Neoliberalism, after decades of reform, continues to steer educational policies around the world. As private enterprise encroaches public education, schools are held accountable, tangled up in an internationally competitive culture of achieving benchmarks that meet technically managed standards. Not only is it academic performance that is audited…

Expulsion is the harshest form of disciplinary action, and behavior policies are the foundation for this decision-making process. The purpose of this study is to uncover how behavior policies used in early childhood settings describe expulsion practices. Among the 111 early childhood programs in Western Massachusetts that met the search criteria…

Problem behavior disrupts classrooms across the United States, impacting student learning. Despite the adverse consequences, teachers often exclude disruptive students from school as a punitive and default response to problem behavior. Alternatives to exclusion are becoming increasingly popular in many school districts to improve behavior and keep…

Recent years have seen a range of new state policies to reduce and prevent the use of suspension and expulsion in early childhood education (ECE) settings. Policymakers in some states have worked to limit disciplinary removals in public ECE programs by restricting suspension and expulsion in early grade levels and requiring or encouraging…

The use of exclusionary discipline practices in schools has continued to increase since the advent of Zero Tolerance discipline policies in the 1990s. Research indicates that these practices are largely ineffective in addressing behavior, and result in detrimental outcomes for students and communities. This study focused on the use of Disciplinary…

At least 37 states and the District of Columbia outline alternatives to suspension/expulsion or non-punitive supports that are either available or encouraged. Commonly cited approaches include community service, conflict resolution, counseling, peer mediation, positive behavioral interventions, restitution and restorative justice. This data point…

Information about the use of physical restraint, seclusion, and time-out rooms in Canadian schools has primarily been anecdotal (media reports and anonymous survey data) due to uneven and non-existent mandates for reporting, transparency and public accountability. The absence of clearly articulated mandates to provide written documentation and…

The education field has long wrestled with how to best handle students who behave badly. Specifically, students who behave in an unsafe manner towards other students present a special conundrum and the traditional response has been to suspend them (Adams, 2000; Black, 2016; Cerrone, 1999; Fabelo et al., 2011; Rumberger et al.,2016). The purpose of…

Wyoming is one of 19 states where the use of corporal punishment is legal in public schools. The purpose of this study was to determine the perceptions of Wyoming public school administrators regarding the legality and use of corporal punishment; uncover their views on the likely effectiveness of corporal punishment as a disciplinary option; and…

Removing students from the classroom and placing them in remote instruction for their behavior is an emerging form of discipline (Jones, 2020). The purpose of this brief is to describe this form of discipline, examine its implications and potential negative impacts, and provide guiding principles for improving behavior through evidence-based…

As advocates for children and youth with exceptionalities, the members of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) are committed to ensuring a safe and positive climate in school and community settings. This requires elimination of any inherent biases school leaders, teachers, and other school personnel may hold and investing in policies and…

Aim: The aim of this paper is to consider the use of current low-level behaviour management systems in secondary schools and how educational psychologists can best work alongside these systems. It does this by combining a psychological discussion about low-level behaviour management systems with the findings from a mixed methods research project…

Background: Suspensions can have negative effects on students' immediate academic and long-run outcomes, including increasing their likelihood of being arrested and incarcerated as an adult (Bacher-Hicks, Billings, Deming, 2019). School discipline practices have become a concern of families and policymakers and there have been increasing local,…

Since the incorporation of student chronic absenteeism rates into state school accountability systems after the passage of the "Every Student Succeeds Act," schools have adopted new practices to improve student attendance and decrease chronic absenteeism. Some of these practices borrow features from behavior management systems such as…

Research suggests that a cycle of misbehavior can escalate quickly from corrections over minor rule infractions to threats of serious disciplinary consequences. There is also evidence that Black youth may be especially at risk for these escalations due to subtle or implicit racial bias, or cultural mismatches that may lead teachers to believe that…