Category Archives: Education

“You Ever Been Charged with a Crime Before?”

Autism, Bullying, Education, Human Rights, Police Abuse, School Discipline, Special Education, , ,

According to a recently filed law suit, “L.G.” was handcuffed by a police officer, slammed to the floor, and pinned there for more thanhalf an hour, as he cried and yelled that he was in pain. The officer in question asked him “You ever been charged with a crime before? Well, you’re fixing to be.”

The crime in question? Spitting. Nothing more. Just spitting. In the end there was no arrest, but L.G. was severely traumatized. This event took place in September, 2018, in Statesville, North Carolina.

Oh, and did I mention that L.G. was an autistic 7-year-old? And that he was targeted in his special needs classroom, as two teachers looked on without intervening to help their student?

Hooo Boy!

Education, Special Education, , ,

I volunteer as an advocate for parents who need help at IEP meetings. Just sat through a doozy.

First, the district had to exclude the special ed teacher and program director from the meeting because they had been actively harassing the mother.

Then, there was the fact that the mother had never been sent a copy of her son’s latest evaluation, on which this meeting was supposed to be based.

But the final straw was that the school district wanted to place her kid in a separate special ed class, based solely on the fact that he had an IEP. He wasn’t having or making trouble in the regular classroom, and he was learning stuff there. But he had an IEP so he had to go. For those who aren’t familiar with this stuff: that is NOT an adequate reason for moving him. The mom is now getting a lawyer.

Sometimes I just can’t believe the stuff that goes on in our schools.

Suspension and Expulsion: The Experience

Education, Human Rights, School Discipline, Suspension and Expulsion, , , , ,

Many students—not just autistic ones—believe that they have been unfairly suspended or expelled from school.  Many students—not just autistic ones—do not fully understand why they were suspended or expelled (sometimes it is hard for adults to figure that out either).  Suspensions are very often used as a punishment in U.S. schools not only for serious offences, but also for all kinds of minor infractions of the rules.  Crying in school may lead to unofficial suspensions, in which parents are told to pick up their children and take them home.  But students may be officially suspended for not meeting the school dress code (this includes even very young children, whose parents pick out their clothes), for having the “wrong” hairstyle, or even for carrying a backpack with the “wrong” picture on it.[1]  Most school codes of student conduct still include vague terms for misbehavior, such “insubordination” or “willful defiance,” which individual teachers can interpret subjectively.  In recent years, some major school districts have removed this language, but in many other places students can still be suspended for eye-rolling, walking away from a teacher without being dismissed, failing to complete homework, or even tapping their feet on the floor.[2]

Sometimes just needing to use the restroom at an inconvenient time for the teacher or other school staff member will be enough.  In December 2018, an 11-year-old autistic African-American child asked to use the bathroom in his elementary school.  The principal of the school, who was escorting him and another student back to their special education classroom, refused to let him go–even though access to the restroom at any time was the rule for Special Education students.  The child couldn’t get around the principal to reach the nearby bathroom, so he went out the back door of the school to find another restroom.  The principal then ordered school staff to lock all the doors and not let the student back in.  He wasn’t trying to run away—in fact, he spent 15 minutes circling the school, as teachers ignored his appeals for help, walking past him outside without speaking, and even pulling down the window blinds in his face.  Finally, another student took pity and opened a door for him.  The school sent his parents an incident report, but they failed to mention the dangerous and illegal lock-out—and the child received a two-day suspension for leaving the school building without permission.   Only after the school’s security tapes were reviewed did the true story come out.  The principal was then placed on paid administrative leave.[3]

 

Suspension and expulsion are over-used forms of discipline in American schools, for students of all neurotypes.  But autistic children face special challenges.  Sensory, emotional, or other stressors can drive them into meltdowns or shutdowns, during which their “fight or flight” instincts take control, sometimes leading to violent reactions. Meltdowns /shutdowns are clearly “manifestations” of autism, and so theoretically schools should respond to them with behavioral interventions.  Yet in practice, many autistic students face suspension, expulsion, and even arrest for what they do during these episodes. Students cannot control their own actions during meltdowns, so is it reasonable or fair for them to be punished in this way?

