A bill that would have stopped Arizona schools from issuing out-of-school suspensions to students who miss class failed to make it out of the Legislature this year, despite bipartisan support.

Rep. Laura Terech, a Democrat, crafted House Bill 2748 in response to a nearly yearlong investigation by AZCIR and The Hechinger Report, which revealed for the first time the scope of the controversial disciplinary practice of suspending Arizona students for tardiness and truancy.

The Hechinger/AZCIR analysis — which relied on data from 150-plus districts and charter networks that enroll about 61 percent of the state’s public school students — identified more than 47,000 suspensions for attendance violations over a five-year period. Students reported feeling even more disengaged and academically lost after serving these suspensions. Black, Latino and Native American students received a disproportionate share of the punishments.

“Being an educator in the field, you often see that students are not coming to school for a variety of reasons. Maybe they have to watch younger siblings at home, or there’s something happening at school — there’s a bullying issue or they’re particularly stressed out about one of their classes,” Terech, a former elementary school teacher, told lawmakers at a House Education Committee hearing this year.

Rather than suspending students, Terech said she believes such problems “are better addressed through working with the student, supporting the student, learning what they need so we can keep them in school.”

Related: When the punishment is the same as the crime: Suspended for missing class

Terech found a handful of allies across the aisle: Republican Sen. John Kavanagh, for instance, told AZCIR he signed on as a bill cosponsor because he found blocking students from class for missing class “ridiculous on its face.” But Republican leadership never brought the measure to the House floor for a vote, after other members of the party expressed concern that lawmakers would be removing a tool schools rely on to give parents a “wake-up call.” Terech has vowed to revive it next year.

The debate comes as the larger issue of keeping students in school is receiving renewed attention statewide. Read On Arizona convened a task force this spring to address a spike in chronic absenteeism, which state law defines as students missing more than 10 percent, or about 18 days, of school in an academic year.

Chronic absence has long been an issue in Arizona, but the pandemic led to dramatic increases across the state. According to data from the Arizona Department of Education, 14 percent of K-12 students were chronically absent in 2019. By 2022, that portion had jumped to 34 percent, and some schools responded to the rising absenteeism with even more attendance-related suspensions, the AZCIR/Hechinger investigation found.

The Read On Arizona task force brings together members of the governor’s office, school districts, state agencies, community organizations and the legislature. Together, they will parse state and local data about attendance, chronic absenteeism and student performance, gather advice from national experts and develop recommendations and resources to help school districts prevent continued absenteeism.

Members of the task force say the AZCIR/Hechinger investigation illuminated the connection between suspensions and absenteeism in Arizona, something that had never before been made public. A key idea discussed at the group’s first meeting was the need to move away from punitive responses to absenteeism and instead focus on supports.

Related: Many schools find ways to solve absenteeism without suspensions

“We have the right players at the right table at the right time to begin to have that conversation,” said Read On Arizona’s Lori Masseur, who is overseeing the task force.

The shift away from punishing absenteeism has already begun at the local level. The Valley of the Sun United Way has helped districts in Maricopa County address chronic absenteeism for several years, focusing on supportive approaches that address the reasons students miss school as part of a wider effort to meet students’ social-emotional needs.

The organization will expand this work in the coming years and Read On Arizona will launch its own professional development for schools, in collaboration with the national nonprofit Attendance Works. Both efforts aim to help teachers and school leaders move away from punitive responses to absenteeism.

“Sometimes, the suspension will actually get their attention, bring them to the table. And that, I think, would be a justification or at least the reason for some of these suspensions in those cases.”

Eric Patten, Yuma Union High School District spokesman

Dawn Gerundo, community development and engagement director for education at the Valley of the Sun United Way, said avoiding suspensions as a response to absenteeism is a central recommendation. A growing body of research has tied missing just two days of school per month to concrete consequences, including lower reading proficiency in third grade, lower math scores in middle school and higher dropout rates in high school.

“Suspensions are absenteeism,” Gerundo said. “If a student is suspended, they are absent.”

Among districts in the AZCIR/Hechinger sample that suspended for attendance, missing class led to 10 percent of all suspensions, resulting in tens of thousands of additional missed days of school. Students served about 1 in 5 of those suspensions out of school, which the U.S. departments of Justice and Education highlighted as particularly concerning.

Presented with the findings last fall, then-Arizona Department of Education spokesman Richie Taylor suggested the state should reexamine its policies around discipline for attendance-related issues.

But that was before the state superintendent’s office changed hands, coming under the direction of Republican Tom Horne in January. Though Horne’s opinion on the prospective legislation is unclear — his administration declined to comment to “respect the legislative process” — he historically has supported schools taking a hard-line approach to discipline.

If Arizona lawmakers move to ban suspensions for absenteeism next year, the state would join at least 17 others that have already limited or removed school districts’ ability to punish attendance issues with suspensions.

Related: Civil rights at stake: Black, Hispanic students blocked from class for missing class

Though school districts across the state largely declined to take a position on the proposed ban, some educators told AZCIR they felt attendance-related suspensions had a place as a “last resort.”

In Yuma Union High School District, spokesman and former teacher Eric Patten said that in cases where “the communication is there about what’s going on” — such as when barriers to attendance or punctuality include students working to support their families or being responsible for younger siblings — staff “can work on a solution rather than a suspension.”

But when parents haven’t been responsive to phone calls, emails or home visits, officials may turn to out-of-school suspensions to jolt them into action. Yuma Union was among the five districts that issued out-of-school suspensions for attendance problems most frequently over the five years reviewed by AZCIR and The Hechinger Report.

“Sometimes, the suspension will actually get their attention, bring them to the table,” Patten said. “And that, I think, would be a justification or at least the reason for some of these suspensions in those cases.”

School officials elsewhere in the state disagreed. Interviews with those administrators pointed to an appetite for state leaders to intervene to limit attendance-related suspensions, something Lupita Hightower, Arizona’s Superintendent of the Year and head of the Tolleson Elementary School District, acknowledged as unusual.

“Being an educator in the field, you often see that students are not coming to school for a variety of reasons. Maybe they have to watch younger siblings at home, or there’s something happening at school — there’s a bullying issue or they’re particularly stressed out about one of their classes.” 

Rep. Laura Terech, an Arizona Democrat

Hightower, whose district issued just three out-of-school suspensions for attendance from 2017-22, is among those willing to give up some local control of student discipline to support a statewide ban on suspensions for tardiness and truancy, which can push students over the chronic absenteeism threshold.

“If we’re contributing to that problem as administrators, that’s not good for kids,” she said. “If it has to be legislated, I would agree with that.”

For Ernest Rose, superintendent of the Phoenix-based Wilson Elementary District, the issue is similarly cut and dry. During suspensions, students don’t get support to change bad habits, and they don’t get help with barriers that might keep them from school, such as family and work commitments or school-based bullying.

“I don’t want to say it’s common sense, because if it was common sense, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Rose said. But “when we’re looking at overall academic attainment of our students, if they’re not in school, then they’re not able to partake in the instruction.”

Early last year, after noticing what he described as an overreliance on suspensions in general, Rose introduced a new code of conduct that discourages attendance-related suspensions. The Wilson district had issued eight out-of-school suspensions and 26 in-school suspensions to its youngest students for missing school between September and December of 2021, according to AZCIR/Hechinger data.

Rose noted the district continues to employ in-school suspensions in certain cases when ongoing attendance issues “escalate.” But he supports Arizona eliminating out-of-school suspensions for attendance problems.

Even when students are habitually truant, he believes educators’ focus should be on bringing those students back into the fold rather than issuing blanket punishments. “To suspend them defeats the purpose,” he said.

Terech cited the same logic in discussing her plans to revive her bill next session.

“Yes, it’s a tool,” she said of attendance-related suspensions. “But it’s not a good one.”

This story about House Bill 2148 was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter and the AZCIR newsletter.

The post Proposed bill to ban suspensions for attendance violations falls short in Arizona appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Este artículo acerca del ausentismo escolar fue producido por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente sin fines de lucro enfocada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación, y el Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, una sala de redacción independiente, no partidista y sin fines de lucro dedicada a la investigación basada en datos en todo el estado.

Los cierres escolares relacionados con la pandemia causaron estragos en la asistencia estudiantil. Aún después de reabrirse, las escuelas fueron impactadas por políticas estrictas de cuarentena que exigían que los estudiantes se quedaran en casa si tuvieran cualquier indicio de tos o nariz mocosa. Los estudiantes perdieron el hábito de llegar a la escuela a tiempo, o a asistir consistentemente.

En el año escolar 2021-22, los distritos y redes de escuelas chárteres en todo el país se estaban enfrentando a lo que muchos llamaron una crisis de ausentismo. Los estudiantes no estaban apareciendo en las escuelas, y los educadores tuvieron que actuar.

En Arizona, muchos reaccionaron como habían hecho antes de la pandemia: con castigos, manteniendo o subiendo el porcentaje de estudiantes suspendidos por faltar la clase. Sin embargo, otros limitaron bruscamente el número de estudiantes suspendidos por infracciones relacionadas con la asistencia tras la pandemia, mientras docenas más siguieron adelante con estrategias menos punitivas que ya habían adoptado.

Agua Fria Union High School District vio a solamente 36 días de suspensión escolar por problemas de la asistencia en 2021-22, comparado con 409 días en 2017-18.

Estas distinciones – ligadas directamente a las libertades otorgadas a las escuelas de Arizona de diseñar sus propias políticas disciplinarias – surgieron como parte de una investigación sobre las suspensiones relacionadas con la asistencia hecha por The Hechinger Report y el Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting que duró casi un año. Este análisis primero de su tipo encontró casi 47.000 suspensiones por faltar clase tras un periodo de cinco años, con los estudiantes afroamericanos, latinos e indígenas frecuentemente recibiendo un porcentaje desproporcionado de suspensiones. 

Relacionado: Cuando el castigo es el mismo que el delito: Suspendido por faltar a clase

Como esta táctica disciplinaria recibe apoyo dispar en diferentes escuelas, que los estudiantes la experimenten puede depender más de donde asisten a la escuela que del hecho de que faltaron a clase. 

Tome, por ejemplo, al Glendale Union High School District. Entre sus 11 escuelas, que juntas educan a casi 16.700 estudiantes, los datos del distrito demuestran que los administradores repartieron casi 12.500 suspensiones por infracciones de asistencia durante los últimos cinco años escolares. En el año escolar 2021-22, ellos infligieron casi 2.200 de estas suspensiones en la escuela – más que en cualquiera de los años anteriores analizados. Una vocera del distrito declinó comentar sobre estos datos, diciendo que estaban siendo evaluados.

Mientras tanto, Agua Fria Union High School District se movió en la dirección opuesta. El distrito de 9.200 estudiantes antes era uno de los que más suspendía a estudiantes por asistencia en todo el estado. Durante el año escolar 2017-18, sus estudiantes pasaron aproximadamente 409 días en suspensiones dentro de la escuela por infracciones de asistencia – aproximadamente 40 por ciento de todo este tipo de suspensiones, según registros del distrito. El año escolar pasado, pasaron 36 días, o un 6 por ciento.

Educadores ahí y en otros distritos que evitan usar las suspensiones relacionadas con la asistencia dicen que hacerlo requiere un enfoque dualista: enfocándose en hacer de la escuela un lugar donde los estudiantes quieren estar mientras abordan al ausentismo como un problema que resolver, en vez de un comportamiento que requiere castigo.

Ellos contienden que esa estrategia, no las suspensiones, es lo que realmente mejora la asistencia de los estudiantes – y que evita las consecuencias dañinas de excluir a alumnos del aula.

“No estamos proveyendo recursos al estudiante para lidiar de modos más saludables cuando solamente utilizamos la suspensión”, dijo Phillip Nowlin, el superintendente adjunto de académicas y escuelas del distrito Agua Fria.

“Nuestra meta es mantenerlos en el aula e identificar la raíz del comportamiento”.

Efectivamente, educadores de varios distritos que rara vez suspenden a estudiantes por infracciones de asistencia dicen que abordar las causas del ausentismo estudiantil es crucial.

En algunos distritos, los lideres de las escuelas han forjado relaciones con entidades comunitarias dispuestas a comprar despertadores para los estudiantes para ayudarlos a levantarse y a salir de sus casas a tiempo. Otros mencionaron directores de escuelas que recogían a estudiantes con sus propios vehículos para que llegaran a las clases.

En otros casos, cuando el ausentismo fue causado por dificultades académicas o bullying, la tutoría y la terapia ayudaron a que los estudiantes se re-involucraran y se mantuvieran en la clase.

Darryl Williford es subdirector de Michael Anderson School (de kínder a 8º grado) en el Avondale Elementary School District, donde los lideres del distrito han fomentado un enfoque particularmente dirigido por datos para seguir al ausentismo estudiantil, identificando a quienes necesitan apoyo y luego enfocándose en las relaciones para atender a las necesidades de las familias.

Williford dice que antes llamaba regularmente a padres para explicarles en detalle las consecuencias que podrían enfrentar si la asistencia de su hijo/a no mejorara. Ahora, él dice, llama con la meta de descubrir que está previniendo al niño asistir a la escuela y como él podría ayudar.

Asegurándose que los niños lleguen a – y se queden en – el aula es especialmente importante dado los tipos de enseñanza y aprendizaje que son más comunes hoy en día, en los cuales los estudiantes llevan conversaciones académicas y buscan como resolver problemas juntos durante tareas prácticas, dijo él.

Él no se acuerda de la última vez que suspendió a un estudiante por faltar la clase.

“Un niño viene a la escuela y llega tarde…¿y lo voy a mandar de vuelta a su casa? Para mi eso no tiene sentido”, dijo Williford. “Mi trabajo es asegurar de que los niños estén en la escuela lo más posible”.

