From personal experience, I can say that the worst part of teaching is when you can’t do your job because students misbehave—hitting each other, talking to a classmate, being disrespectful, and so on.
I was fortunate that Mr. Thomas, my middle school’s guidance counselor and discipline dean in the 1990s, was old school. He was a former Marine drill sergeant, and when misbehaving students were sent to him, he would make them stand facing the front of the room for an hour or two without talking. He also kept the room a few degrees warmer than necessary. This discouraged students from engaging in antisocial behavior when threatened with a visit to Mr. Thomas. However, few schools have ex-military personnel in the counseling office.
At about the same time Mr. Thomas left my school, Restorative Justice—a touchy-feely, new-age fad—had gained momentum and still persists. RJ emphasizes “making the victim and offender whole” and involves “an open discussion of feelings.” RJ arose because black students are far more likely to be suspended than students of other ethnicities. The implication here, of course, is that white teachers and administrators tend to be racist. But the racial bean counters never bother to explain why the racial disparity exists even in schools where black principals and staff predominate.
The Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports regimen was also in force at the time. PBIS aims to create a “framework for creating safe, positive, equitable schools, where every student can feel valued, connected to the school community, and supported by caring adults.”
Additionally, the practitioners claim that by applying “evidence-based practices within a PBIS framework, schools promote students’ academic, social, emotional, and behavioral success, work with families to develop locally meaningful and culturally relevant outcomes, and use data to make informed decisions that enhance overall effectiveness.”
Over the years, I have monitored school discipline issues and can confidently state that these trends have made no difference whatsoever. In fact, they have been counterproductive.
Surveys consistently show that student behavior has declined over the past decade, with school violence and overall classroom disorder now reaching record levels.
A recent EdWeek Research Center poll found that student behavior is getting worse nationwide. The survey results showed that 72% of educators believe students in their classroom, school, or district have misbehaved either “a little” (24%) or “a lot” (48%) more than in the fall of 2019, the last semester before the COVID-19 shutdowns began.
In fact, student misbehavior is currently the leading cause of teachers leaving the profession.
In July, the Manhattan Institute published a report showing that New York City’s implementation of RJ has failed badly. The changes undermine teacher authority and disrupt classroom order rather than improving school climate and promoting equity. They also draw resources away from essential supports.
By examining the city’s policies, financial decisions, and classroom outcomes, the issue brief demonstrates how RJ reforms have led to widespread dysfunction.
Similarly, PBIS has proven disastrous. Veteran educator Ben Foley is among many who have found the situation intolerable after being required to implement PBIS. After more than twenty years of teaching middle school in California, he quit midyear, worn out by classrooms that had become chaotic. He described the daily environment as “anarchic,” with students frequently ignoring basic instructions, wandering around the room, throwing objects, and roughhousing. Foley compared the experience to “death by a thousand cuts,” asserting that “for every request I make, several kids flat-out defy it.”
In debates about weak school discipline, PBIS is often overlooked, overshadowed by its more politically controversial counterpart, RJ. However, PBIS is equally problematic; it simply masks its anti-punitive stance behind seemingly harmless goals like better data collection and improved communication. It’s also much more widespread than RJ. It has been a staple in school discipline policies for decades—supported by a dedicated, taxpayer-funded center run by the U.S. Department of Education.
A better way forward would be to revive the “No Excuses” model, which emphasizes “high behavioral expectations through a formal discipline system.” The term was introduced in the 1990s as a call for educators to stop using poverty and broken homes as excuses for the chaos in urban schools that makes learning impossible.
David Whitman effectively conveyed the mindset in his 2008 Fordham Institute book, Sweating the Small Stuff, where he wrote that a belief that “disorder, not violence or poverty per se, is the fatal undoing of urban schools in poor neighborhoods.” Minimizing disorder also explains why effective schools “are long on rituals, including school-affirming chants at assemblies, hallways of academic fame with photos of student honorees plastered on the wall, public recognition and awards for students who have done well scholastically, and activities that build a sense of teamwork and esprit de corps.”
In an effort to change direction, President Trump signed an executive order in April requiring public schools to establish student discipline policies that do not take race or ethnicity into account. The order states, “The Federal Government will no longer tolerate known risks to children’s safety and well-being in the classroom that result from the application of school discipline based on discriminatory and unlawful ‘equity’ ideology.”
One traditional method of punishing misbehaving students has been to suspend them from school for a day or two. While this certainly makes teaching willing learners easier, it rarely positively affects the offending student. After a suspension, I always asked my disruptive students how they spent their time outside school. The most common reply was a shrug, followed by “Watched TV.” Hardly an effective punishment.
A better approach would be to eliminate RJ, PBIS, and suspensions, and if a student breaks school rules, require them to come to school early, stay late, or perhaps attend Saturday morning classes. Flipping off the English teacher might then lose some of its temporary appeal.
Ultimately, there must be meaningful consequences for bad behavior. Teachers, students, their parents, and society would all greatly benefit from this.
Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network—a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views expressed here are entirely his own.