Moreover, many teachers don’t acknowledge their own role in triggering these problems.  In New Mexico, for example, a second-grader had a meltdown because his teacher yelled directly into his face, and then took away his Ipad, which was a very important comfort object for him.  She caused the meltdown, during which she was struck in the nose, causing a bruise.  Yet not only was the child—who happens to be black—suspended from school for having a meltdown, but his teacher actually pressed battery charges against an 8-year-old.[4]

In Florida, an autistic fourth-grader who had just gone through a long, stressful day of testing, was bothered by the noise when his teacher put on a movie (presumably as a reward for the other students.)  Seraph put on headphones and sat at a computer to distract himself from the noise, but he could still hear the movie.  So he started tapping computer keys loudly to drown it out.  That’s where the trouble began.  The teacher called in the dean, the assistant principal, and the school resource officer to remove him from his classroom.  He was willing to leave, but, looking for a quiet place to recover from the noise, he entered the school media room.  At this point, another teacher began reading a book to him—yet more noise.  Seraph, with his hands covering his ears, went over to the teacher and knocked at the book, using his elbow.  (The teacher was untouched).  The school resource officer then tackled him to the ground with so much force that Seraph ended up with carpet burns on his face.  He was suspended for several days—not because anyone was injured or even threatened, but simply because he was autistic and overstressed by noise.[5]

 

It is not unusual for autistic students to be get in trouble for leaving their classroom, or even their school without permission.  What is unusual is for schools to acknowledge what autistic students remember–that they often fled to avoid bullying:

I received three suspensions from my school during my time there, two for leaving the room to seek sanctuary in the library when the entire class (teachers included) united in mocking me, and one for deliberate non attendance over a period of days (truanting).[6]

Autistic students are disproportionately bullied at school.  And within a few years of being in school, they realize that the advice they are given—”speak to a member of the school staff”—is almost always ineffective.  School staff rarely stop the bullying.  They may fail to see what happened (and bullies are very adept at flying under the radar).  They may believe the bullies rather than the victim—because a highly verbal neurotypical bully can be more convincing than an autistic victim, or because there may be multiple bullies whose united testimony outweighs that of the victim.  (This is what happened to my own daughter.)  School staffers may simply not care.

one time a boy way bigger than me punched me in the face and made my nose bleed, and a teacher caught me inside trying to clean myself up, and I got yelled at for being inside during recess even though I was dripping with blood; nothing was done about the boy who hit me . . .[7]

People beat me up and they’d go free and I’d be in detention.[8]

Teachers may even dislike the autistic student and want him or her to suffer.  One autistic student listed reasons why she hated school:

Being bullied and being told it was my fault.

Being my teacher’s punching bag.[9]

 

The only solutions for these students are either to endure the suffering (the trauma this causes was described in an earlier post), to run away (and thus be suspended), or to retaliate—and retaliation often ends in their being suspended or expelled as well.  Here is “Aristophanes’s” description of his experience at school:

Attempting to avoid a fight, getting flat out sucker punched instead, and going to the principal who gave me as much detention as the aggressor, reasoning ‘you’re going to be an adult soon, you need to learn to solve your own problems, that’s the lesson here.’

Going back literally a week later, getting punched again, and retaliating by stomping my heel on the kid’s ankle, fracturing his tibia and earning me a suspension that go around.[10]

Other autistic students remember fighting with their bullies, and then being punished for it—while the bullies got off scot free:

Once [a privileged person] tried to stab me and he got off without a punishment simply because [his] family was rich.  I got a suspension and was threatened with expulsion because i kicked him in the stomach and dropped him to the ground.[11]

An increasing number of parents are filing lawsuits against school districts that allow things like this to happen.  For example, a Staten Island teenager was suspended for three days because he allegedly pushed to the ground bullies who had been physically assaulting him for years—including breaking his arm at one point.  His parents sued the school district, “claiming he was wrongfully punished for something his school should’ve done — and that’s stop his bullying.”[12]  A lawsuit pending in Cinncinnati, Ohio, charges a local school district with denying a student’s right to FAPE, both by refusing to recognize his disabilities and provide appropriate accommodations, and by failing to address the constant bullying he was subjected to.  The suit alleges that the school district suspended this young man multiple times, when he fought back or even just shouted at the students bullying him.  Even when he didn’t fight back, the school sometimes disciplined him.  In one of the incidents reported in the lawsuit, a bully spit on him, and called him names on the school bus.  It was the victim, not the bully, who was suspended for this incident.[13]

Perhaps the most significant problem with the use of suspension and expulsion as forms of discipline is that many autistic students hate school, and therefore prefer being removed from it.  This is the attitude of “Agent Smirnoff”:

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in suspension, as it granted me peace from the incessant bullying and allowed me to play on my computer all day.[14]

“deog” felt the same was about expulsion:

The highschool years are very difficult. . . . My misery and depression was profound. I got expelled by my sophmore year. i was ditching certain classes almost every single day…    I was so happy when I got expelled and I have no regrets about that because I was just done . . .[15]