En algunos distritos, el cambio de no utilizar las suspensiones relacionadas a la asistencia es reciente. Pero otros educadores en Arizona han luchado en contra de esta práctica – y han promovido alternativas dirigidas a eliminar barreras a la asistencia – por años.

Bahja Ali, quien trabajó anteriormente como trabajadora social para el estado, dijo que ser testigo de demasiadas suspensiones por infracciones de asistencia le impulsó a convertirse en educadora. Uno de los estudiantes en su carpeta de casos era una adolecente embarazada sufriendo de náuseas matinales, ella recordó. La respuesta de su escuela a su asistencia irregular prevenía que ella asistiera a clase aún cuando se sentía bien.

“Cada asunto de disciplina que surge, siempre nos estamos preguntando: ‘¿Por qué? Yo veo este comportamiento, yo conozco este comportamiento – ¿que está contribuyendo a ello? ¿Qué tenemos que hacer para superarlo?’”

Bajha Ali, directora de El Dorado High School

La voz de Ali se anima cuando cuenta esta historia.

“¿Por qué no estamos mirando al porque faltaron a la clase para empezar, en vez de ir directamente al castigo?” pregunta Ali, ahora la directora de El Dorado High School en Chandler.

Las investigaciones sobre si las suspensiones pueden ser efectivas en disuadir el ausentismo son limitadas – y el debate puede ser feroz. Los administradores en distritos que suspenden a estudiantes por infracciones de asistencia argumentaron que los estudiantes tenían que rendir cuentas por sus acciones, particularmente cuando sus ausencias crean consecuencias legales. Frecuentemente, dijeron, los niños no tomaron formas menores de castigo en serio.

Pero educadores de Arizona como Ali creen que suspender por una ausencia o una tardanza lastima más de lo que ayuda, y que no debería ocurrir en lo absoluto.

Relacionados: Derechos civiles en riesgo: Estudiantes afroamericanos y latinos son suspendidos más por faltar a clase.

Una escuela alternativa, El Dorado educa a alrededor de 220 estudiantes, quienes están buscando apoyo académico y del comportamiento que no podían encontrar en escuelas tradicionales. Ali les dice a los estudiantes que sus pasados les hacen quienes son, pero no los definen, y en su escuela ella crea espacio para que los estudiantes desarrollen nuevos hábitos y experimenten con nuevas identidades educacionales.

“Con cada asunto de disciplina que surge”, dijo Ali, “siempre nos estamos preguntando: ‘¿Por qué? Yo veo este comportamiento, yo conozco este comportamiento – ¿que está contribuyendo a ello? ¿Qué tenemos que hacer para superarlo?’”

Sus estudiantes lo notan.

Tyequan Colkey, un estudiante de 12º grado en El Dorado, por ejemplo, dice que pasó sus años de escuela secundaria en Buffalo regularmente siendo suspendido debido al ausentismo. Él se volvió insensible al castigo y dice que dejó de preocuparse cuando lo suspendieron. “No iba a la escuela de todos modos, pues no hacía nada”, dice. De hecho, lo único que lograba una suspensión era alienarlo más aún de la escuela.

“Me mostró que no me querían ahí de todos modos”, él dijo. “¿Entonces, por qué yo iría?”

Después de mudarse a Arizona a los 16 años, al principio él asistía a una preparatoria tradicional grande, donde se sentía perdido y sin apoyo. Él frecuentemente faltaba a clase, dijo, y cuando la pandemia cerró su escuela, lo único que tenía que hacer era ignorar su computadora.

Cuando Colkey se trasladó a El Dorado el año escolar pasado, él trajo consigo sus problemas de asistencia. Pero Ali y su personal le cayeron detrás, inundándolo con llamadas, mensajes de texto y hasta visitas a su casa, tratando de convencerlo de asistir a la escuela. Le dijeron que él era capaz y un líder y que no debería desechar su potencial. En la escuela, los profesores le daban más atención personal y se esforzaban en ayudarlo para que él entendiera el contenido de los cursos.

Aunque confiesa que llega tarde a veces, Colkey, 19, dice que ahora asiste a la escuela a diario.

“Están esforzándose”, dijo Colkey del personal de El Dorado. “Yo debería esforzarme, también”.

Él debe graduarse en la primavera, y espera ganarse un título universitario después de su diploma de high school.

Mientras las escuelas alternativas tienden a ser conocidas por sus poblaciones estudiantiles más pequeñas y políticas más flexibles, los lideres de algunos distritos tradicionales más grandes también se han comprometido a minimizar los castigos excesivos.

“Para nosotros, no es que los niños están descontrolados. Invertimos mucha estrategia y mucho trabajo acerca de esa filosofía y esa creencia”.

Lupita Hightower, superintendente de Tolleson Elementary School District

Lupita Hightower, Superintendente del Año de Arizona y la jefa del distrito escolar de Tolleson Elementary, marca la pauta para cinco escuelas que educan a alrededor de 2.900 estudiantes, abogando en contra de las suspensiones y expulsiones relacionadas con asistencia.

Para ser efectivo, el enfoque tiene que “llegar desde arriba”, ella dijo, y después “todos tienen que estar de acuerdo sobre esa filosofía”.

En el distrito escolar de Tolleson Elementary, a cada adulto se le llama “cazador/a de tesoro”, y están encargados con buscar los talentos, habilidades e inteligencia que existen en cada niño, y creer que todos los niños son capaces del éxito, “sin excepciones”. Se junta cada niño en el distrito con un/a cazador/a de tesoro adulto, como Hightower, quien chequea con el niño regularmente.

Los clubes estudiantiles y actividades extracurriculares, incluyendo un grupo mariachi premiado, tienen el objetivo de ayudar a que los estudiantes encuentren a una cálida bienvenida en sus escuelas. Una clínica de salud en el distrito, financiada con dólares filantrópicos, ayuda a tratar enfermedades tempranamente para que los niños puedan volver a la escuela. Hasta la comida escolar se considera una técnica para incitar a que los estudiantes asistan: “el día del pozole” es un evento favorito, dice Hightower, y ella ha oído a estudiantes quejarse a sus padres cuando faltan a tomar la sopa mexicana por ser recogidos temprano para ir a citas.

Aunque Hightower está orgullosa del registro disciplinario a lo largo de su periodo de casi 12 años como superintendente, el enfoque no ha existido sin críticas. Cuando el consejo escolar de Tolleson Elementary presentó en una conferencia nacional sobre sus esfuerzos para reducir las suspensiones y expulsiones, por ejemplo, algunos en el público argumentaron que el modelo significaba una falta de responsabilidad en los niños.

Hightower no lo ve así. El distrito usa mediación entre pares y un programa llamado justicia reconstituyente que incentiva a los estudiantes a tomar responsabilidad por sus acciones, mientras que limitan las suspensiones.

“Para nosotros, no es que los niños están descontrolados”, dijo Hightower. “Invertimos mucha estrategia y mucho trabajo acerca de esa filosofía y esa creencia”.

Este artículo acerca del ausentismo escolar fue producido por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente sin fines de lucro enfocada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación, y el Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, una sala de redacción independiente, no partidista y sin fines de lucro dedicada a la investigación basada en datos en todo el estado.

The post Muchas escuelas encuentran modos de resolver el problema del ausentismo sin suspensiones appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

This story about absenteeism in schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter and the AZCIR newsletter.

Pandemic-related school closures wreaked havoc on attendance. Strict quarantine periods and policies demanding students stay home at any hint of a cough or runny nose tormented schools even after they reopened. Students got out of the habit of getting to school on time or going consistently at all.

By the 2021-22 school year, districts and charter networks across the country were facing what many dubbed a crisis of absenteeism. Students weren’t showing up, and educators had to act. 

In Arizona, many responded as they had prior to the pandemic: with punishment, maintaining or even increasing the share of students they suspended for missing class. Yet others sharply limited the number of students suspended for attendance-related violations in the wake of the pandemic, and dozens more pushed ahead with less punitive strategies they had already adopted.

Agua Fria Union High School District had just 6 percent of in-school suspension days assigned because of attendance problems in 2021-22, compared with 40 percent in 2017-18.

These distinctions — directly tied to the freedom afforded Arizona school systems to design their own disciplinary policies — emerged as part of a nearly yearlong investigation into attendance-related suspensions by The Hechinger Report and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. The first-of-its-kind analysis found nearly 47,000 suspensions for missing class over a five-year period, with Black, Latino and Indigenous students frequently receiving a disproportionate share. 

Because this disciplinary tactic has uneven support across schools, whether students experience it can depend more on where they go to school than the fact that they missed class.

Related:When the punishment is the same as the crime: Suspended for missing class

Take, for instance, Glendale Union High School District. Across its 11 schools, which together serve almost 16,700 students, district data shows administrators handed out nearly 12,500 suspensions for attendance violations over the past five school years. In 2021-22, they meted out nearly 2,200 of these in-school suspensions — more than in any of the preceding years analyzed. A district spokeswoman declined to comment on the data, saying it was under review.

Agua Fria Union High School District, meanwhile, moved in the opposite direction. The 9,200-student district used to be one of the state’s top suspenders for attendance. During the 2017-18 school year, students spent about 409 days in in-school suspensions for attendance violations — about 40 percent of all such suspensions, according to district records. Last school year, they spent 36 days, or 6 percent.

Educators there and in other districts that avoid using attendance-related suspensions say doing so requires a two-pronged approach: focusing on making school a place where students want to be while approaching absenteeism as a problem to solve, rather than a behavior calling for punishment. 

They contend this strategy, not suspensions, is what actually improves students’ attendance — and it avoids the damaging consequences of blocking kids from class. 

“We are not providing the student resources to cope in healthier ways when we use suspension alone,” said Phillip Nowlin, Agua Fria’s deputy superintendent of academics and schools. 

“Our goal is to keep them in the classroom and identify the root of the behavior.”

Indeed, educators in several districts that rarely suspend for attendance violations say addressing the causes of student absenteeism is crucial. 

In some districts, school leaders have forged relationships with community partners willing to buy alarm clocks for students to help them get up and out of their homes on time. Others described principals picking up students in their own cars to get them to class. 

In other cases, where academic struggles or bullying was to blame, tutoring and counseling helped re-engage students and keep them in class.

Related: Civil rights at stake: Black, Hispanic students blocked from class for missing class

Darryl Williford is assistant principal of the K-8 Michael Anderson School in the Avondale Elementary School District, where district leaders have encouraged a particularly data-driven approach to tracking student absenteeism, identifying who needs support and then focusing on relationships to address families’ needs. 

Williford said he used to call parents regularly to detail the consequences they might face if their child’s attendance didn’t improve. Now, he said, he calls with the goal of finding out what is keeping a child from school and how he might help.

Ensuring kids get to — and stay in — class is especially important given the type of teaching and learning that is more common in classrooms today, where students carry on academic conversations and problem-solve together during hands-on assignments, he said.

“Every discipline issue that comes up, we’re always asking: ‘Why? I see this behavior, I recognize this behavior — what’s contributing to it? What do we need to do to overcome it?’”

Bajah Ali, principal of El Dorado High School

He can’t remember the last time he suspended a student for missing class.

“A kid comes to school and they’re late … and I’m going to send them right back home? That just doesn’t make sense to me,” Williford said. “My job is to make sure the kids are in school as much as possible.” 

In some districts, leaders’ shift away from attendance-related suspensions is a recent one. But other Arizona educators have fought the practice — and promoted alternatives geared toward eliminating barriers to attendance — for years. 

Related:Inside our analysis of attendance-related suspensions in Arizona

Bahja Ali, a former caseworker for the state, said witnessing one too many suspensions for attendance violations spurred her to become an educator in the first place. One of the students on her caseload was a pregnant teen suffering from morning sickness, she recalled. The school’s response to her irregular attendance was blocking her from class even when she was feeling well. 

Ali’s voice gets animated when she tells this story. 

“Why are we not looking at why they missed in the first place instead of going to punishment?” asked Ali, now principal of El Dorado High School in Chandler. 

Limited research exists on whether suspensions are actually effective when it comes to discouraging absenteeism — and the debate can be fierce. Administrators in districts that suspend for attendance violations argued students had to be held accountable for their actions, particularly when their absences created liability concerns. Often, they said, kids failed to take lesser forms of punishment seriously.

But Arizona educators like Ali believe suspending for an absence or a tardy hurts more than it helps, and shouldn’t happen at all.

An alternative charter school, El Dorado serves about 220 students searching for academic and behavioral support they couldn’t find at traditional schools. Ali tells students that their past makes them who they are, but it doesn’t define them, and at her school, she creates room for students to develop new habits and try on new educational identities.

“Every discipline issue that comes up,” Ali said, “we’re always asking: ‘Why? I see this behavior, I recognize this behavior — what’s contributing to it? What do we need to do to overcome it?’ ”

Her students notice. 

El Dorado senior Tyequan Colkey, for instance, said he spent his middle school years in Buffalo, New York, regularly getting suspended for absenteeism. He became numb to the punishment and said he stopped caring when he got suspended. “I didn’t go to school anyways, so it didn’t do nothing,” he said. Indeed, all a suspension accomplished was further alienating him from school.

“It showed me that they didn’t want me there anyways,” he said. “So why would I go?”  

Related: Restorative justice is about more than just reducing suspensions

After moving to Arizona at 16, he first attended a large, traditional high school, where he felt lost and unsupported. He frequently skipped class, he said, and when the pandemic shut down his school, all he needed to do was ignore his computer. 

When Colkey transferred to El Dorado last school year, he brought his attendance problems with him. But Ali and her staff chased after him, overwhelming him with phone calls, texts and even home visits, trying to convince him to show up. They told him he was capable and a leader and shouldn’t throw away his potential. At school, teachers gave him more personal attention and worked to help him understand the course content. 

While he admits to being late on occasion, Colkey, 19, said he now goes to school daily. 

“They’re putting in the effort,” Colkey said of El Dorado staff. “I might as well put in the effort, too.”

