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Essay on zero tolerance.policy
Essay on zero tolerance.policy
Zero tolerance policy in american schools
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Zero-tolerance policies argument
I personally do not believe that the zero-tolerance policy is a good thing because it limits the students abilities to defend themselves. The wellbeing of the students is and should always be the most important factor for public schools.
Schools have had a difficult time trying to balance the best interest of the whole school body. When this policy was put into place they had good intentions. But soon problems were caused. Where they supposed to punish the kids just defending themselves from bullies? Or only punish the one who started it and make it seem like they are taking sides. For example in Delaware a 6 year old boy took a camping utensil which can be used as a knife, fork and spoon to school. Naturally
anyone can safely assume there is no harm, however, Zachary Christie received 45 days in the district's reform school. In this case, the wellbeing of the students surrounding Christie is thrown out of the window and it comes down to its consistency in being enforced. The boy clearly had no intention in causing harm, however he was treated as if he was. Zero tolerance policies were at first were first intended to make schools safer and more efficient. But researchers have not found any evidence that these policies have been effective at doing that. Meanwhile, suspension rates skyrocketed. According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Education, one out of five middle and high school students will be suspended in any year. A study in Texas showed that over half of that state’s students were suspended or expelled at least once during middle and high school. Very few of these conflicts involved weapons and most could have been taken care of by just taking a trip to the principal's office. In conclusion, the school districts were just trying to better the schools. But really it only lead to conflicts and problems. Students started acting out even more. The problems that were occuring were not even life threatening. The kids should just be sent to the principal and punished without being sent the alternative school or getting the authorities involved.
This decision makes it clear the most important thing for a school to do is to protect the students. It also states that the board of education, whose role is to oversee the schools, must make sure that the staff of the schools is protecting those children. This case highlights that long-term abuse can happen in schools if there are not clear policies or, if there are, that there is no one ensuring that those policies are
Firstly, if there are no more troublemakers in the school, the students that want to learn will be able to learn without any distractions; also, there would be no one to bully them, and there would be no interference in their ability to learn. If we permanently ban such students from school, educators could focus more on the students who want to learn instead of focusing on troublemakers. Secondly, the students that doesn`t want to be in schools wouldn’t be wasting their time anymore. Troublemakers do not learn anything by attending the school because they have no interest in studies, and all they are doing is wasting their time. They could use this time for doing something that they want to do, or something that they are interested in. Lastly, their absence will provide a safer school environment. Troublemakers always try to get into fights against others; in fact, they have no fear of security. By their actions, they could put other students into big troubles. Their mind is always seeking for attention, and they could do anything to attain others` attention; as a result, the environment of the school gets disturbed. By not letting them into the school, we could provide a safer environment for the students that really wants to learn. Overall, banning troublemakers would be helpful for students that are serious about their
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,
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.
The intent of this argumentative research paper, is to take a close look at school systems disciplinary policies and the effect they have on students. While most school systems in the nation have adopted the zero tolerance policies, there are major concerns that specific students could be targeted, and introduced into the criminal justice system based on these disciplinary policies. This research paper is intended to focus on the reform of zero tolerance policies, and minimizing the school to prison pipeline.
It is a serious waste of tax funds and waste extremely precious time which can never be regained. Unless parents teachers and the country start seeing these problems with shootings and gangs. in high school are all due to the fact that the most basic concept every teen knows about “everyone for their selves, if you can’t play with the big dogs than get off the porch.” With that stated, we seriously need to change the school system for.
Looking back on my own educational experience the words, “zero tolerance” vaguely strike a chord. If I am not mistaken I believe that our district adopted the zero tolerance policy between my junior and senior year (96/97-97/98 respectfully) as a means to hinder bullying/violence among the students. As I consider my years in high school I do not recall violence being a normal occurrence, with the exception of your random argument turned, “meet me at short stop,” dispute, nor do I remember drugs being a large concern among parents and/or school personnel. Perhaps I was naïve or maybe it turns out that it just wasn’t something to be considered a problem. There is an exception to every rule; however, I trust that during my high school career violence and drug abuse and its distribution was not the norm…
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.
Students’ rights in schools are limited or just taken away. Kids are forced to do whatever the officials at their school, either the principal or the teachers, tell the students to do. One of the main right that gets taken away or limited is students’ first amendment rights, which is the freedom of expression. Students can gets suspended by just doing things the staff at the school does not like, including saying things that they don 't like or supporting a religion that the school does not support. Also, if something is said about the school or the people attending the school is said on social media that student can also get in a lot of trouble. Students should be able to have more first amendment
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).
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.
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
This then becomes an incident of poor practise. Having this policy ensures that all children are safe and if the policy is not followed that there will be consequences. Teachers may be aware of the policy but may not have been brought through it and therefore are unclear of how the policy works. This means that they will be unaware of how to deal with a situation or who to report to if they feel that there may be a problem with a child. Teachers and parents may be unaware or the signs and symptoms of different types of abuse and may over look it.
I completely believe schools should be the one intervening in the problem not the parents. Parents aren’t with their children during school hours so for they aren’t responsible if there child is getting bullied because from personal experience I would know the parents wo...
When you take a child out of school it doesn’t just take away their opportunity to see their friends or make bad decisions in school again, it takes away their education. Now if schools were to start using In School Suspension, where the children still have to go to school and do work but are separated from everyone else, that is usually a worse punishment than not having to go to school for a few days. The fact of the matter is that most of the people who get suspended are people who don’t care and have parents who don’t care if they get suspended or not. They would rather get suspended than still have to stay in school and do work. Yes, sometimes it is necessary to suspend a child or punish them in a harsher way, but still there is no reason to take a child away from their education because of a bad mistake or decision they made. This means that suspending children all the time is not