Pre K - 12 & PSRP Public Education Issues Platform

Discipline For Safe, Orderly Schools

The Issue

All children deserve schools that offer a safe and orderly learning environment. In a disorderly school, teachers cannot teach, children cannot learn, and precious classroom time is lost forever.

Action Steps

Michigan school districts are required to have strong, clear student discipline policies and codes of conduct. However, consistent enforcement of these codes is still problematic. Elected officials should support:

• Code of Conduct Standards: Many school district discipline policies are extremely vague and inadequately enforced. To correct these inadequacies school districts must be required to form a committee of parents, teachers, support staff, and administrators to develop a code of conduct. If there is noncompliance or the code remains ineffective the state must provide assistance.


• Quality Alternative Placements: Some students will have to be removed from the regular classroom and into an appropriate alternative placement. Putting troubled students out on the street, or simply moving violent or chronically disruptive students to another school without providing them with behavioral intervention, special treatment or discipline programs is not the answer. Districts must provide and the state must fund a continuum of alternative educational placements that can help such students meet their need for remediation of behavior and maintenance of academic progress;
  
  
• Behavior Management Training: The state should make it a priority to see that every teacher and classroom paraprofessional who needs help acquiring effective classroom management skills receives assistance, especially those just entering the profession. Behavior management training should also be provided to all school-related personnel who are given the responsibility of maintaining order and discipline.

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