He’s due to graduate in the spring, and he hopes to follow his high school diploma with a college degree.

While alternative schools tend to be known for their smaller student populations and more flexible policies, leaders of some larger, more traditional school districts have also committed to minimizing harsh punishments. 

Lupita Hightower, Arizona’s Superintendent of the Year and head of the Tolleson Elementary School District, sets the tone for five schools serving about 2,900 students, advocating against attendance-related suspensions and expulsions.

To be effective, the approach has to “come from the top,” she said, and then “everyone has to be in agreement on that philosophy.”

Related:Students can’t learn if they don’t show up at school

In Tolleson Elementary School District, every adult is called a “treasure hunter,” tasked with searching for the talents, skills and intelligence that exist in every child and believing that all children are capable of success, “no exceptions.” Each child in the district is paired with an adult treasure hunter, like Hightower, who checks in with them regularly. 

Student clubs and extracurriculars, including an award-winning mariachi band, aim to help students find a welcoming home in their schools. A health clinic in the district, funded with philanthropic dollars, helps address illnesses early and get kids back to school. Even the school food is considered a way to entice students to show up: “Pozole day” is a favorite, Hightower said, and she has heard students complaining to their parents when they get picked up for appointments early and miss the Mexican soup.  

“They’re putting in the effort. I might as well put in the effort, too.”

Tyequan Colkey, senior at El Dorado High School

Though Hightower is proud of the district’s disciplinary record over her nearly 12-year tenure as superintendent, the approach hasn’t come without criticism. When Tolleson Elementary’s school board presented at a national conference about its efforts to reduce suspensions and expulsions, for example, some in the audience argued that the model meant a lack of accountability for kids. 

Hightower doesn’t see it that way. The district uses peer mediation and a program called restorative justice that encourages students to take responsibility for their actions, while still limiting suspensions.  

“For us, it’s not like the kids are running around wild,” Hightower said. “There’s a lot of strategy and a lot of work around that philosophy and that belief.” 

This story about absenteeism in schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter and the AZCIR newsletter.

The post Many schools find ways to solve absenteeism without suspensions appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Este artículo acerca de sesgo racial en la disciplina escolar fue producido por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente sin fines de lucro enfocada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación, y el Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, una sala de redacción independiente, no partidista y sin fines de lucro dedicada a la investigación basada en datos en todo el estado.

GLENDALE, AZ. — Camron Olivas ha sido suspendido al menos cinco veces en el último par de años por llegar tarde a clase. Mientras su mamá cuida a su hermana pequeña, su hermano mayor lo lleva y con frecuencia llegan después del primer timbre. Durante el día, Camron dijo que a veces se queda demasiado tiempo en los pasillos entre clases, hablando con sus amigos.

Los castigos por las tardanzas del adolescente se han intensificado desde advertencias hasta suspensiones en la escuela a suspensiones fuera de la escuela.

Camron, de 15 años, asiste a Deer Valley High School, al oeste de Phoenix, donde es uno de los muchos estudiantes hispanos que han sido suspendidos por infracciones de asistencia, según datos del distrito. Camron, quien también es nativo americano, recientemente pasó un día en la sala de suspensión de la escuela en octubre, un castigo que lo obligó a faltar a siete períodos completos por llegar ocasionalmente unos minutos tarde a algunos de ellos. Al día siguiente, tenía que ponerse al día con lo que se había perdido, al mismo tiempo que aprendía nuevas lecciones.

“Nunca pensé que tuviera sentido”, dijo Camron sobre el castigo.

Los estudiantes de todo Arizona son suspendidos por no presentarse a clase, ya sea porque llegan tarde, salen del campus al mediodía o no asisten, según una investigación realizada por The Hechinger Report y el Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting (AZCIR). Según muestran los datos, los estudiantes afroamericanos, latinos y nativos americanos con frecuencia están sobrerrepresentados entre los que no pueden asistir a clases por faltar a clase, lo que algunos argumentan es evidencia de una posible violación de derechos civiles.

A nivel nacional, los investigadores han relacionado disparidades disciplinarias similares con las políticas de asistencia escolar y la aplicación desigual del castigo. Las políticas tienden a aceptar más las razones por las que los estudiantes blancos tienen más probabilidades de faltar a clase y los educadores asignan desigualmente sanciones de todo tipo, lo que permite que se introduzcan prejuicios. Las consecuencias pueden ser pronunciadas: estas desigualdades en la disciplina escolar — lo que algunos investigadores han denominado la “brecha de castigo”— contribuyen directamente a las diferencias raciales en el rendimiento académico.

“Los estudiantes tienen derecho a ser tratados en igualdad con sus compañeros, y cuando hay una desproporcionalidad inexplicable, realmente les corresponde a las escuelas entender por qué existe esa desproporcionalidad y trabajar para rectificarla”, dijo Darrell Hill, abogado y director de políticas de la American Civil Liberties Union de Arizona.

Los estudiantes de grupos históricamente marginados que reciben suspensiones excesivas en respuesta a tardanzas o ausencias injustificadas podrían “ciertamente” tener motivos para un reclamo de derechos civiles, dijo Hill.

“Me vas a suspender por llegar tarde, y luego vas a hacer que me atrase más en clase. ¿Cuál era el punto?”.

DaMarion Green, estudiante de Dysart High School

La investigación de Hechinger/AZCIR ofrece uno de los análisis más profundos jamás realizados sobre suspensiones por infracciones de asistencia. Debido a que la mayoría de los estados y el gobierno federal no recopilan datos detallados sobre los motivos de las suspensiones, el alcance de esta controvertida práctica ha permanecido oculto durante mucho tiempo.

El análisis reveló casi 47.000 suspensiones por infracciones de asistencia en los últimos cinco años escolares, en más de 80 distritos que suspendieron a estudiantes por faltar a clase. Es probable que la verdadera escala del problema sea mucho mayor, ya que casi 250 distritos no proporcionaron datos completos en respuesta a las solicitudes de registros públicos.

Acumulativamente, los estudiantes afroamericanos e hispanos estaban sobrerrepresentados entre los castigados cada año, entre 20 distritos que proporcionaron datos demográficos utilizables. (Juntos, representaron el 90 por ciento de todas las suspensiones relacionadas con la asistencia en la muestra). El año escolar pasado, por ejemplo, los estudiantes afroamericanos representaron el 6 por ciento de la inscripción total en los 20 distritos, pero recibieron el 15 por ciento de las suspensiones. Los estudiantes hispanos constituyeron el 43 por ciento de la matrícula pero recibieron el 68 por ciento de las suspensiones.

Mientras tanto, los estudiantes blancos estaban en gran medida subrepresentados, con el 37 por ciento de la inscripción y recibiendo el 23 por ciento de las suspensiones.

Entre la docena de distritos con suficientes datos para evaluar la representación de los estudiantes nativos americanos, estos estudiantes a veces representaron el doble o el triple de la proporción de suspensiones que se esperaría en función de su proporción de inscripción.

Cuando se le presentaron los resultados del análisis, Kathy Hoffman, superintendente de instrucción pública de Arizona, emitió un comunicado diciendo que los hallazgos confirmaron “por qué es vital que Arizona se centre en el trato justo y equitativo de todos los estudiantes”. Pero no abordó el papel del estado durante su mandato de cuatro años, sino que instó a su sucesor recientemente electo a “trabajar con nuestras escuelas para encontrar soluciones que animen y apoyen a los estudiantes de color en Arizona” una vez que preste juramento.

“Cuando los estudiantes de color son disciplinados de manera desproporcionada, afecta el tiempo que pueden pasar aprendiendo en el salón de clases y obstaculiza su capacidad para tener éxito académico”, dijo Hoffman.

Bajo la administración de Obama, los departamentos de Justicia y Educación de Estados Unidos emitieron una guía conjunta para las escuelas sobre las disparidades raciales en la disciplina escolar. Advirtieron que una política disciplinaria que tuvo un impacto adverso en los estudiantes de una raza en particular y que “no era necesaria para alcanzar una meta educativa importante” violaba la ley de derechos civiles.

Las agencias destacaron las suspensiones fuera de la escuela por faltar a la escuela como motivo de especial preocupación.

“Una escuela”, decía la guía, “probablemente tendría dificultades para demostrar que excluir a un estudiante de asistir a la escuela en respuesta a los esfuerzos del estudiante por evitar la escuela era necesario para alcanzar un objetivo educativo importante”.

La administración Trump rescindió la guía en 2018, diciendo que iba más allá de lo que requería la Ley de Derechos Civiles. Pero los departamentos afirmaron que “las sólidas protecciones contra la discriminación por raza, color y origen nacional… permanecen sin cambios”.

Bajo la administración de Biden, la Oficina de Derechos Civiles del Departamento de Educación aún no ha emitido una nueva guía sobre el tema. Pero la subsecretaria Catherine Lhamon, quien primero dirigió la oficina bajo Obama, dijo que su personal usaría el mismo proceso que usó entonces para evaluar si las disparidades en la disciplina constituyen discriminación ilegal.

La Oficina de Derechos Civiles considera más que solo datos al decidir si hubo discriminación o no. Pero Lhamon dijo que los números descubiertos por el análisis de Hechinger/AZCIR ofrecen justificación para una investigación. “Las disparidades de cualquier tipo son notables y vale la pena evaluarlas”, dijo Lhamon.

“Estoy muy preocupada cuando escucho que los niños pierden tiempo de instrucción”, agregó.

El año escolar pasado, los estudiantes afroamericanos representaron el 6 por ciento de la inscripción total en 20 distritos de Arizona que proporcionaron datos demográficos utilizables pero recibieron el 15 por ciento de las suspensiones. Los estudiantes hispanos constituyeron el 43 por ciento de la matrícula pero recibieron el 68 por ciento de las suspensiones.

En algunos distritos de Arizona, el desequilibrio entre quién es suspendido por infracciones de asistencia es extremo.

El Glendale Union High School District, por ejemplo, entregó casi 12.500 suspensiones por infracciones de asistencia en los últimos cinco años escolares. Y aunque los estudiantes latinos constituían alrededor del 60 por ciento de su matrícula, representaron hasta el 90 por ciento de los estudiantes suspendidos. Los estudiantes afroamericanos representaron alrededor del 8 por ciento de los estudiantes matriculados, pero tanto como el 21 por ciento de los estudiantes suspendidos, mientras que los estudiantes nativos americanos representaron alrededor del 2 por ciento de la inscripción y hasta el 6 por ciento de las suspensiones.

Kim Mesquita, portavoz del Glendale Union High School District, no comentó sobre las disparidades en la disciplina escolar por raza. En respuesta a las preguntas sobre el uso frecuente de suspensiones por infracciones de asistencia por parte del distrito, dijo que el distrito estaba “revisando los datos” y “determinando qué es efectivo y qué no”.

Los investigadores han descubierto que las disparidades raciales en cuanto a quién es disciplinado por ausentismo pueden atribuirse, en parte, a las propias políticas de asistencia. Los distritos escolares castigan a los estudiantes solo por ausencias injustificadas, lo que hace que la aprobación del distrito por faltar a la escuela sea crucial. Y los estudiantes blancos tienen más probabilidades que los de otras razas de ausentarse por razones que las escuelas justifican.

“El racismo está tan descaradamente escrito en las políticas”, dijo Clea McNeely, profesora investigadora de la Universidad de Tennessee que estudió las políticas de asistencia en una muestra representativa a nivel nacional de 97 distritos escolares.

“Es un poco cómo te ven. Si sales con ciertos niños, sucede mucho. Sobre todo por llegar tarde”.

Antoine Moore, estudiante de Deer Valley High School

McNeely y su equipo encontraron que los distritos escolares tenían menos probabilidades de excusar las ausencias causadas por circunstancias de la vida que suelen experimentar los niños afroamericanos, hispanos e nativos americanos.

Los estudiantes que van al médico cuando están enfermos tienen más facilidad para que se les justifiquen las ausencias relacionadas con enfermedades, por ejemplo, y es más probable que las familias blancas reciban atención médica. Los niños cuyas familias no pueden pagar un transporte confiable tienen más probabilidades de acumular tardanzas que conducen a suspensiones. Las escuelas a menudo excusarán una ausencia para un niño que visita a un padre en el ejército, pero no para una visita a un padre que está encarcelado. La lista continúa. Siglos de discriminación, a veces patrocinada por el gobierno, han llevado a patrones raciales en torno a la pobreza y el encarcelamiento, lo que hace que las familias afroamericanas, latinas e indígenas tengan menos probabilidades de estar aseguradas, más probabilidades de vivir en la pobreza y más probabilidades de lidiar con el encarcelamiento.

En tres distritos donde el equipo de McNeely estudió las ausencias individuales, el 13 por ciento de las ausencias de los estudiantes blancos se consideró injustificada, en comparación con el 21 por ciento de las ausencias de los estudiantes hispanos y el 24 por ciento de las ausencias de los estudiantes afroamericanos e indígenas.

Los distritos de Arizona tienen políticas similares a las que estudió McNeely. En el distrito escolar de Dysart Unified, por ejemplo, la enfermedad, las citas médicas y las vacaciones familiares aprobadas se encuentran entre las razones por las que los estudiantes pueden calificar para una ausencia justificada.

Los estudiantes afroamericanos representan alrededor del 7 por ciento de la matrícula de Dysart, pero recibieron hasta el 13 por ciento de las suspensiones en los últimos cinco años escolares. Los estudiantes hispanos representan alrededor del 40 por ciento de la matrícula y recibieron hasta el 67 por ciento de las suspensiones.

En un estudio, las ausencias entre los estudiantes afroamericanos fueron injustificadas el 24 por ciento de las veces, en comparación con el 13 por ciento de los estudiantes blancos.

Renee Ryon, vocera de Dysart Unified, dijo que la disciplina por infracciones de asistencia está claramente descrita en el manual del estudiante.

