(NewsNation) —Several states are moving towards legislation that gives teachers more power to remove a student from the classroom for misbehavior, but some education experts caution that the move could lead to negative outcomes for students.
The Alabama state house passed legislation last month establishing new policies for removing students from classrooms joining several states that have moved towards more punitive measures after a pandemic-era surge in student misbehavior.
SB157, also referred to as the Teachers Bill of Rights, passed through the Alabama legislature and is now waiting to be signed by Gov. Kay Ivey. Once signed, it will go into effect this upcoming school year.
Prior to the legislation, suspensions and other removals were handled by administrators, not the teachers themselves.
Over the last year, several states including Virginia and West Virginia have passed or introduced policies similar to Alabama’s policy allowing teachers to remove students they perceive as disruptive students from the classroom.
In 2023, at least 40 states allowed exclusion for defiant or disruptive behavior in some form according to research by the Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University.
Several education experts have voiced concerns that removing students from class as a form of discipline does not address the root cause of unruly behavior, contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline, and that these policies have historically disproportionately affected Black students.
“What’s going on in Alabama is really par for the course with what a lot of states have been doing in the aftermath of the pandemic in terms of getting more punitive in their policies and providing more discretion to teachers in the name of protecting teachers,” Richard Welsh, an associate professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University, told NewsNation.
Teachers at a ‘breaking point’
The Alabama legislation was largely pushed by the Alabama Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union. Like other states, the union said that classroom disruption has led to both verbal and physical abuse by students and that school administrators have done too little.
Member teachers told lawmakers they were “at a breaking point,” and that “valuable instructional time was lost” to disruptive students, according to the Alabama Reflector.
One teacher was reportedly physically injured in the classroom by a student who resigned due to inaction by administrators, according to the outlet.
“I could give you dozens of stories just like this one,” a teacher told lawmakers.
The Alabama Education Association did not return multiple requests for comment by NewsNation.
The landscape of exclusionary policies
Between 2019 and 2022, 151 bills related to discipline were enacted across 41 states, the report found.
Several states have attempted to or have rolled back restorative justice policies and made way for more punitive legislation, several education experts told NewsNation.
Since the pandemic, schools across the nation have reported a surge of disruptive behavior in classrooms and have been faced with the conundrum of how to deal with students.
“Students struggled coming back to schools and they missed a lot of key in-person time where they learned socializing aspects of school, how to be in school, how to sit still in seats, how to tolerate frustration,” Rachel M. Perera, a fellow at the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings Institute, said.
At the same time, teachers struggled with less resources, little training and have gotten little support to counter these new challenges which has led to a “perfect storm,” she said.
Still, some states have gone the other way.
There has also been an increase in the number of states that allowed or recommended more restorative approaches, such as social and emotional learning interventions, counseling and positive behavioral interventions according to Brittney Alexander, an assistant professor at Arizona State University, who co-authored the report, said..
What are the implications of these punitive policies?
While removing a disruptive student appears to be a fairly quick method for a teacher to remove an unruly student, robust research has shown that repeated exclusionary discipline has led to a host of negative outcomes.
Exclusionary discipline increases the risk of academic failure, decreased attendance, and declining graduation rates, which can all lead to a school-to-prison pipeline, Perera said.
“I imagine that a lot of the behavioral issues are related to kids being behind academically and this is only going to make those issues worse,” she added.
Another big factor is that the nature of these decisions can be entirely subjective, Welsh said, which means a teacher’s subjectivity will come into play as to who they perceive as disruptive.
Research has shown that those deemed disruptive by teachers have been disproportionately Black and disabled.
The most recently available data from the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights which examined the 2017-18 school year, disabled students comprised approximately 13% of total school K-12 enrollment, yet received about 25% of one or more out-of-school suspensions and 23% of all school expulsions.
That federal data has also consistently shown similar disparities with Black students making up 15% of public school enrollment but receiving nearly 40% of suspensions and expulsions in 2017-18. Other studies have found that Black students are punished more harshly than their peers for the same offenses.
Experts argue that these trends will only increase with more punitive policies that have historically been disproportionately applied according to race and ability.
“The research evidence tells us that this type of one-way discretion is a pathway for bias in disciplinary decisions so there should be more guardrails and more support for teachers rather than extending their leeway to exclude students from the classrooms,” Welsh said.
Teachers do need more resources, support and tools, but handing them punitive measures won’t get at the root issue, Perera said.
“Those kids are going to continue to be disruptive until somebody gets to the root issue, whether it’s a school counselor, it’s a parent or it’s a school leader.”