The List of the Sixth Pupil Month Suspensions

By the end of the sixth month of school, January 2010, JCPS published this list of Middle School Suspensions for dissemination among it's employees. These are the number of suspensions in the first two-thirds of the school year. At this writing, we're in the middle of the last third of the year.

The good news; sixteen of the middle schools actually lowered their number of suspensions in comparison with the previous year's data. The bad news; most of the gains were slight to negligible, or were caused by major changes in the school or school population. Still, Stuart Middle dropped its suspensions from 382 in 08/09 to 289 in 09/10; a great change to be sure. But the problem is that this data sheet tells us nothing about why suspensions went up or down; it's just a "out there" list. In other words; a list that causes schools with higher suspension rates to worry about writing fewer suspensions than they have been writing; which could actually make things worse. Imagine a high crime area where the solution to high incidents of crime is to stop arresting perpetrators. Remember, even if a school has only 100 suspensions per 1000 students, then it has a suspension rate of one out of every ten students.

Notes on the report jokingly reflect on how teachers are often held accountable for student behavior in addition to student achievement. The suspension rate = the degree of bad instruction. 

So where is your child's school on the list. How many suspensions per 1000 has the school had? How many suspensions has your child had? None; good. One; blame it on the teacher. Two; blame it on the administration. Three; look in the mirror.