“O los estudiantes llegan a clase a tiempo o se les marca tarde o ausente”, dijo Ryon por correo electrónico. “Dysart se dedica a servir a todos los estudiantes, y seríamos negligentes si no hiciéramos todo lo que esté a nuestro alcance para garantizar que todos estén en clase a tiempo para aprender, independientemente de su demografía”.

Sin embargo, se cuestiona la sabiduría de suspender a los estudiantes por faltar a clase. Algunos estudiantes de Arizona dijeron que sus distritos no deberían suspender por infracciones de asistencia, lógica que coincide con la de los investigadores, defensores y educadores que dicen que el castigo no es la respuesta al ausentismo.

“Todos tienen algo en casa”, dijo DaMarion Green, estudiante de segundo año en Dysart High School. “Puede que estén pasando por algo y por eso llegan tarde, y esto no ayuda en nada”.

DaMarion, quien es afroamericano, dijo que ha sido suspendido unas cuatro veces por llegar tarde en las mañanas. Para él, todo parece ilógico.

“Me vas a suspender por llegar tarde, y luego vas a hacer que me atrase más en clase”, dijo DaMarion. “¿Cuál era el punto?”

A veces, las disparidades en la disciplina escolar se pueden atribuir directamente a quienes toman las decisiones sobre si aplicar o no los castigos. Dos décadas de investigación han demostrado que los estudiantes afroamericanos, aunque no tienen más probabilidades de portarse mal, tienen más probabilidades que sus compañeros blancos de ser remitidos a la oficina del director, específicamente por ofensas subjetivas, como una actitud desafiante.

El equipo de McNeely encontró un patrón similar en el castigo por ausentismo. Los investigadores observaron de cerca las referencias a la corte sobre ausencias y ausentismo escolar en tres distritos escolares y descubrieron que los estudiantes indígenas, afroamericanos e hispanos tienen más probabilidades que sus compañeros blancos de ser enviados a la corte, incluso cuando pierden la misma cantidad de días de clases.

Los estudiantes de Arizona también describieron un nivel de subjetividad en la forma en que los educadores deciden quién es castigado por llegar tarde a clase, incluso si ninguno de los encuestados lo relacionó con prejuicios raciales. En Deer Valley High School, a la que asiste Camron, los niños notaron que algunos estudiantes no enfrentaron ninguna consecuencia por faltar a clase, mientras que otros fueron suspendidos.

El propio hermano de Camron, estudiante de último año de high school, llega tarde con la misma frecuencia que Camron. Pero la clase del primer periodo de su hermano este año es educación física, y el maestro es más indulgente, dijo Camron. Y aunque las tardanzas del mediodía de Camron ciertamente cuentan en su contra, sus compañeros describieron casos similares de trato dispar.

“Es más o menos cómo te ven”, dijo Antoine Moore, de 16 años, quien dijo que nunca ha sido suspendido por infracciones de asistencia, pero conoce a estudiantes que sí. “Si sales con ciertos niños, sucede mucho. Sobre todo por llegar tarde”.

En Deer Valley Unified, la sobrerrepresentación entre los estudiantes afroamericanos e hispanos suspendidos osciló entre 2 y 12 puntos porcentuales por encima de su participación en la inscripción de estudiantes en los últimos cinco años.

Gary Zehrbach, superintendente adjunto de liderazgo administrativo y servicios en el distrito, dijo que las suspensiones registradas por infracciones de asistencia “generalmente estaban relacionadas con múltiples infracciones disciplinarias”, pero la frecuencia exacta no está clara en los datos. No respondió a las solicitudes de comentarios sobre las disparidades raciales dentro de las suspensiones.

Aún así, no todos los estudiantes que tienen la costumbre de llegar tarde o tener ausencias injustificadas terminan siendo suspendidos por ello.

Jalen Greathouse, de 16 años, asiste a Valley Vista High School en el distrito escolar de Dysart Unified. Dijo que ser castigado por llegar tarde a clase depende, en parte, del maestro que supervisa esa clase. Los maestros pueden optar por que los estudiantes que lleguen tarde sean “barridos” dentro de un salón de clases donde permanecen sentados el resto del periodo y los administradores evalúan si califican para una suspensión más prolongada.

“Algunos maestros están de acuerdo con eso”, dijo Jalen. “Otros maestros dicen, ‘Un segundo tarde — ve a ‘sweep’”.

Los estudiantes no informan que su comportamiento se haya visto frenado por suspensiones por infracciones de asistencia. El castigo, después de todo, no les da control sobre mucho de lo que les impide ir a la escuela. Y cuando son suspendidos, lo que Jalen no ha tenido hasta ahora, pierden un tiempo de instrucción importante.

Los investigadores han descubierto que faltar a la escuela solo dos días al mes — por cualquier motivo — puede generar problemas graves. Los estudiantes que se ausentan mucho tienen más probabilidades de tener problemas para leer en tercer grado, obtener calificaciones más bajas en las pruebas de lenguaje y matemáticas en la escuela intermedia y abandonar la escuela secundaria. Los estudiantes que son suspendidos ven un rendimiento académico y tasas de graduación igualmente bajos, áreas en las que los estudiantes afroamericanos y latinos ya tienden a estar rezagados con respecto a sus compañeros blancos.

Un estudio realizado por investigadores de la Universidad de Kentucky y la Universidad de Indiana examinó el impacto de las suspensiones en las diferencias raciales en el rendimiento de lectura y matemáticas, y denominó a la disparidad racial la “brecha de castigo”. Un 20 por ciento de la diferencia en el rendimiento académico entre los estudiantes afroamericanos y blancos, dijeron, puede explicarse por la mayor tasa de suspensiones de los estudiantes afroamericanos.

Cuando la administración de Obama emitió su guía sobre la disciplina escolar, se centró en la suspensión de las disparidades raciales entre los estudiantes. Tanto los partidarios como los críticos atribuyeron a la guía (actualmente “bajo revisión” por parte de la administración de Biden) la reducción de las suspensiones, en parte debido a la amenaza de investigación que implicaba.

En agosto pasado, la Oficina de Derechos Civiles del Departamento de Educación de los Estados Unidos anunció una resolución con el Victor Valley Union High School District de California, en la que el distrito acordó revisar sus políticas de disciplina y eliminar las tardanzas y el ausentismo escolar como motivos de suspensión. La Oficina de Derechos Civiles encontró suficiente evidencia para concluir que el distrito disciplinó de manera desproporcionada a los estudiantes afroamericanos por faltar a clase, entre otras cosas.

Aún así, Lhamon dijo que los distritos escolares tienen la responsabilidad de cumplir la promesa de la Ley de Derechos Civiles, ya sea que su oficina esté investigando o no.

“La obligación es una obligación todos los días”, dijo, “para cada comunidad escolar”.

Este artículo acerca de sesgo racial en la disciplina escolar fue producido por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente sin fines de lucro enfocada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación, y el Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, una sala de redacción independiente, no partidista y sin fines de lucro dedicada a la investigación basada en datos en todo el estado.

The post Derechos civiles en riesgo: Estudiantes afroamericanos y latinos son suspendidos más por faltar a clase. appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

This story about racial bias in school discipline was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter and the AZCIR newsletter.

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Camron Olivas has been suspended at least five times throughout middle and high school for being late to class. While his mother cares for his toddler sister, his older brother drives him in, and they frequently arrive after the first bell. During the day, Camron said he sometimes remains in the hallways too long between classes, talking to his friends.

Punishments for the teen’s tardiness have escalated from warnings to in-school suspensions to multiday out-of-school suspensions.

Camron, 15, attends Deer Valley High School, just west of Phoenix, where he is one of an outsize number of Hispanic students who have been suspended for attendance violations, according to district data. Camron, who is also Native American, most recently spent a day in the in-school suspension room in October, a punishment that forced him to miss seven whole periods for occasionally being a few minutes late to some of them. The next day, he had to catch up on what he missed, while also taking in new lessons.

“I never thought it made sense,” Camron said of the punishment.

Students all over Arizona are suspended for not showing up to class, whether it’s because they arrive late, leave campus midday or fail to make it at all, an investigation by The Hechinger Report and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting has found. And, the data shows, Black, Latino and Native American students are frequently overrepresented among those blocked from class for missing class — what some argue is evidence of a potential civil rights violation.

Nationally, researchers have tied similar discipline disparities to school attendance policies and the unequal application of punishment. The policies tend to be more accepting of reasons that white students are most likely to miss class, and educators unevenly assign discipline of all kinds, allowing bias to creep in. The consequences can be steep: These inequities in school discipline — what some researchers have dubbed the “punishment gap” — contribute directly to racial differences in academic performance.

“Students have a right to be treated in equity with their peers, and when there’s unexplained disproportionality, it’s really incumbent on schools to understand why that disproportionality exists and to work to rectify it,” said Darrell Hill, attorney and policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.

Related: When the punishment is the same as the crime: Suspended for missing class

Students from historically marginalized groups who receive excessive suspensions in response to tardies or unexcused absences could “certainly” have grounds for a civil rights claim, Hill said.

The Hechinger/AZCIR investigation offers one of the most in-depth analyses ever conducted of suspensions for attendance violations. Because most states and the federal government don’t collect detailed data on the reasons behind suspensions, the extent of this controversial practice has long remained hidden.

The analysis revealed nearly 47,000 suspensions for attendance violations over the past five school years, across more than 80 districts that suspended students for missing class. The true scale of the problem is likely much larger, as almost 250 districts failed to provide comprehensive data in response to public records requests.

“You’re going to suspend me for being late, and then you’re going to make me fall behind in class more. It’s like, what was the point?”

DaMarion Green, Dysart High School student

Cumulatively, Black and Hispanic students were overrepresented among those punished every year, among 20 districts that supplied usable demographic data. (Together, they accounted for 90 percent of all attendance-related suspensions in the sample.) Last school year, for example, Black students made up 6 percent of the total enrollment across all 20 districts but received 15 percent of suspensions. Hispanic students made up 43 percent of enrollment but received 68 percent of suspensions.

White students, meanwhile, were largely underrepresented, making up 37 percent of enrollment and receiving 23 percent of suspensions.

Among the dozen districts with enough data to assess Native American student representation, these students sometimes accounted for double or triple the share of suspensions that would be expected based on their proportion of enrollment.

Presented with the results of the analysis, Kathy Hoffman, Arizona superintendent of public instruction, issued a statement saying the findings confirmed “why it is vital for Arizona to focus on equitable and fair treatment of all students.” But she did not address the state’s role during her four-year tenure, instead urging her recently elected successor to “work with our schools toward solutions that uplift and support students of color in Arizona” once he is sworn in.

“When students of color are disproportionately disciplined, it impacts the time they can spend learning in the classroom and hampers their ability to succeed academically,” Hoffman said.

Under the Obama administration, the U.S. departments of Justice and Education issued joint guidance to schools about racial disparities in school discipline. They cautioned that a disciplinary policy that had an adverse impact on students of a particular race and was “not necessary to meet an important educational goal” violated civil rights law.

The agencies highlighted out-of-school suspensions for missing school as cause for particular concern.

“A school,” the guidance read, “would likely have difficulty demonstrating that excluding a student from attending school in response to the student’s efforts to avoid school was necessary to meet an important educational goal.”

Related: Inside our analysis of attendance-related suspensions in Arizona

The Trump administration rescinded the guidance in 2018, saying it went beyond what the Civil Rights Act required. But the departments asserted that “robust protections against race, color, and national origin discrimination … remain unchanged.”

Under the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has yet to issue fresh guidance on the topic. But Assistant Secretary Catherine Lhamon, who first ran the office under former President Barack Obama, said her staff would use the same process it used then to assess whether disparities in discipline constitute unlawful discrimination.

“It’s kind of just how they see you. If you hang out with certain kids, it happens a lot. Especially for being late.”

Antoine Moore, Deer Valley High School student

The Office for Civil Rights considers more than just data when deciding whether or not discrimination occurred. But Lhamon said the numbers uncovered by the Hechinger/AZCIR analysis offer justification for an investigation. “Disparities of any kind are notable and worth evaluating,” Lhamon said.

“I am very concerned when I hear about kids missing instructional time,” she added.

In some Arizona districts, the imbalance in who gets suspended for attendance violations is striking.

Glendale Union High School District, for example, handed out nearly 12,500 suspensions for attendance violations over the past five school years. And while Latino students made up about 60 percent of its enrollment, they accounted for up to 90 percent of students suspended. Black students represented about 8  percent of students enrolled but as much as 21 percent of students suspended, while Native American students made up about 2 percent of enrollment and as much as 6 percent of suspensions.

Kim Mesquita, Glendale Union High School District spokeswoman, did not comment on the disparities in school discipline by race. In response to questions about the district’s frequent use of suspensions for attendance violations, she said the district was “reviewing the data” and “determining what is effective and what is not.”

Related: Some kids have returned to in-person learning only to be kicked right back out

Researchers have found that racial disparities in who is disciplined for absenteeism can be attributed, in part, to attendance policies themselves. School districts punish students only for unexcused absences, making district approval for missing school crucial. And white students are more likely than those of other races to be absent for reasons that schools excuse.

“Racism is so blatantly written into the policies,” said Clea McNeely, a University of Tennessee research professor who studied attendance policies in a nationally representative sample of 97 school districts.

McNeely and her team found that school districts were less likely to excuse absences caused by life circumstances more typically experienced by Black, Hispanic and American Indian children.

Students who go to the doctor when they’re sick have an easier time getting illness-related absences excused, for instance, and white families are more likely to receive medical care. Kids whose families can’t afford reliable transportation are more likely to rack up tardies that lead to suspensions. Schools will often excuse an absence for a child visiting a parent in the military, but not one for visiting a parent who is incarcerated. The list goes on. Centuries of discrimination, sometimes government-sponsored, have led to racial patterns around poverty and incarceration, making Black, Latino and Indigenous families less likely to be insured, more likely to live in poverty, and more likely to deal with incarceration.

