Zero tolerance

Abstract: Because there is little or no evidence of the efficacy of zero tolerance, schools and school districts need to explore preventive alternatives.

Abstract: Dramatic incidents of school violence have thrust school discipline to the forefront of public consciousness. Despite a dramatic increase in the use of zero tolerance procedures and policies, there is little evidence demonstrating that these procedures have increased school safety or improved student behavior. Moreover, a punitive disciplinary climate may make any attempt to include more students with behavioral problems a cause for conflict between general and special educators. A preventive, early response disciplinary model increases the range of effective options for addressing violence and disruption across both general and special education. Ultimately, the effectiveness of any disciplinary system may be judged by the extent to which it teaches students to solve interpersonal and intrapersonal problems without resorting to disruption or violence.

Abstract: Seriousness of purpose in seeking to avert the tragedy of school violence does not necessarily demand rigid adherence to harsh and extreme measures. There are alternatives to politically facile get-tough strategies, the authors point out. THE 1997-98 school year was a shocking and frightening one, filled with reports of seemingly random violence in communities heretofore immune to such incidents. In the wake of these tragedies, we can expect to hear renewed calls for increasingly severe penalties for any kind of school disruption, a stance that has led to the widespread adoption of so-called zero tolerance discipline policies. Already many districts have decreed that making any sort of threat will result in automatic expulsion. Some have gone as far as to suggest that principals be armed in order to deter - or perhaps outshoot - students who bring firearms to school. Such an approach is extreme, to say the least, and is unlikely to be implemented. Yet it is simply the far end of a continuum of responses to what has become the largely unquestioned assumption that school violence is accelerating at an alarming rate and that increasingly draconian disciplinary measures are not only justified but necessary to guarantee school safety. Before we continue down a path that may well turn school principals into town marshals and cafeterias into free-fire zones, however, we would do well to examine more closely the track record of zero tolerance. What is "zero tolerance"? What is the nature of the school violence that has brought us to this point? How well does the approach address the serious issues of school safety toward which it has been aimed? The Origins of Zero Tolerance The term "zero tolerance" - referring to policies that punish all offenses severely, no matter how minor - grew out of state and federal drug enforcement policies in the 1980s. The first use of the term recorded in the Lexis-Nexis national newspaper database was in 1983, when the Navy reassigned 40 submarine crew members for suspected drug abuse. In 1986 zero tolerance was picked up and used by a U.S. attorney in San Diego as the title of a program developed to impound seacraft carrying any amount of drugs. By February 1988 the program had received national attention, and U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese authorized customs officials to seize the boats, automobiles, and passports of anyone crossing the border with even trace amounts of drugs and to charge those individuals in federal court. Zero tolerance took hold quickly and within months was being applied to issues as diverse as environmental pollution, trespassing, skateboarding, racial intolerance, homelessness, sexual harassment, and boom boxes. From the outset, the harsh punishments meted out under zero tolerance drug policies engendered considerable controversy. Private citizens whose cars, boats, and even bicycles were impounded for sometimes minute amounts of drugs complained bitterly, and the American Civil Liberties Union considered filing suit against the program. By 1990 the U.S. Customs Service quietly discontinued its initial zero tolerance program after strict applications of the rule resulted in the seizure of two research vessels on which a small amount of marijuana was found. Yet just as the early zero tolerance drug programs in the community were being phased out, the concept was beginning to catch on in the public schools. In late 1989 school districts in Orange County, California, and Louisville, Kentucky, promulgated zero tolerance policies that called for expulsion for possession of drugs or participation in gang-related activity. In New York, Donald Batista, superintendent of the Yonkers public schools, proposed a sweeping zero tolerance program as a way of taking action against students who caused school disruption. With its restricted school access, ban on hats, immediate suspension for any school disruption, and increased use of law enforcement, the program contained many of the elements that have come to characterize zero tolerance approaches in the past decade. …

Abstract: Throughout the United States, schools most frequently punish the students who have the greatest academic, social, economic, and emotional needs An examination of which students are most likely to be suspended, expelled, or removed from the classroom for punishment, reveals that minorities (especially Blacks and Latinos), males, and low achievers are vastly overrepresented The enactment of zero tolerance policies related to discipline in school districts has contributed to a significant increase in the number of children who are being suspended and expelled from school This article explains why this has occurred and puts forward an alternative approach to discipline that is aligned with the educational mission of schools