Last month, the Long Beach Post reported on teachers who were being hit, bitten, kicked, headbutted, and bruised. One student struck a teacher so hard that he sent her to the emergency room and permanently altered her vision. The number of severe workers’ comp claims in Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) is increasing year after year.
LBUSD is no outlier; it parallels a broader trend. In a recent survey from Education Week, the majority of teachers report behavior worsening over the past year. Every district might not be as bad as LBUSD, but at least according to teachers, student behavior in schools is generally getting worse.
A survey from RAND found that student behavior was a top concern among educators. Teachers must deal with the consequences of disorder, and the consequences are predictable. No student can focus when there’s chaos in the hallway. In a comprehensive review of meta-analyses, John Hattie wrote that the most consequential factors affecting a student’s success or failure relate to “features within schools such as the climate of the classroom, peer influences, and the lack of disruptive students [emphasis mine].”
To speak of “solutions” for misbehavior in schools, though, is something of a category error. Misbehavior cannot be “solved.” It is not akin to biking or reading, where a handful of lessons can solve the problem or teach the skills.
Even if students have all that they need and schools have outlined expectations, some students will still choose to pick a fight cuss out their teacher, or even something more minor like shoot spitballs. Policies can establish clear routines and encourage good behavior, engaging instruction draws students to learning, and a child’s background can incentivize or discourage misbehavior. But there is no solving it.
As far back as Greek rhetorical schools and sophist tutors, adults have been complaining about the young and trying to manage unruly children. Instead of “solving” misbehavior, we must think about managing it.
A new report from AEI’s Conservative Education Reform Network by Manhattan Institute policy analyst Neetu Arnold discusses a promising new slate of policies from a handful of conservative states that could help schools establish the very structures necessary to successfully manage behavior. While each law varies in the specifics, Arnold explains the core principles in each:
Strong laws clearly spell out when teachers may remove students for disruptive or violent behavior, require plans for managing student behavior, and prevent school administrators from automatically returning a student to a teacher’s classroom without following student reentry procedures.
Generally called a “Teachers’ Bill of Rights,” these laws would ideally be more than a list of symbolic promises. It is all well and good to declare that a teacher has a right to an orderly classroom, but if no policy accompanies such a declaration, it is empty rhetoric.
Still, Arnold notes, “even weak bills can be politically useful.” For example, she notes that “Tennessee passed its ‘Educator’s Bill of Rights’ in 2017, with such unenforceable provisions as a teacher’s right to ‘Be treated with civility and respect.’” But the Professional Educators of Tennessee call the bill a “framework” that could “be built upon in the future.” And in 2021, the state passed the “Teacher’s Discipline Act,” which, according to Arnold, “operationalized disciplinary procedures between the teacher and principal.” And any disciplinary policy—weak or strong—gives governors a reason to use the bully pulpit to advance the message that discipline, order, and consequences are not necessary evils, but active goods for schools and young students.
Discipline is a primary factor in any school’s success, meaning it may not necessarily be the most important factor, but it comes first. A teacher’s bill of rights won’t solve chaos in school, but it will create the discipline codes and policies necessary for effective classroom management, and thus the conditions that every student needs to succeed.