Across three districts where McNeely’s team studied individual absences, 13 percent of white students’ absences were deemed unexcused, compared with 21 percent of absences by Hispanic students and 24 percent of absences by Black and American Indian students.

Arizona districts have policies similar to those McNeely studied. In Dysart Unified School District, for example, illness, medical appointments and approved family vacations are among the reasons students can qualify for an excused absence.

Black students make up about 7 percent of Dysart’s enrollment, yet they received as much as 13 percent of suspensions over the past five school years. Hispanic students make up around 40 percent of enrollment and received as much as 67 percent of suspensions.

In one study, absences among Black students were unexcused 24 percent of the time, compared with 13 percent for white students.

Renee Ryon, spokeswoman for Dysart Unified, said discipline for attendance violations is clearly described in the student handbook.

“Either students come to class on time, or they are marked tardy or absent,” Ryon said via email. “Dysart is dedicated to serving all students, and we would be remiss if we did not do everything in our power to ensure they are all in class on time in order to learn, regardless of their demographics.”

Related: How career and technical education shuts out Black and Latino students from high-paying professions

The wisdom of suspending students for missing class, however, is disputed. Some Arizona students said their districts shouldn’t suspend students for attendance violations — logic that matches that of researchers, advocates and educators who say discipline is not the answer to absenteeism.

“Everyone has something at home,” said DaMarion Green, a sophomore at Dysart High School. “They might be going through something and that’s why they’re late, and this doesn’t help nothing.”

DaMarion, who is Black, said he has been suspended about four times for being late in the mornings. To him, it all just seems illogical.

“You’re going to suspend me for being late, and then you’re going to make me fall behind in class more,” said DaMarion. “It’s like, what was the point?”

Sometimes, disparities in school discipline can be attributed directly to those making decisions about whether or not to dole out punishments. Two decades of research have demonstrated that Black students, while no more likely to misbehave, are more likely than their white classmates to be referred to the principal’s office — specifically for subjective offenses, such as defiance.

McNeely’s team found a similar pattern in punishment for absenteeism. Researchers looked closely at absences and truancy court referrals in three school districts, finding that American Indian, Black and Hispanic students are more likely than their white peers to be sent to court, even when they miss the same number of days of school.

Arizona students also described a level of subjectivity in how educators decide who gets punished for being late to class, even if none who were asked tied it to racial bias. At Deer Valley High School, which Camron attends, kids noted some students didn’t face any consequences for missing class, while others got suspended.

Last school year, Black students made up 6 percent of the total enrollment across 20 Arizona districts that supplied usable demographic data but received 15 percent of suspensions. Hispanic students made up 43 percent of enrollment but received 68 percent of suspensions.

Camron’s own brother, a senior at the high school, arrives late just as frequently as Camron. But his brother’s first-period class this year is physical education, and the teacher is more lenient, Camron said. And while Camron’s midday tardies certainly count against him, his peers described similar cases of disparate treatment.

“It’s kind of just how they see you,” said Antoine Moore, 16, who said he has never been suspended for attendance violations but knows students who have. “If you hang out with certain kids, it happens a lot. Especially for being late.”

At Deer Valley Unified, overrepresentation among Black and Hispanic students suspended ranged from 2 to 12 percentage points above their share of student enrollment over the past five years.

Gary Zehrbach, deputy superintendent of administrative leadership and services in the district, said the suspensions logged for attendance violations were “usually related to multiple disciplinary infractions,” but exactly how often isn’t clear in the data. He did not respond to requests for comment on the racial disparities within the suspensions.

Related: Students can’t learn if they don’t show up at school

Still, not every student who makes a habit of being late or has unexcused absences ends up getting suspended for it.

Jalen Greathouse, 16, attends Valley Vista High School in Dysart Unified. He said getting punished for being late to class depends, in part, on the teacher overseeing that class. Teachers can choose to have students who are late get “swept” into a classroom where they sit out the rest of the period and administrators assess whether they qualify for a longer suspension.

“Some teachers are cool with it,” Jalen said. “Other teachers are like, ‘One second late — go to sweep.’ ”

Students don’t report having their behavior curbed by suspensions for attendance violations. The punishment, after all, doesn’t give them control over much of what keeps them from school. And when they do get suspended, which Jalen so far has not, they miss important instructional time.

Researchers have found missing just two days of school per month — for any reason — can lead to serious problems. Students who are absent that much are more likely to have trouble reading in third grade, to score lower on language and math tests in middle school, and to drop out of high school. Students who get suspended see similarly depressed academic performance and graduation rates — areas where Black and Latino students already tend to trail their white peers.

A study by researchers from the University of Kentucky and Indiana University examined the impact of suspensions on racial differences in reading and math performance, dubbing the racial disparity the “punishment gap.” A full 20 percent of the difference in academic performance between Black and white students, they said, can be explained by Black students’ higher rate of suspensions.

When the Obama administration issued its guidance on school discipline, it focused on racial disparities among students being suspended. Supporters and critics alike credited the now-rescinded guidance, currently “under review” by the Biden administration, with driving down suspensions, in part because of the threat of investigation it implied.

This past August, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced a resolution with California’s Victor Valley Union High School District, in which the district agreed to revise its discipline policies and remove tardiness and truancy as reasons for suspension. The Office for Civil Rights had found enough evidence to conclude the district disproportionately disciplined Black students for missing class, among other things.

Still, Lhamon said school districts have a responsibility to fulfill the promise of the Civil Rights Act, whether her office is investigating or not.

“The obligation is an obligation every day,” she said, “for every school community.”

This story about racial bias in school discipline was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter and the AZCIR newsletter.

The post Civil rights at stake: Black, Hispanic students blocked from class for missing class appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

This story about suspensions for truancy was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter and the AZCIR newsletter.

PHOENIX — Guadalupe Hernandez’s attendance problems started in kindergarten.

The boy, who has two attention disorders and oppositional defiant disorder, often refused to sit still for circle time. He also experienced separation anxiety while away from his grandmother, Frances Yduarte, who raised him. He’d spend his days distracted from lessons, wishing he was home with her.

Guadalupe started asking Yduarte, whom he calls mama, to let him skip school. Frequently, she did. Eventually, school administrators responded to his absences with punishment: Guadalupe said they gave him an in-school suspension, keeping him away from his classmates for an entire day. The next year, in first grade, he said administrators escalated the punishment to an out-of-school suspension, temporarily barring him from school altogether.

To Yduarte and Guadalupe, the discipline didn’t make any sense. She was struggling to get him to class, and now the school was telling her not to bother.

“They should have talked to me,” said Guadalupe, now 13, “instead of just coming to conclusions and straight up suspending me.”

Suspending students for missing class — whether it’s because they showed up late, cut midday or were absent from school entirely — is a controversial tactic. At least 11 states fully ban the practice, and six more prohibit out-of-school suspensions to some extent for attendance violations.

That leaves schools in much of the country, including Arizona, free to punish most students for missing learning time by forcing them to miss even more. Yet the scope of that practice is largely hidden: The federal government doesn’t collect detailed data on why schools suspend students, and most states don’t, either.

Arizona collects limited discipline data from its districts. But a first-of-its-kind analysis by The Hechinger Report and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting has found that attendance-related suspensions are pervasive, in some districts accounting for more than half of all in-school suspensions.

Related: How the pandemic has altered school discipline – perhaps forever

Hechinger and AZCIR obtained, through public records requests, data from 150-plus districts and charter networks that educate about 61 percent of Arizona’s 1.1 million public school students. The majority had suspended students for attendance-related violations, collectively assigning nearly 47,000 suspensions over the past five school years. Of those, 1 in 5 were out-of-school suspensions. Totals for the full public school population are likely much higher, given that almost 250 school systems failed to produce comprehensive data — or any data at all — under Arizona public records law.

Among districts in the Hechinger/AZCIR sample that suspended for attendance, missing class led to 10 percent of all suspensions, resulting in tens of thousands of additional missed days of school. A deeper analysis of 20 districts that provided extensive demographic data revealed Black and Hispanic students frequently received a disproportionate share of these suspensions.

Students may miss class for any number of reasons, including transportation problems, family responsibilities or disengagement from school. Suspending them, experts say, not only fails to remedy these underlying challenges but, as with Guadalupe, can lead to further disengagement and worsen the attendance problems the discipline was meant to address.

Suspensions can also contribute to new problems, such as lower academic performance and higher dropout rates. The consequences can extend beyond high school, researchers have found, with suspensions linked to lower college enrollment rates and increased involvement with the criminal justice system. Nationwide, critics of the punishment cite missed class time as a key problem with it, and the U.S. Department of Education now tracks days lost to out-of-school suspensions.

“If a child is struggling to get to school or class and this is the issue, then removing them from the place that we want them to be is really counterintuitive,” said Anna Warmbrand, director of student relations for Tucson Unified School District, where district policy prohibits out-of-school suspensions for attendance violations alone.

But many districts continue to suspend kids for missing school, not just for dayslong absences but also for showing up a few minutes late to class, the 11-month Hechinger/AZCIR investigation found. In conversations with more than 75 students in two Arizona districts that frequently suspend for attendance violations, kids described how administrators mete out the punishment routinely.

Richie Taylor, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Education, noted that state statute generally allows school boards to set their own rules when it comes to discipline. But after reviewing preliminary Hechinger/AZCIR findings, he suggested it may be time to examine what he called “state policies, or lack thereof, that lead to overly punitive disciplinary actions related to attendance and result in more time spent by students out of the classroom.”

“If the past few years have taught us anything,” Taylor said of the pandemic and its aftermath, “it is that regular in-person learning is critical to a student’s academic success.”

For years, it was a battle getting Guadalupe to his Phoenix elementary school in the Washington Elementary School District. Yduarte said she would wake him up, pull the blankets off him and tell him it was time to go. Sometimes, he’d negotiate: “I’ll go at 10,” or “I’ll go at lunchtime.” Sometimes, he’d plead: “Get me out early, mama — please, please get me out early.” Other times, he’d just lie there in silence.

“That was a daily thing for him,” Yduarte said.

Guadalupe missed so much school that, when he did show up, he couldn’t follow what was happening in class.

“Most of the things that we were learning, I didn’t understand, and I wasn’t getting much help,” Guadalupe said. “I just didn’t feel comfortable coming to school anymore.”

Guadalupe remembers a two-day out-of-school suspension in first grade. It was the first time the school had punished him by forcing him to stay home, he said. He was chastened for a day, returning to school as instructed when his suspension was over. But the effect didn’t last. He didn’t go the following day. The suspension, he said, made him want to go to school even less.

The district declined to comment on his case, citing federal student privacy laws, but a spokesperson, Pam Horton, said it generally does not suspend students for attendance violations. Data provided by the district shows that it has, however, issued suspensions for attendance issues — at least 650 over the past four school years.

Related: Students can’t learn if they don’t show up at school

Under Arizona law, students are considered truant if they miss at least one class period without a valid excuse. The law defines excessive absences as missing 10 percent of school days or more, a level more widely referred to as chronic absenteeism. State statute allows districts to set their own punishments for missing school and suggests a range of consequences for chronically absent students, including failing a subject, failing a grade level, suspension and expulsion.

Districts and charters use a mix of approaches to address absenteeism, the Hechinger/AZCIR investigation found, including warnings, parent conferences, detentions, in-school suspensions and out-of-school suspensions. In a relatively small portion of cases, schools refer kids who are frequently absent to the courts for truancy, which can lead to criminal charges for children or their guardians.

Strategies for combating absenteeism can vary within a single school system. Several administrators contacted for this story said they did not realize how often certain schools in their districts were suspending kids for attendance violations.   

Arizona places pressure on schools to reduce chronic absenteeism, evaluating elementary and middle schools in part on the number of their students who miss at least 10 percent of school days. In fact, most states now expect districts to pay attention to this issue, informed by research that says an average of two absences per month can create a tipping point in early literacy, performance on standardized tests and dropout rates. But the Hechinger/AZCIR analysis indicates suspensions in many Arizona districts are compounding an absenteeism problem already exacerbated by the pandemic.

Colorado River Union High School District, near the Nevada border, is among the most punitive districts in the Hechinger/AZCIR sample. It serves fewer than 2,000 students but assigned 351 out-of-school suspensions for attendance-related violations over the past five school years. Most of those suspensions happened at Mohave High School.

Principal Gina Covert said the school has a homeless liaison and a psychologist intended to help students overcome barriers to their attendance, but “there are times when consequences have to happen.”

For the first few weeks of this school year, teachers and administrators were relatively lenient, she said, explaining school rules and guiding students who tested those rules back to class. But by late August, Covert said students without a hall pass received a suspension.

“We’ve been training them now for five weeks,” she said at the time. “They need to be where they’re supposed to be.” 

Related: When typical middle school antics mean suspensions, handcuffs or jail

Lucky Arvizo is principal of Somerton High School in the Yuma Union High School District, which serves about 11,000 students and handed out 535 attendance-related out-of-school suspensions over the past five years — one of only three districts issuing more of these suspensions than Covert’s. He described a similar policy of gradually escalating discipline and said he considers suspension in response to poor attendance a last resort.

“But when it does happen, the student thinks, ‘Oh, wow, this is more serious than I thought.’ And that behavior changes,” Arvizo said.

Several current and former school officials disagree. During a suspension, they said, students don’t get support to change bad habits, and they don’t get help with barriers that might keep them from school, such as family and work commitments. Suspensions similarly fail to address school-based issues that can contribute to poor attendance, like bullying or academic troubles.

Missing just two days of school per month has been tied to lower reading proficiency in third grade, lower math scores in middle school and higher dropout rates in high school.

