Schools don't need more of the same

By Christina Ager

The School District of Philadelphia needs to rethink its approach to school violence and it needs to do it now.

The recent attacks on teachers and the continued student-against-student violence highlight one very clear conclusion: the answer is not more of the same. Yet this is what the district and the teachers' union are calling for - easier ways to expel violent students and permanent expulsion to alternative schools.

These answers won't work for three reasons. First, we are not effectively addressing student behavioral problems when they first develop. Second, we are not establishing school environments that prevent behavior problems and teach expected behaviors. Third, we have no evidence that alternative schools are making substantive changes in students' behavior.

These students may be excluded from school, but they are not excluded from life. Society still needs to invest in these students if they are to become good citizens. And they can.

School violence is an emotional issue and over the last 10 years it has become a political one. As such, emotional and political solutions, not scientific solutions, are offered. These won't work. By scientific solutions I mean research-based practices that reduce aggressive and disruptive behaviors, teaching appropriate school-based social skills and creating more positive learning communities. Research has established them, and schools should use them. Plain and simple.

As cochair of a district task force on school violence more than five years ago, I headed a committee that called for the systematic use of positive behavior support, a process for establishing safe, positive educational environments. The report was written and submitted, yet almost nothing was done.

Yes, the district has invested in a few schoolwide projects by Arcadia University in the Mount Airy section of the city and by the Devereux Center for Effective Schools in South Philadelphia. And guess what? They were successful. In some schools test scores even increased along with improvements in behavior and climate. But no systemic change, no districtwide plan to provide the expertise and resources necessary for every school in the district to engage in this process has been provided. And it will take resources and expertise.

Positive behavior support is a nationally recognized, data-based process that every school can engage in to select schoolwide rules, then teach and reinforce them. It helps teachers know how to deal effectively with classroom problems, how to determine which problems should be referred to the head office, and to recognize which kinds of consequences are not effective and might escalate bad behavior.

Positive behavior support offers problem-solving and anger-management skills, and provides evidence that teaching them works. These skills are as important to teach, if not more so, than calculus and history. The program recognizes the irony of millions of adults struggling to change how they eat or exercise, while we demand that young people simply "be different."

We as educators can identify students with challenging behaviors often as early as kindergarten. If we examined the data, we would see most often that those students continue on a path of increasing problem behaviors. That is not a failure of the children; it is a failure of the system.

We need to train teachers and schools to address problems in ways that teach behavioral alternatives and maintain positive climates. We need to have schools where every student and every teacher can, when stopped in the hallway, report the same school rules and understand what they mean for his or her behavior. We need to use data, not emotions and politics, to solve the problems of school climate and school violence.