Monday, January 7, 2008

No in-school suspensions?

Whole lotta Milwaukee ninth graders getting kicked out of school. This interested me:
While many teachers say they spend too much time dealing with a handful of misbehaving students rather than teaching the bulk of their students, Andrekopoulos argues that ways can be found to keep many of those students in class or, in the alternative, at least keep them in school.

I always thought out-of-school suspension was the Holy Grail. Sleep late! Watch TV! A day without the tedium of class! That's not a punishment, that's a REWARD! But the in-school suspension: stick 'em in a room where all they can do is read all day--THAT'S a punishment (I enjoyed my in-school suspension immensely after my father didn't kill me, but I'm not typical).

The article didn't give any data on how many students are typically serving suspensions simultaneously, so maybe they don't have sufficient space (or guards) to hold all the disruptive students. But you know, they'd be in the building; they'd have to hold off on the sex and violence until after 3 p.m.

The rest of it--all the kids flunking 9th grade, etc--I don't know. I just work for a living.

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