Limited research exists on whether suspensions are an effective strategy for discouraging absenteeism. One study found that while kids who received out-of-school suspensions for truancy were less likely to be truant again in the short term, repeated use of suspensions actually led to greater absenteeism in the long term.

That absenteeism can have lasting consequences: Missing just two days of school per month has been tied to lower reading proficiency in third grade, lower math scores in middle school and higher dropout rates in high school. Meanwhile, the growing body of research on suspensions more generally shows they harm kids and their learning, leading to growing calls to address misbehavior in ways that keep students in class.

Terri Martinez-McGraw, executive director of the National Center for School Engagement, says suspensions are counterproductive. Her group counsels schools to address absenteeism with problem-solving, working with students to identify exactly why they’re missing school and addressing those root causes.

“Our kids have the answer,” Martinez-McGraw said. “If we sit down and talk to them about their behavior, they’re going to let us know the whys and the whats and how we can get that behavior changed.”

In Guadalupe’s case, suspensions added to his time out of class, while doing nothing to change his academic trajectory.

Related: A third of public school children were chronically absent after classrooms re-opened, advocacy group says

Yduarte said Guadalupe was consistently failing all his classes. He struggled to read and do grade-level math and couldn’t follow what was being taught in science and social studies.  

Yduarte said she tried to convince the school to give him extra services to help him control his behavior and catch up on his work, but the help was intermittent. When he was given more one-on-one attention, he would go to school more willingly, she said. But when he didn’t get that extra help, he’d go back to begging to stay home.

“What they never understood,” Yduarte said, “was because he hadn’t been in school for so long, he didn’t know what was going on at school, he didn’t know his work, and there was nobody there to help him with it.”

Dysart Unified School District serves about 23,000 students across 140 square miles of Maricopa County, its sprawling campuses dotting the dry valley terrain. The district handed out nearly 12,000 attendance-related suspensions over the five-year period reviewed.

During the 2018-19 school year, the last full year before COVID, Dysart suspended students nearly 3,500 times for being late to class. During the roller coaster of 2020-21, school leaders suspended students more than 1,000 times for being late, according to the district’s data. In total, over the past five years,nearly 60 percent of all in-school suspensions in the district were for attendance violations. (This includes single-period or half-day suspensions.)

It’s not hard to find Dysart High School students who’ve been suspended for being late. Most students have six classes each day, 180 days of the year, providing more than 1,000 chances to rack up a tardy. School policy indicates six tardies lead to a one-day in-school suspension. Three more lead to a three-day stint in the suspension room, where students are expected to stay quiet. They can work on assignments or, as one sophomore put it, stare at a wall.

Five Dysart students who had been suspended for being late to class said various circumstances contributed to their tardiness. One said she was suspended when her school bus arrived late, while two others were suspended after relatives dropped them off after the bell. Two more students said they overslept or lost track of time. A sixth said her friend was suspended for missing class while in the school bathroom dealing with her menstrual cycle. She had blood on her clothes and spent unexcused time cleaning herself up.

Another student, whose name is being withheld due to privacy concerns, described the school’s suspension policy for tardiness as “stupid.”

“If you’re late in one class, and it’s repeated,” she said, “I feel like they shouldn’t take your learning away from your other classes, because then you’ll fall behind.”

Related: Some kids have returned to in-person learning only to be kicked right back out

District officials said they could not comment on individual suspensions. But Renee Ryon, Dysart Unified’s director of communications, said students would only get suspended after a late bus arrival if they didn’t “promptly report to class.” And she defended the district’s suspension policy for repeated tardies.

“While it may seem odd to take students out of class in response to attendance issues, it is important to remember that it is also a safety issue if students aren’t where they should be during class time,” Ryon said. “We take safety very seriously and must be able to account for each student throughout the day.”

Still, advocates say schools should address the root causes of absenteeism rather than resort to disciplinary action. Hedy Chang, founder and executive director of the national nonprofit Attendance Works, urges schools to identify the barriers keeping students from class — including transportation issues, family instability, bullying, mental health problems and academic struggles — and offer solutions like bus passes, counseling, tutoring and other support to reengage students and keep them in class.

Students simply can’t benefit from instruction and opportunities in the classroom, Chang said, if they’re not there.

DaMarion Green, 16, said he has gotten approximately four in-school suspensions for arriving late to first period, all at Dysart High School, where he is a sophomore. Each time, he slipped behind in his classes without access to his teachers.

“That’s the whole point of a teacher, is to give you help,” DaMarion said. In the suspension room, he said, he couldn’t ask any questions. “They just want you to be quiet.” 

Though Arizona largely leaves disciplinary policy decisions to districts and charters, state legislators can, and do, intervene when they want to ban or limit certain punitive practices.

By the start of the 2021-22 school year, for example, lawmakers had stepped in to stop schools from suspending kids in kindergarten through fourth grade for all but the most serious disciplinary infractions — a move that should have indirectly eliminated attendance-related suspensions for the state’s youngest learners. But the law did not establish a state-level process for enforcement.  

Indeed, the Hechinger/AZCIR analysis suggests some districts may be flouting it. Phoenix-based Wilson Elementary School District, for instance, assigned eight out-of-school suspensions and 26 in-school suspensions to its youngest students for missing school between September and December of 2021, according to its own records. (Only a handful of districts provided discipline data to The Hechinger Report and AZCIR in a format that tracked student grade level along with suspension type.)

Superintendent Ernest Rose, who moved to Wilson from Tucson Unified in 2021, doesn’t defend the suspensions. After noticing an overreliance on suspensions in general, he said, he introduced a new code of conduct in January that discourages suspending kids for attendance violations, among other changes.

“It doesn’t make sense to punish someone for attendance by sending them home,” Rose said, adding that the change required a shift in mindset among district staff.

Related: Why is it so hard to stop suspending kindergartners?

Darrell Hill, policy director for the ACLU of Arizona, said advocates previously pushed for legislation explicitly targeting schools’ ability to suspend students because of excessive or unexcused absences, but conversations stalled. And while he still supports a law to end the practice, he also wants policymakers to give educators and administrators more resources to help struggling students.

“Schools haven’t been equipped to deal with these issues in any way but a suspension or expulsion,” Hill said. “So … they rely on exclusionary discipline even when it is clearly detrimental to the students they’re serving.”

In Guadalupe’s case, his attendance issues led to even more extreme consequences. While Yduarte said she remains his legal guardian, Guadalupe now lives with a foster family southeast of Phoenix. He was placed in foster care in large part due to his many absences from school while living with Yduarte. But the move came with a bevy of supports.

At his new public school in Chandler, Guadalupe said he gets counseling and after-school tutoring, and his doctors have finally settled on medication that helps him control his behavior disorders. He qualified for special education services shortly before moving, and the new supports have contributed to a turnaround: Guadalupe said he feels caught up academically, and he goes to school consistently.

Both Guadalupe and Yduarte hope the boy will soon be able to move back home.

Yduarte has a nagging worry that if he ends up in another school that responds to absenteeism with suspensions rather than supports, he’ll get off track again. But Guadalupe assures her he’ll be able to maintain his momentum at any school.

Yduarte remains cautious: “You’ll try.”

Fazil Khan contributed data analysis to this report.

This story about suspensions for truancy was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter and the AZCIR newsletter.

The post When the punishment is the same as the crime: Suspended for missing class appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Este artículo sobre suspensiones por ausentismo escolar fue producido por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente sin fines de lucro enfocada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación, y el Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, una sala de redacción independiente, no partidista y sin fines de lucro dedicada a la investigación basada en datos en todo el estado.

PHOENIX — Los problemas de asistencia de Guadalupe Hernández comenzaron en kínder.

El niño, que tiene dos trastornos de atención y un trastorno desafiante oposicional, a menudo se negaba a quedarse quieto en su clase. También se sintió ansiedad por separación mientras estaba lejos de su abuela, Frances Yduarte, quien lo crió. Pasaría sus días distraído de las lecciones, deseando estar en casa con ella.

Guadalupe comenzó a pedirle a Yduarte, a quien llama mamá, que lo dejara faltar a la escuela. Con frecuencia, ella lo hizo. Eventualmente, los administradores de la escuela respondieron a sus ausencias con castigos: Guadalupe dijo que lo suspendieron dentro de la escuela, manteniéndolo alejado de sus compañeros de clase durante todo un día. Al año siguiente, en primer grado, dijo que los administradores escalaron el castigo a una suspensión fuera de la escuela, prohibiéndole temporalmente asistir.

Para Yduarte y Guadalupe, el castigo no tenía ningún sentido. Ella estaba luchando para llevarlo a clase, y ahora la escuela le decía que no se molestara.

“Deberían haber hablado conmigo”, dijo Guadalupe, que ahora tiene 13 años, “en lugar de simplemente llegar a conclusiones y suspenderme directamente”.

Suspender a los estudiantes por faltar a clases — ya sea porque llegaron tarde, se fueron a mitad del día o se ausentaron por completo de la escuela— es una táctica controvertida. Al menos 11 estados prohíben por completo la práctica, y seis más prohíben las suspensiones fuera de la escuela hasta cierto punto por infracciones de asistencia.

Eso deja a las escuelas en gran parte del país, incluso Arizona, libre de castigar a la mayoría de los estudiantes por perder tiempo de aprendizaje obligándolos a perder aún más. Sin embargo, el alcance de esa práctica está en gran parte oculto: el gobierno federal no recopila datos detallados sobre por qué las escuelas suspenden a los estudiantes, y la mayoría de los estados tampoco.

Arizona recopila datos de disciplina limitados de sus distritos. Pero un análisis único en su tipo realizado por The Hechinger Report y el Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting (AZCIR) descubrió que las suspensiones relacionadas con la asistencia son generalizadas, representando en algunos distritos más de la mitad de todas las suspensiones dentro de la escuela.

Hechinger y AZCIR obtuvieron — a través de solicitudes de registros públicos — datos de más de 150 distritos y redes de escuelas chárter que educan alrededor del 61 por ciento de los 1,1 millones de estudiantes de escuelas públicas de Arizona. La mayoría había suspendido a estudiantes por infracciones relacionadas con la asistencia, asignando colectivamente casi 47.000 suspensiones en los últimos cinco años escolares. Entre ellos, 1 de cada 5 fueron suspensiones fuera de la escuela. Es probable que los totales para la población completa de las escuelas públicas sean mucho más altos, dado que casi 250 sistemas escolares no pudieron producir datos completos — o no produjeron ningunos datos — conforme a la ley de registros públicos de Arizona.

En los distritos que si suspendieron por infracciones de asistencia, faltar a clase provocó el 10 por ciento de todas las suspensiones, lo que resultó en perder decenas de miles de días escolares adicionales. En un análisis más profundo de 20 distritos que proporcionaron datos demográficos y de matriculación completos, los estudiantes afroamericanos e hispanos con frecuencia recibieron una parte desproporcionada de estos castigos.

Los estudiantes pueden estar ausente por varias razones, inclusos problemas de transporte, responsabilidades familiares o desvinculación de la escuela. Suspenderlos, dicen los expertos, no solo no soluciona estos desafíos subyacentes, sino que, al igual que con Guadalupe, puede causar a una mayor desvinculación y empeorar los problemas de asistencia que la disciplina debía abordar.

Las suspensiones también pueden contribuir a nuevos problemas, con la táctica disciplinaria ligada a un rendimiento académico más bajo y tasas de deserción más altas. Los investigadores han encontrado que las consecuencias pueden extenderse más allá del high school, con suspensiones vinculadas a tasas más bajas de inscripción universitaria y una mayor participación en el sistema de justicia penal. En todo el país, los críticos del castigo citan el tiempo de clase perdido como un problema clave y el Departamento de Educación de Estados Unidos ahora rastrea los días perdidos por suspensiones.

“Si un niño tiene dificultades para llegar a la escuela o a clases y este es el problema, sacarlo del lugar donde queremos que esté es realmente contrario a la intuición”, dijo Anna Warmbrand, directora de relaciones estudiantiles del distrito escolar Tucson Unified, donde la política del distrito prohíbe las suspensiones fuera de la escuela solo por infracciones de asistencia.

Pero muchos distritos continúan suspendiendo a los niños por faltar a la escuela, no solo por ausencias de un día, sino también por llegar unos minutos tarde a clase, encontró la investigación de 11 meses de Hechinger/AZCIR. En conversaciones con más de 75 estudiantes en dos distritos de Arizona que frecuentemente suspenden por infracciones de asistencia, los niños describieron cómo los administradores imponen el castigo de manera rutinaria.

Richie Taylor, portavoz del Departamento de Educación de Arizona, señaló que el estatuto estatal generalmente permite que las juntas escolares establezcan sus propias reglas en lo que respecta a la disciplina. Pero después de revisar los hallazgos preliminares de Hechinger/AZCIR, sugirió que podría ser momento de examinar lo que llamó “políticas estatales, o la falta de ellas, que conducen a acciones disciplinarias excesivamente punitivas relacionadas con la asistencia y dan como resultado que los estudiantes pasen más tiempo fuera del aula”.

“Si los últimos años nos han enseñado algo”, dijo Taylor sobre la pandemia y sus consecuencias, “es que el aprendizaje regular en persona es fundamental para el éxito académico de un estudiante”.

Durante años, fue una batalla llevar a Guadalupe a su escuela primaria de Phoenix en el distrito escolar Washington Elementary. Yduarte dijo que lo despertaba, le quitaba las cobijas y le decía que era hora de irse. A veces negociaba: “Iré a las 10” o “Iré a la hora del almuerzo”. A veces, suplicaba: “Sácame temprano, mamá, por favor, sácame temprano”. Otras veces, simplemente se quedaba allí en silencio.

“Eso era algo diario para él”, dijo Yduarte.

Guadalupe faltaba tanto a la escuela que, cuando llegaba, no podía seguir lo que pasaba en sus clases.