It is fairly common for autistic and other students to misbehave on purpose in order to get some relief from their sufferings at school.  Sebastian, a student in New Mexico “relished being sent to in-school suspension, which he came to see as a haven from the stress of the classroom. Once, his mom says, he randomly punched a classmate in the parking lot in an effort to get sent back to the peace and quiet of in-school suspension.”[16]

When I was in grade school, I would purposely act up in order TO GET suspended. Sure my mom wouldn’t let me watch TV and stuff and would sometimes make me work on store bought workbooks, but I didn’t care. I just didn’t want to be at school. Suspension was a reward to me. The school was starting to catch on that I was acting up on purpose and tried something called an “in school suspension”. I was in a classroom with a “babysitter” and with the exception of the “babysitter”, I was all alone. I was allowed to draw and color all day long. The classroom I was in was even quieter than my own house. I perfered quiet. Some punishment.[17]

 

The problem with students seeking out suspension and even expulsion for relief from stress is that they don’t realize the implications for their future.  Having a “record” is not helpful when applying to college or looking for a job, but many autistic students find school so painful that they don’t care.

Instead of suspending autistic students at such high rates, school districts should be looking for ways to make school more tolerable for them, ways to prevent them from having meltdowns, ways to seriously address the problem of bullying.

 

[1] Morgan Craven et al., “Suspended Childhood: An Analysis of Exclusionary Discipline of Texas’ Pre-K and Elementary School Students, Updated with 2015-16 Data,” for the Texas Appleseed organization, November, 2015; updated March, 2017: http://stories.texasappleseed.org/suspended-childhood-updated.

[2] Nina Agrawal, “California expands ban on ‘willful defiance’ suspensions in schools,” Los Angeles Times September 10, 2019:  https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-09-10/school-suspension-willful-defiance-california.

[3] Jessica Oh, “Child with autism locked out of school,” report on Kiro 7 television in Seattle, January 23, 2019:  https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/child-with-autism-locked-out-of-school/908564250/.  This incident was widely reported elsewhere.

[4] “Teacher files charges against 8-year-old student who hit her”, report on KQRE TV, April 14, 2018:  https://abc13.com/education/teacher-files-charges-against-8-year-old-student-who-hit-her/3344462/.  The incident was also widely reported.

[5] David M. Perry, “America Keeps Criminalizing Autistic Children,” Pacific Standard June 12, 2017:  https://psmag.com/education/america-keeps-criminalizing-autistic-children.

[6] Agent Smirnoff, in the “Is Suspension Really a Punishment?” discussion on the Wrong Planet website:  https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=194004.

[7] dragoncat, in the “Things You Hated About School” discussion on the Autism Forums website (October 28, 2017):  https://www.autismforums.com/threads/things-you-hated-about-school.22361/#post-443119.  It is worth noting that this topic elicited four pages of responses.

[8] tlc, in the “Things You Hated About School” discussion on the Autism Forums website (March 30, 2018):  https://www.autismforums.com/threads/things-you-hated-about-school.22361/#post-443119.

[9] SchrodingersMeerkat, in the “Things You Hated About School” discussion on the Autism Forums website (October 27, 2017):  https://www.autismforums.com/threads/things-you-hated-about-school.22361/#post-443119.

[10] Aristophanes, in the “Why School Sucked” discussion on the Wrong Planet website: https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=357585&start=60.

[11] The Musings of the Lost, in the “Why School Sucked” discussion on the Wrong Planet website:  https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=357585&start=60.

[12] Elizabeth Rosner and Chris Perez, “Autistic student suspended for standing up to bullies, $5M suit claims,” New York Post August 17, 2018:  https://nypost.com/2018/08/17/autistic-student-suspended-for-standing-up-to-bullies-5m-suit-claims/.

[13] Max Londberg, “Suit: Winton Woods Officials Allowed Bullying of Student with ‘Significant Autism’ for Years,” Cincinnati Enquirer August 19, 2019:  https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2019/08/19/suit-winton-woods-officials-allowed-bullying-student-autism/2054763001/.

[14] Agent Smirnoff, in the “Is Suspension Really a Punishment?” discussion on the Wrong Planet website:  https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=194004.

[15] deog, in the “I’m So Done!!!! discussion on the Autism Forums website: https://www.autismforums.com/threads/im-so-done.27361/#post-552380.

[16] Ed Williams, “Criminalizing Disability,” Searchlight New Mexico, May 7, 2019:

[17] MagicMeerkat, in the “Is Suspension Really a Punishment?” discussion on the Wrong Planet website:  https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=194004.

