Educators and parents are of a like mind when it comes to dealing with disruptive students who are robbing others of valuable classroom time.

The thing we need most in school is time, and if you don’t have discipline it takes time away from learning, it takes time away from the other students and the curriculum,” says elementary school teacher Bonnie Markey, a member of the United School Employees of Pasco (USEP) in Florida.

The majority of kids do come to school to learn, but it only takes a few persistent troublemakers to rob an entire class of that opportunity. Disruptions in the form of lateness, talking out of turn, and disrespecting the teacher and other students take a serious toll on the educational process. And then there are the more serious offenses, such as fighting and bringing illegal drugs and weapons to school.

Poll after poll has shown that parents, teachers and the public are on the same page when it comes to the importance of a safe, orderly school environment. “Disorderly schools severely compromise opportunities to learn. Teachers cannot teach, children cannot concentrate and precious classroom time is forever lost,” according to “Setting the Stage for Strong Standards: Elements of a Safe and Orderly School,” a booklet published by the AFT.

And a study released in 2004 by the nonpartisan research firm Public Agenda—“Teaching Interrupted: Do Discipline Policies in Today’s Public Schools Foster the Common Good?”—found that 61 percent of teachers and 63 percent of parents strongly believe that strictly enforcing the smaller rules sets a tone that helps prevent the bigger problems.

The study also showed that large majorities of teachers (78 percent) and parents (74 percent) say it’s just a handful of students who cause most of the problems.

But all of the students end up paying the price, and it is having an impact on teacher turnover. Discipline and behavior problems are driving a substantial number of teachers out of the profession, the Public Agenda poll reveals. More than one in three teachers said colleagues in their school had left because student discipline was such a challenge, and the same number had themselves considered leaving. Eighty-five percent of the teachers polled thought that new teachers are particularly unprepared to deal with behavior problems.

Based on research and the experiences of school staffs across the country, the AFT believes that the following seven proactive steps will help make schools safer and more orderly:

■  Enact districtwide discipline codes.

■  Teach students how to follow the discipline code and ensure that the code is rigorously and fairly enforced.

■  Implement effective classroom management practices.

■  Implement programs to modify student misbehavior.

■  Establish alternative placements that should include “wraparound” supports for chronically disruptive and violent students.

■  Develop school safety plans.

■  Support the work of families, religious institutions and communities in developing sound character in children.

‘Buy-in’ from students, parents and the community

Creating a classroom environment that’s conducive to teaching and learning is a challenge many members confront every day. Most educators have their own tried-and-true strategies for maintaining order in the classroom. Baltimore Teachers Union member Ken Toppin thinks there is a solution to even the most challenging discipline problems. A social studies teacher at Dunbar Middle School, Toppin finds that most students act out when they have trouble with an assignment.

“Every student likes to be successful,” he says. When students struggle and can’t complete certain academic tasks, “they become frustrated, and it often shows in their behavior.” 

It’s at this point that Toppin reaches out to the student—and usually the student’s parents. “I believe it’s incumbent upon me to figure out how we can move forward, to get the child to buy into what I’m trying to do,” he says.

When the Gary (Ind.) Teachers Union (GTU) wanted to engage parents in a discussion of how the union and the community might work together to strengthen the city’s public schools, it sponsored a forum and invited parents and other members of the community to share their ideas for improving student achievement.

“We wanted to have an open and frank discussion about the obstacles our schools and students were facing,” says Joe Zimmerman, who chairs the GTU committee that organized last spring’s forum.

The local’s leaders quickly discovered that “parents had basically the same concerns as our members,” especially when it came to student discipline and its impact on learning, Zimmerman reports.

“Most of the parents who spoke at the forum believed the problem was a lack of consistent enforcement of the student code of conduct from one school to the next,” which is something that teachers often talk about, notes Zimmerman, adding that many of the parents blamed the problem on other parents and a lack of discipline at home.

That common concern has created an opportunity for a partnership between the union and the community. The local has begun work with a group of parents on a “Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” that they hope to have posted in every Gary school. The document will feature 10 recommendations for improving the city’s schools, including ideas for strengthening student discipline schoolwide.

“Our members tell us all the time that discipline is their number one problem,” says Sandra Irons, president of the Gary local and an AFT vice president. “By involving parents in the discussion, we feel that we are in a much better position to address that problem.”

The GTU is planning to hold at least two more forums this fall.

Contract language puts everybody on the same page

Many local unions are supporting members’ efforts by negotiating contract language that lays out the rights and responsibilities of administrators and teachers when it comes to enforcing the discipline code and dealing with disruptive students. The United School Employees of Pasco has negotiated language that among other things calls for the establishment of a discipline committee at every school “to offer constructive recommendations to enhance schoolwide behavior.”

The language was negotiated in the early 1990s when the school district was “experiencing phenomenal growth” and the subsequent overcrowding was leading to some discipline issues, says USEP president Lynne Webb.

“The district and the union were looking at how we might collaboratively address the discipline problem, and one of the ideas we came up with was to have a committee in each school that didn’t just develop a plan for how we would punish students but would also look at early intervention and prevention.”

While not a panacea, the discipline committee “has proven to be very powerful and effective in many schools,” she adds.

Bonnie Markey, a USEP building representative, serves on the committee at Hudson Elementary School where she teaches art. She says the committee at Hudson annually surveys teachers to find out how they view discipline at the school. “We use the information to revise our discipline code, if necessary, or to address new concerns that staff have.”

The discipline plan put together by the committee is given to the principal for approval, and the faculty also votes on it. “When the kids know that the teacher and the administration are working together around the enforcement of the discipline code, it makes a big difference in their behavior,” Markey says.

Support for alternative settings

So what do we do about the kids who have chronic behavior problems—sometimes to the point of being violent? Many school districts, often at the urging of the union, have established alternative settings for these students. “Some students with poor behavior do not respond to even the most skilled efforts of behavior specialists. These students must be removed from the regular education setting both for their own sakes and in order not to jeopardize their classmates’ education,” according to the AFT booklet “Setting the Stage for Strong Standards.”

The Baltimore Teachers Union’s contract has language regarding the placement of students in the city’s alternative education program.

Toppin believes these settings—which often have smaller class sizes, access to psychologists, intensive instruction in social skills, and other special services for the children and their families—are exactly what some students need. When behavior leads to students’ frequent removal from the regular classroom, “we really need to send those students to a setting where their needs can be best met,” he says.

It is not desirable, however, merely to suspend or expel these students, the AFT’s booklet says. “When removed from school and left unsupervised, they have no opportunity to learn new ways to conduct themselves. They fall behind in school and beyond the sphere of the positive influence of the school setting.”

Eighty-seven percent of teachers and 74 percent of parents support proposals for establishing alternative school settings, the Public Agenda poll found. The same survey showed that teachers wanted “these children to be retrieved, not forgotten.”