“La mayoría de las cosas que estábamos aprendiendo no las entendía y no recibía mucha ayuda”, dijo Guadalupe. “Simplemente ya no me sentía cómodo yendo a la escuela”.

Guadalupe recuerda una suspensión de dos días fuera de la escuela en primer grado. Era la primera vez que la escuela lo respondía obligándolo a quedarse en casa, dijo. Fue castigado por un día, regresando a la escuela como se le indicó cuando terminó su suspensión. Pero el efecto no duró. No fue al día siguiente. La suspensión, dijo, lo hizo querer ir a la escuela aún menos.

El distrito se negó a comentar sobre su caso, citando las leyes federales de privacidad de los estudiantes, pero una portavoz, Pam Horton, dijo que generalmente no suspende a los estudiantes por infracciones de asistencia. Los datos proporcionados por el distrito muestran que, sin embargo, ha emitido suspensiones por problemas de asistencia —al menos 650 en los últimos cuatro años escolares.

Según la ley de Arizona, los estudiantes se consideran ausentes sin justificación si faltan al menos a un periodo de clase sin una excusa válida. Define las ausencias excesivas como faltar al 10 por ciento de los días escolares o más, un nivel más conocido como ausentismo crónico. El estatuto del estado permite que los distritos establezcan sus propios castigos por faltar a la escuela y sugiere una variedad de consecuencias para los estudiantes con ausencias crónicas, que incluyen reprobar una materia, reprobar un nivel de grado, suspensión y expulsión.

Los distritos y las escuelas chárter utilizan una combinación de enfoques para abordar el ausentismo, según descubrió la investigación de Hechinger/AZCIR, que incluyen advertencias, conferencias con los padres, detenciones, suspensiones en la escuela y suspensiones fuera de la escuela. En una porción relativamente pequeña de los casos, los niños que se ausentan con frecuencia son remitidos a los tribunales por ausentismo escolar, lo que puede dar lugar a cargos penales para los niños o sus papás.

Las estrategias para combatir el ausentismo pueden variar dentro de un mismo sistema escolar. Varios administradores contactados para este artículo dijeron que no se dieron cuenta de la frecuencia con la que ciertas escuelas en sus distritos suspendían a los niños por infracciones de asistencia.

Arizona presiona a las escuelas para que reduzcan el ausentismo crónico, evaluando a las escuelas primarias y secundarias en parte según la cantidad de estudiantes que faltan al menos el 10 por ciento de los días escolares. De hecho, la mayoría de los estados ahora esperan que los distritos presten atención a este problema, informados por investigaciones que dicen que un promedio de dos ausencias por mes puede crear un punto de inflexión en la alfabetización temprana, el rendimiento en las pruebas estandarizadas y las tasas de abandono escolar. Pero el análisis de Hechinger/AZCIR indica que las suspensiones en muchos distritos de Arizona están agravando un problema de ausentismo ya exacerbado por la pandemia.

El análisis de Hechinger/AZCIR encontró casi 47.000 suspensiones asignadas durante los últimos cinco años escolares por infracciones de asistencia.

El Colorado River Union High School District, cerca de la frontera con Nevada, se encuentra entre los distritos más punitivos en la muestra de Hechinger/AZCIR. Sirve a menos de 2.000 estudiantes, pero asignó 351 suspensiones fuera de la escuela por infracciones relacionadas con la asistencia en los últimos cinco años escolares. La mayoría de esas suspensiones ocurrieron en Mohave High School.

La directora Gina Covert dijo que la escuela tiene un coordinador para personas sin hogar y un psicólogo con la intención de ayudar a los estudiantes a superar las barreras para su asistencia, pero “hay momentos en que las consecuencias tienen que suceder”.

Durante las primeras semanas de este año escolar, los maestros y administradores fueron relativamente indulgentes, dijo, explicando las reglas escolares y guiando a los estudiantes que probaron esas reglas de regreso a clase. Pero a fines de agosto, Covert dijo que los estudiantes sin pase de pasillo recibieron una suspensión.

“Los hemos estado entrenando durante cinco semanas”, dijo en ese momento. “Tienen que estar donde se supone que deben estar”.

Lucky Arvizo es director de Somerton High School en el Yuma Union High School District, que atiende a unos 11.000 estudiantes y asignó 535 suspensiones fuera de la escuela relacionadas con la asistencia en los últimos cinco años — uno de los tres distritos que asignó más de estas suspensiones que el de Covert. Describió una política similar de escalada gradual de la disciplina y dijo que considera la suspensión en respuesta a la mala asistencia como último recurso.

“Pero cuando sucede, el estudiante piensa, ‘Oh, vaya, esto es más serio de lo que pensaba’. Y ese comportamiento cambia”, dijo Arvizo.

Faltar solo dos días de clases por mes se ha relacionado con una menor competencia en lectura en tercer grado, puntajes más bajos en matemáticas en la escuela intermedia y tasas más altas de abandono escolar en la escuela secundaria.

Varios funcionarios escolares actuales y anteriores no están de acuerdo. Durante una suspensión, dijeron, los estudiantes no reciben apoyo para cambiar los malos hábitos y no reciben ayuda con las barreras que podrían impedirles ir a la escuela, como los compromisos familiares y laborales. Las suspensiones tampoco abordan los problemas escolares que pueden contribuir a la mala asistencia, como el bullying o los problemas académicos.

Existe muy pocas investigaciones acerca de la eficacia de las suspensiones como una estrategia para desalentar el ausentismo. Un estudio encontró que aunque los niños que recibieron suspensiones fuera de la escuela por ausentismo escolar tenían menos probabilidades de ausentarse nuevamente a corto plazo, el uso repetido de suspensiones en realidad condujo a un mayor ausentismo a largo plazo.

Ese ausentismo puede tener consecuencias duraderas: faltar solo dos días de clases por mes se ha relacionado con una menor competencia en lectura en tercer grado, calificaciones más bajas en matemáticas en la escuela intermedia y tasas más altas de deserción escolar en la escuela secundaria. Mientras tanto, el creciente cuerpo de investigación sobre las suspensiones muestra de manera más general que dañan a los niños y su aprendizaje, lo que lleva a un aumento de demanda para abordar el mal comportamiento de manera que los estudiantes permanezcan en clase.

Terri Martinez-McGraw, directora ejecutiva del Centro Nacional para la Participación Escolar, dice que las suspensiones son contraproducentes. Su grupo aconseja a las escuelas que aborden el ausentismo mediante la resolución de problemas, trabajando con los estudiantes para identificar exactamente por qué faltan a la escuela y abordando esas causas fundamentales.

“Nuestros niños tienen la respuesta”, dijo Martinez-McGraw. “Si nos sentamos y hablamos con ellos sobre su comportamiento, nos dirán los por qué y los qué y cómo podemos cambiar ese comportamiento”.

En el caso de Guadalupe, las suspensiones se sumaron a su tiempo fuera de clase, sin hacer nada para cambiar su trayectoria académica.

Yduarte dijo que Guadalupe estaba reprobando constantemente todas sus clases. Tuvo problemas para leer y hacer matemáticas de nivel de grado y no podía seguir lo que se enseñaba en ciencias y estudios sociales.

Yduarte dijo que trató de convencer a la escuela de que le brindaran servicios adicionales para ayudarlo a controlar su comportamiento y ponerse al día con su trabajo, pero la ayuda fue intermitente. Cuando se le dio más atención personalizada, iba a la escuela con más ganas, dijo. Pero cuando no recibía esa ayuda adicional, volvía a rogar para quedarse en casa.

“Lo que nunca entendieron”, dijo Yduarte, “fue que él no había estado en la escuela durante tanto tiempo, no sabía lo que estaba pasando en la escuela, no sabía su trabajo y no había nadie allí para ayudarlo con eso.”

El distrito escolar de Dysart Unified atiende a unos 23.000 estudiantes en 140 millas cuadradas del condado de Maricopa, sus extensos campus se esparcen por el terreno seco del valle. El distrito otorgó casi 12.000 suspensiones relacionadas con la asistencia durante el período de cinco años revisado.

Durante el año escolar 2018-19, el último año completo antes de COVID, Dysart suspendió a los estudiantes casi 3.500 veces por llegar tarde a clase. Durante la montaña rusa de 2020-21, los líderes escolares suspendieron a los estudiantes más de 1.000 veces por llegar tarde, según los datos del distrito. En total, durante los últimos cinco años, casi el 60 por ciento de todas las suspensiones dentro de la escuela en el distrito fueron por infracciones de asistencia. (Esta cantidad incluye suspensiones de un periodo o la mitad del día.)

No es difícil encontrar estudiantes de Dysart High School que hayan sido suspendidos por llegar tarde. La mayoría de los estudiantes tienen seis clases cada día, 180 días del año, lo que brinda más de 1.000 oportunidades de llegar tarde. La política de la escuela indica que seis tardanzas conducen a una suspensión dentro de la escuela de un día. Tres más conducen a un período de tres días en la sala de suspensión, donde se espera que los estudiantes permanezcan en silencio. Pueden trabajar en tareas o, como dijo un estudiante de segundo año, mirar fijamente a una pared.

Cinco estudiantes de Dysart que habían sido suspendidos por llegar tarde a clase dijeron que varias circunstancias contribuyeron a su tardanza. Una dijo que fue suspendida cuando su autobús escolar llegó tarde, mientras que otros dos fueron suspendidos después de que sus familiares los dejaran tarde. Dos estudiantes más dijeron que se quedaron dormidos o perdieron la noción del tiempo. Una sexta dijo que su amiga fue suspendida por faltar a clase mientras estaba en el baño de la escuela lidiando con su ciclo menstrual. Tenía sangre en la ropa y pasó tiempo injustificado limpiándose.

Otro estudiante, cuyo nombre se mantiene oculto debido a preocupaciones de privacidad, describió la política de suspensión de la escuela por tardanzas como “estúpida”.

“Si llegas tarde a una clase y se repite”, dijo, “siento que no deberían quitarte el aprendizaje de tus otras clases, porque entonces te atrasarás”.

Los funcionarios del distrito dijeron que no podían comentar sobre suspensiones individuales debido a las leyes de privacidad de los estudiantes. Pero Renee Ryon, directora de comunicaciones de Dysart Unified, dijo que los estudiantes solo recibirían una suspensión después de llegar tarde en el autobús del distrito si no fueron directo a sus clases. Ella defendió la política de suspensión del distrito por tardanzas repetidas.

“Si bien puede parecer extraño sacar a los estudiantes de la clase en respuesta a problemas de asistencia, es importante recordar que también es un problema de seguridad si los estudiantes no están donde deberían estar durante el horario de clase”, dijo Ryon. “Nos tomamos la seguridad muy en serio y debemos poder dar cuenta de cada estudiante durante todo el día”.

Aun así, los defensores dicen que las escuelas deberían abordar las causas fundamentales del ausentismo en lugar de recurrir a medidas disciplinarias. Hedy Chang, fundadora y directora ejecutiva de la organización nacional sin fines de lucro Attendance Works, urge a las escuelas a identificar las barreras que impiden que los estudiantes asistan a clases, incluidos problemas de transporte, inestabilidad familiar, acoso escolar, problemas de salud mental y dificultades académicas, y luego ofrecer soluciones como pases de autobús, asesoramiento, tutoría y otro tipo de apoyo para volver a involucrar a los estudiantes y mantenerlos en clase.

Los estudiantes simplemente no pueden beneficiarse de la instrucción y las oportunidades en el aula, dijo Chang, si no están allí.

DaMarion Green, de 16 años, dijo que recibió aproximadamente cuatro suspensiones dentro de la escuela por llegar tarde al primer periodo, todas en la Dysart High, donde cursa el segundo año. Cada vez, se atrasaba en sus clases sin acceso a sus maestros.

“Ese es el objetivo de un maestro, brindarte ayuda”, dijo DaMarion. En la sala de suspensión, dijo, no podía hacer ninguna pregunta. “Solo quieren que estés callado”.

Aunque Arizona en gran medida deja las decisiones de política disciplinaria a los distritos y escuelas autónomas, los legisladores estatales pueden intervenir, y lo hacen, para prohibir o limitar ciertas prácticas punitivas.

Para el comienzo del año escolar 2021-22, por ejemplo, los legisladores intervinieron para evitar que las escuelas suspendieran a los niños desde kínder hasta cuarto grado por todas las infracciones disciplinarias excepto las más graves, una medida que debería haber eliminado indirectamente las suspensiones relacionadas con la asistencia para los estudiantes más jóvenes del estado. Pero la ley no estableció un proceso a nivel estatal para su cumplimiento.

De hecho, el análisis de Hechinger/AZCIR sugiere que algunos distritos pueden estar incumpliéndolo. El distrito escolar de Wilson Elementary, con sede en Phoenix, por ejemplo, asignó ocho suspensiones fuera de la escuela y 26 suspensiones dentro de la escuela a sus estudiantes más jóvenes por faltar entre septiembre y diciembre de 2021, según sus propios registros. (Solo un puñado de distritos proporcionaron datos de disciplina a The Hechinger Report y AZCIR en un formato que rastreaba el nivel de grado del estudiante junto con el tipo de suspensión).

El superintendente Ernest Rose, quien se mudó a Wilson del distrito de Tucson Unified en 2021, no defiende las suspensiones. Después de notar una dependencia excesiva de las suspensiones en general, dijo, presentó un nuevo código de conducta en enero que desalienta la suspensión de estudiantes por infracciones de asistencia, entre otros cambios.

“No tiene sentido castigar a alguien por su asistencia enviándolo a casa”, dijo Rose, y agregó que el cambio requería asimismo un cambio de mentalidad entre el personal del distrito.

Darrell Hill, director de políticas de la ACLU de Arizona, dijo que los defensores presionaron anteriormente por una legislación que se enfocara explícitamente en la capacidad de las escuelas para suspender a los estudiantes debido a ausencias excesivas o injustificadas, pero las conversaciones se estancaron. Y aunque todavía apoya una ley para poner fin a la práctica, también quiere que los legisladores brinden a los educadores y administradores más recursos para ayudar a los estudiantes con dificultades.