Suspension and Expulsion: The Data

Education, Human Rights, School Discipline, , , , ,

The reality of school discipline is more complicated than the law would suggest.  To begin with, students with disabilities, as a group, are much more likely to be suspended from school than students without disabilities.  A 2018 report, “School Climate and Safety Report” published by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found that even though only 12% of all students in the U.S. have disabilities, 26% of those subject to out-of-school suspension and 24% of those expelled have disabilities.  In other words, students with disabilities are being suspended and expelled at roughly twice the rate of other students.[1]  Students of color, especially African Americans, face even higher rates of disciplinary removal from school.  Among students with identified disabilities, roughly 9% of whites and Hispanics were suspended in any given year, while 21% of Native Americans and 23% of black students were suspended.[2]

If we look specifically at autistic students, we should remember, first of all, that there are still many autistic students who have not been formally diagnosed. Unless they happen to have another, recognized, disability, they are not protected under IDEA and may be suspended or expelled because of behavior that would be considered a “manifestation” of autism in a diagnosed student.  Since girls and minority students are much less likely than white male students to be diagnosed with autism, they are also more likely to lack IDEA protections against excessive suspensions and expulsions.[3]

Relatively little research has focused on children with an actual autism diagnosis, but a 2018 report from the Center for American Progress states that pre-school children diagnosed with autism are ten times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their “typically developing” peers.[4]  A 2017 research study analyzes data for older children in the state of Maryland, from 2004 to 2015.  The authors found that about 3.3% of both white and African American students with autism were suspended during this period.  White autistic students were much more likely that non-disabled white students to be suspended, while autistic African American students were less likely to be suspended than non-disabled African American students.[5]

The fact that both groups of autistic students this study were suspended at the same rate suggests that both groups were treated equally.  But bear in mind that African Americans are much less likely than whites to be diagnosed with autism and may instead be diagnosed with intellectual or emotional disabilities.  In the same study, 10.5% of African American students with intellectual disability had been suspended at least once, compared to only 7.3% of white students with ID.  If we assume that at least some of those diagnosed with ID also have autism, or have been misdiagnosed with ID instead of autism, then it looks like the rate of suspension for African American students with autism probably is higher than it is for whites.[6]  The authors provided no data comparing students with autism and students with “emotional disturbance,” but African-American children with autism are very frequently misdiagnosed with ED, and students with ED are the most likely of all disability groups to be suspended or expelled.  It seems plausible, then, to assume that African Americans and members of other minority groups with autism are at higher risk of being removed from school than white students with autism.

There is also the question of how often autistic students are suspended.  Sometimes schools suspend children “unofficially,” by saying they are having a “bad day” and would be better off at home.  They call the parents to pick the child up, but do not register this event as a suspension.[7]  This allows the school to get around federal regulations that limit the number of suspensions that can be imposed on students with disabilities.  As a result, suspensions from school can occur with stunning frequency.  A report on television news in Washington state looked at statewide rates of suspension and expulsion for students with disabilities, with results similar to those described above.  The main focus of the report, a young autistic man named Austin, was suspended for more than 100 days during his time in middle school (far, far beyond the 10 days a year allowed under IDEA and federal regulations).  Another young autistic man in Washington state was officially suspended for 24 days, and unofficially for 45 days, for a total of 69 days out of the classroom during a single school year.[8]  While these are extreme cases, it is not at all unusual for schools to use unofficial removals to evade the limits set on suspensions by law.

Repeated removals from school obviously limit children’s educational opportunities, leading them to fall farther and farther behind other students academically.  But beyond that, repeated suspensions and expulsion from school have devastating emotional effects on children.  As Austin, the young man mentioned in the last paragraph, put it: “I felt like I was one of the worst kids that ever was because they were just constantly sending me home.” [9]  Disciplinary removal may alienate children from schools which they see as simply not wanting them.  And so, children repeatedly suspended and expelled are much more likely to drop out of school altogether.[10]  “As a teen, I was expelled from the entire county school system and my parents had to find a private school willing to take me.  At sixteen, I dropped out of school altogether,” recalls one autistic adult.[11]

Finally, repeated suspensions and expulsion promote entry into the “school-to-prison pipeline,” especially, but certainly not exclusively, for young African American males.[12] School “resource officers” (i.e., armed police officers) often intervene in disturbances at school, all too often in inappropriate ways.  They may end up handcuffing and even bringing to jail autistic students seen as “disruptive”—setting up a vicious cycle in which these students see authorities as the enemy and act out accordingly.  In addition, many suspended and expelled students spend their days unsupervised at home or on the streets, where they may engage in a variety of criminal activities, eventually leading to arrest and imprisonment.

