers must have an exact and specific definition of what a discipline problem looks like so they can better handle situations with minimal disruption to the classroom. Case 2.1 on page 30 discusses a teacher who turned a minor student problem into a huge ordeal. Unfortunately, the problem could have been resolved by itself and did not need to be addressed. Because the teacher did not have the proper tools or definition of what a disciplinary problem looks like, all the students were disrupted and the learning processed stopped. However, Case 2.2 on page 31 was quite the opposite. It discussed how a student was not motivated to learn, complete
...o make school a safe learning environment by prohibiting weapons and drugs. Today, the zero tolerance policy includes much more than weapons. They may also lead to suspension or expulsion for several things. For instance, carrying other over-the-counter medications.