“Las escuelas no han sido equipadas para lidiar con estos problemas de otra manera que no sea con una suspensión o una expulsión”, dijo Hill. “Entonces… confían en la disciplina excluyente incluso cuando es claramente perjudicial para los estudiantes a los que sirven”.

En el caso de Guadalupe, sus problemas de asistencia llevaron a consecuencias aún más extremas. Aunque Yduarte dijo que sigue siendo su tutora legal, Guadalupe ahora vive con una familia adoptiva al sureste de Phoenix. Fue puesto en un hogar de acogida en gran parte debido a sus muchas ausencias de la escuela mientras vivía con Yduarte. Pero el movimiento vino con un grupo de apoyo.

En su nueva escuela pública en Chandler, Guadalupe dijo que recibe asesoramiento y tutoría después de la escuela, y sus médicos finalmente se decidieron por un medicamento que lo ayuda a controlar sus trastornos de conducta. Calificó para los servicios de educación especial poco antes de mudarse, y los nuevos apoyos han contribuido a un cambio: Guadalupe dijo que se siente motivado académicamente y asiste a la escuela de manera constante.

Tanto Guadalupe como Yduarte esperan que el niño pronto pueda regresar a casa.

Yduarte tiene una preocupación persistente de que, si termina en otra escuela que responde al ausentismo con suspensiones en lugar de ayuda, volverá a perder el rumbo. Pero Guadalupe le asegura que podrá mantener su impulso en cualquier escuela.

Yduarte se mantiene cautelosa: “Lo intentarás”.

Fazil Khan contribuyó con el análisis de datos.

Este artículo sobre suspensiones por ausentismo escolar fue producido por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente sin fines de lucro enfocada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación, y el Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, una sala de redacción independiente, no partidista y sin fines de lucro dedicada a la investigación basada en datos en todo el estado.

The post Cuando el castigo es el mismo que el delito: Suspendido por faltar a clase appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

This story about attendance-related suspensions was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter and the AZCIR newsletter.

“Education Suspended,” a collaboration between the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting and The Hechinger Report, represents an ambitious, nearly yearlong effort to better understand the impact of school absences on Arizona students. When kids aren’t in class, they aren’t learning, a reality underscored by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This series isn’t just about why students may miss class, though. Our collaborative investigation is more about what Arizona schools do to students who are consistently absent — or, as we ultimately found, what they do even if kids are repeatedly a few minutes late, sometimes through no fault of their own.

Administrators at schools of varying sizes, types and demographic makeups often respond to a range of attendance violations by keeping students out of class altogether, in the form of in- or out-of-school suspensions. Being blocked from class for missing class, however, compounds the problem these officials say they’re trying to solve.

Yet, without comprehensive data readily available at either the state or federal levels, it was initially impossible to see how widespread the practice of suspending students for attendance issues was, or how many additional school days kids were missing as a result.

We also couldn’t tell which districts most frequently used suspensions in response to attendance problems, how heavily they leaned on out-of-school suspensions, which types of attendance violations were being punished most often, and whether students from historically marginalized groups were overrepresented when it came to disciplinary action.

So we submitted hundreds of records requests and used the responses to create an original database to answer those and other key questions.

Here’s a closer look at how we did it, and the decisions we made along the way.

Why were public records requests needed to access this information?

Districts and charter schools periodically collect and report suspension and expulsion data to the U.S. Department of Education as part of the Civil Rights Data Collection, a federal effort to ensure the country’s public schools do not discriminate against protected classes of students. Though Arizona displays the results online as part of its “school report card” system, CRDC data couldn’t address the questions we sought to answer.

The data does not tie suspensions to violations, making it impossible to see whether a school system suspended students for attendance issues in general, or which types of attendance violations it suspends for specifically. CRDC data also does not provide a full picture of suspension lengths, which we needed to determine how long students were being blocked from class as a result of missing class.

The Arizona Department of Education does not collect detailed disciplinary data for all students, either. It does, however, maintain enrollment data and chronic absenteeism data that we used to establish district baselines for comparison.

What information did reporters ask for?

To fill these data gaps — and allow us to see, for the first time, which school systems use suspensions in response to absences, tardies and other attendance issues—AZCIR and The Hechinger Report submitted more than 400 records requests to districts and charter systems throughout the state.

We asked for disciplinary data capturing in-school and out-of-school suspensions, expulsions and transfers that:

• Spanned the 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years.
• Included the reason for each disciplinary action.
• Noted, for suspensions, how many days the punishment lasted.
• Was broken down by race/ethnicity, gender and disability status.

We also requested information on truancy referrals, since some schools refer students with excessive absences to the court system.

Were records requests sent to every school system in Arizona?

We excluded the following from our analysis:

• Alternative schools, which explicitly serve at-risk students: those with a history of disruptive behavior issues, for example, or those who have previously dropped out of school or are primary caregivers. Since alternative schools tend to treat discipline differently than traditional campuses (for example, by committing to avoiding highly punitive measures), their data could skew the results of our analysis.
• Accommodation districts. We used a similar rationale here, since these districts also tend to serve student populations with specific needs (such as students in juvenile detention, students experiencing homelessness, students on military bases or reservations) in nontraditional learning environments.
• Career and technical education districts, another type of unconventional educational setting that focuses on preparing students for the workforce. CTEDs require a majority of instructional time to be conducted in a field-based or work-based learning environment.
• Small rural districts that have so few students, the Department of Education redacts any meaningful data.

Did all Arizona school systems provide responsive data?

No. Several school districts were slow to comply, in many cases only providing data after several rounds of follow-up. Hundreds of other districts and charters either didn’t provide usable data or respond at all (a violation of Arizona public records law).

It ultimately took more than six months to get responses from about 200 district and charter systems, and many were incomplete. Some were missing demographic information, or did not specify how long suspensions lasted. A handful did not tie disciplinary actions to violation categories. Others redacted all data points representing numbers smaller than 11, citing student privacy concerns.

School systems also provided responses in a wide range of formats. A portion sent clean databases that could be analyzed immediately, while many more sent spreadsheets or PDFs that required significant standardization before they could be analyzed. Some sent scanned copies of individual incident report forms or other files that included thousands of narrative descriptions. In those cases, we read the descriptions and logged the corresponding data points in spreadsheets.

Why was there so much variation in disciplinary data?

At a basic level, the discrepancies make sense, because schools aren’t required to maintain this data in a uniform way. Districts and charters use a variety of digital student management systems that generate different types of reports, and some smaller schools don’t use a digital system at all.

In other circumstances, the discrepancies were either deliberate or avoidable. For instance, some school systems, acting on advice from their attorneys, converted spreadsheets to PDFs before providing their data. Some districts claimed current employees were not familiar enough with their student management systems to produce responsive reports — one wanted AZCIR/Hechinger to pay more than $400 for employee training in order to get the data (we did not). Others said they could only provide data for certain years because they had switched student management systems and had not retained records from prior systems.

How did you standardize the data?

We first reviewed each school system’s data to determine whether it had suspended students for attendance violations over the past five school years.

Sometimes, it was easy to identify attendance-related violation categories: “truancy,” “tardy,” “unexcused absence,” “excessive absences,” “ditching,” “skipping,” “other attendance violation,” and so on. Other times, we had to make a judgment call. For instance:

• We considered “leaving school grounds/campus without permission” and “elopement” (fleeing the campus) attendance violations, as students were being punished for leaving during the school day.
• We considered skipping an in-school suspension to be an attendance violation, since those occur during class time, unlike out-of-school suspensions.
• We did not consider skipping an after-school detention to be an attendance violation, since that would happen outside of school hours.

If a school system did, in fact, suspend for attendance-related violations, we worked to clean and standardize its data so we could add it to our master database.This involved (1) making basic fixes to ensure data was consistently formatted and (2) using data analysis software to calculate total in-school suspensions, total out-of-school suspensions and days missed as a result, by violation type and school year. When provided, we also calculated demographic totals — by race/ethnicity, gender and disability status — by violation type and school year.

A few things worth noting:

Data for some school systems indicated they doled out partial-day suspensions, such as sending a student home on out-of-school suspension “for the rest of the day.” When districts calculated the time missed for us, we used their numbers. When they didn’t, we calculated estimates ourselves based on details in the incident description. (For example, if a district noted a student was sent to the in-school suspension room the last two of six class periods, we estimated 0.3 days missed. If the incident time indicated a district sent a student home about halfway through the school day, we estimated 0.5 days missed.)

Some school districts listed a minimum duration of one school day for all suspensions, then claimed that many suspensions were actually for less than one day when contacted about total days missed. If districts could not provide more precise suspension durations, we used the data as submitted.

We did not calculate suspension lengths for districts that only listed start and end dates for each incident. Doing so would have required determining total days included in the range, then reviewing both standard and academic calendars for each year to subtract weekend days and school holidays for every suspension.

In at least five cases, we could see a district suspended students for attendance problems, but data integrity issues did not allow us to glean much more. We ultimately excluded those districts from our database, since their data was not usable for detailed calculations.

What did the final AZCIR/Hechinger database include?

Our database included the number of in-school and out-of-school suspensions each district issued, by school year and violation type, as well as how long the suspensions lasted. We also added demographic data for those suspended when available. We distinguished between true zeroes and missing or redacted data points, since those differences matter.

We categorized each violation category as attendance-related or not, so we could analyze the number and rates of suspensions for attendance issues — the most original part of our data-driven reporting. Among other questions, we wanted to know: What proportion of suspensions were for attendance violations overall? Which districts used them most often? Were school systems using in-school or out-of-school suspensions more to punish kids for missing class time? Which types of attendance violations were being punished most frequently? How much additional class time were kids missing as a result of these suspensions?

How did you analyze the data?

We did topline calculations using data from districts and charters that suspended for attendance violations. We first determined the total number of attendance-related suspensions for the five-year review period, as well as the total days lost to those suspensions. We did the same calculations for in-school suspensions specifically, as well as out-of-school suspensions.

Because we received suspension data organized by incident, not by student ID, totals represented the number of suspensions issued, not the number of students suspended. In a group of 100 suspensions, for instance, one student could account for 10 of them.

Because several districts did not provide the lengths of any of all suspensions issued, we also knew total days missed would likely be an undercount.

Though the analysis did not include all Arizona school systems, or complete data for every district that did respond, the calculations offer a better understanding of the proportion of overall suspensions tied to attendance violations, illustrating for the first time just how pervasive the practice of suspending for attendance issues is across Arizona — and what that means in terms of additional days missed, even if approximate.

The in-school versus out-of-school suspension comparison revealed that more than 1 in 5 attendance-related suspensions in our sample were served out of school, a practice experts argue is even more detrimental than in-school suspensions when it comes to student disengagement. It also showed, as we explore in part two of this series, that attendance-related suspensions tend to disproportionately affect Arizona’s Black, Hispanic and Indigenous students.

How did you do the district-level analysis?

At a more granular level, we wanted to better understand which district and charter systems most harshly punished students for attendance issues, and whether that was consistent over the five school years analyzed.

Because student populations varied widely from district to district, though, looking at raw numbers of suspensions issued and the resulting days missed — by district and year — wasn’t a fair comparative measure for every question we were trying to answer.

We instead used Arizona Department of Education enrollment data to calculate annual rates of attendance-related suspensions for each school system. Specifically, we analyzed the number of suspensions issued for attendance violations by district, per 1,000 students, per school year. This allowed us to compare districts, and also to see if and how a district’s use of suspensions for attendance violations changed over time.

We then used ADE’s chronic absenteeism data to calculate annual chronic absenteeism rates for each school system (again, per 1,000 students). We used those rates to determine if districts that most heavily relied on suspensions for attendance issues were the same as those with high rates of chronic absenteeism.

To examine specific subcategories of attendance-related violations — for instance, to see where suspending for tardies was most common — we filtered our database using keywords. In cases where districts grouped multiple offenses leading to a single suspension, we counted that suspension when calculating totals for each subcategory. For example, a suspension for “truancy/tardies” would appear both in the total number of tardy suspensions and the total number of truancy suspensions.

These analyses helped inform our decisions about where to focus our efforts when it came to interviewing district administrators, school officials and students.

How did you check for overrepresentation of certain racial/ethnic groups?

Though roughly 75 school systems provided some level of demographic breakdown for their suspension data, much of the race and ethnicity data was incomplete or heavily redacted.

To ensure our analysis was as accurate and fair as possible, we opted to analyze only the top 20 districts with the highest number of attendance-related suspensions and the most comprehensive demographic data (for both discipline and overall enrollment) for disproportionality. These districts accounted for just over a quarter of the state’s public school population but nearly 90 percent of attendance-related suspensions in the AZCIR/Hechinger sample.

To check for overrepresentation of certain racial/ethnic groups, we compared each group’s share of attendance-related suspensions within a district with its share of district enrollment, as supplied by ADE, for a given year. If the former was higher — for example, if Black students represented 10 percent of a district’s relevant suspensions but only 5 percent of its student population — that group was understood to be overrepresented, and thus disproportionately affected by attendance-related suspensions. This also allowed us to see that white students tended to be underrepresented among those suspended.

Two items worth mentioning:

• Because data for Indigenous students in particular was even more limited, analysis of that group involved about a dozen of the top 20 districts.
• Some school systems differed in how they treated students identifying as Hispanic — whether they listed a student identifying as Black and Hispanic under both Black and Hispanic or under “two or more races,” for instance. We generally had to defer to the school system when it came to race/ethnicity categorizations, which means it’s possible a small number of students appeared more than once in a district’s data.

This story about attendance-related suspensions was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter and the AZCIR newsletter.

The post Inside our analysis of attendance-related suspensions in Arizona appeared first on The Hechinger Report.