As research has repeatedly shown, disciplinary removal from school has no positive impact at all on student behavior.  On the contrary, it is more likely to worsen that behavior.[13]  As a result, the official policy of many school districts is that suspension and expulsion should only be used when necessary to protect other students and staff, or when guns or drugs are involved.  In practice, however, these disciplinary techniques are often used to “punish” students who skip classes, fail to complete their homework, or talk back to their teachers.  As we’ll see in the next post, autistic students who receive these punishments often view them as senseless, and even malicious (a way for “mean teachers” to get back at them).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Office of Civil Rights, Department of Education, “School Climate and Safety,” 2018 report based on the 2015-16 Civil Rights Data Collection:  https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/school-climate-and-safety.pdf.   The disparity begins in preschool:  Cristina Novoa and Rasheed Malik, “Suspensions Are Not Support:  The Disciplining of Preschoolers With Disabilities” (Report from the Center for American Progress, January17, 2018:  https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2018/01/17/445041/suspensions-not-support/.  See also [No author], “Washington special needs students disciplined more than twice as often as general education peers,” report on King5 television news:  https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/washington-special-needs-students-disciplined-more-than-twice-as-often-as-general-education-peers/281-608161669.

[2] Nicholas Gage, et al., “National Analysis of the Disciplinary Exclusion of Black Students with and without Disabilities,” Journal of Child and Family Studies 28:7 (2019), 1754-64.

[3] Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Special Education:  A Multi-Year Disproportionality Analysis by State, Analysis Category, and Race/Ethnicity” (2016), pp. 23-24:  https://www2.ed.gov/programs/osepidea/618-data/LEA-racial-ethnic-disparities-tables/index.html.

[4] Cristina Novoa and Rasheed Malik, “Suspensions Are Not Support:  The Disciplining of Preschoolers With Disabilities” (Report from the Center for American Progress, January17, 2018:  https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2018/01/17/445041/suspensions-not-support/.

[5] M. Krezmien, et al., “Suspension Rates of Students with Autism or Intellectual Disabilities in Maryland from 2004 to 2015,” Journal of Intellectual Disability 61:11 (November, 2017), 1011-1020

[6] M. Krezmien, et al., “Suspension Rates of Students with Autism or Intellectual Disabilities in Maryland from 2004 to 2015,” Journal of Intellectual Disability 61:11 (November, 2017), 1011-1020.

[7] Robert Tudisco, “Can the School Give my Child With an IEP ‘Unofficial” Suspensions?’”, on the Understood.org website:  https://www.understood.org/en/school-learning/your-childs-rights/basics-about-childs-rights/can-the-school-give-my-child-with-an-iep-unofficial-suspensions; see also Cristina Novoa and Rasheed Malik, “Suspensions Are Not Support:  The Disciplining of Preschoolers With Disabilities” (Report from the Center for American Progress, January17, 2018:  https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2018/01/17/445041/suspensions-not-support/.

[8] Report from the Washington State ACLU, “Pushed out; kicked out: Stories from families with special education students in Washington”:  https://www.aclu-wa.org/pages/pushed-out-kicked-out-stories-families-special-education-students-washington.

[9] [No author], “Washington special needs students disciplined more than twice as often as general education peers,” report on King5 television news:  https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/washington-special-needs-students-disciplined-more-than-twice-as-often-as-general-education-peers/281-608161669.

[10] Amity Noltemeyer, Rose Marie Ward, and Caven Mcloughlin, “Relationship Between School Suspension and Student Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis,” School Psychology Review 44 (2015), 224-40; Susan Faircloth, “Factors Impacting the Graduation and Dropout Rates of American Indian Males with Disabilities,” in Susan Faircloth, Ivory Toldson, and Robert Lucio, eds., Decreasing Dropout Rates for Minority Male Youth with Disabilities from Culturally and Ethnically Diverse Backgrounds (Clemson, SC:  National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities, 2014), pp. 8-9.

[11] Max [formerly known as Sparrow Rose] Jones, No You Don’t:  Essays from an Unstrange Mind (Self-published, 2013), p. 51

[12] Abigail Novak, “The association between experiences of exclusionary discipline and justice system contact: A systematic review,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 40 (2018), 73-82; Amity L. Noltemeyer, Rose Marie Ward, and Caven Mcloughlin, “Relationship Between School  Suspension and Student Outcomes:  A Meta-Analysis,”  School Psychology Review  44: 2,  (June,  2015):  224-24; A.E. Cuellar and S. Markowitz, “School Suspension and the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” International Review of Law and Economics 43 (2015), 98-106.

[13] Ambra Green, Deanna Maynard, and Sondra Stegenga, “Common misconceptions of suspension: Ideas and alternatives for school leaders,” Psychology in the Schools 55:4 (April, 2018), 419-28.