At-risk students get more suspensions, study finds
Stats at Ottawa-Carleton district board support longtime community concerns
Students who are racialized, have diverse gender identities or disabilities are more likely to be suspended from school, a report from the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board suggests.
That's not surprising news, the report indicates, since students, parents and the community have long raised concerns about those students being more likely to face discipline and suspension.
For the first time, however, the board compared information it collected last year about the identity of students to its data on suspensions and concluded that the concerns are valid. “The data supports these concerns and indicates that some student populations are suspended at a disproportionate rate,” the report says.
Now the question shifts to what should be done about it. Trustees discussed the report Tuesday.
The report suggests the board implement practices that “support positive behaviour and bias-free progressive discipline, taking mitigating and other factors into account not only in response to inappropriate behaviour but in all interactions with students.”
The report comes in the context of wider concerns about higher suspension rates among some groups of students.
The provincial government has banned discretionary suspensions among children in kindergarten to Grade 3, saying the measure will help combat racism and inequality in schools and “break down barriers for Black, Indigenous and racialized students and provide all students with an equal opportunity to succeed.”
The report from the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board finds that 2.2 per cent of the nearly 75,000 students in the board were suspended last year.
That rate is consistent with the previous two years, adjusted to take into account that schools were closed last March due to the pandemic. Across the province, the suspension rate was 2.85 per cent in 2018-19, the last year statistics are available.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board report compared suspensions with information collected about student identity last year. The data sets don't align perfectly, since only 39 per cent of the 1,674 students who were suspended last year participated in the identity survey. And only 46.5 per cent of all board students filled out the survey.
However, the report is able to draw conclusions about the students who participated.
Among that group, students who identified as First Nations, Métis, Black, Middle Eastern, Indigenous, a boy or man, gender-diverse, or with a disability (such as autism, learning or developmental disabilities, mental health or addictions) were suspended disproportionately, the report finds.
“In the context of race, disparities were greatest for Indigenous students, followed by Middle Eastern students and Black students, with likelihood of suspension between 2 and 3.5 times higher” than other students who responded to the identity survey.
Students who self-identified as having a disability had a suspension rate 2.5 times higher than the overall survey group. The largest disparities in suspension rates were recorded for students reporting addiction, followed by mental health, another disability not listed and developmental disability.
Across the district, most suspended students were in high school, and about two-thirds of suspensions were for a single day.
In addition, boys, students with special education needs (excluding gifted students), English-language learners and those living in lower-income neighbourhoods are more likely to be suspended, the report says.
The report also breaks down the number of mandatory and discretionary suspensions.
Suspensions are mandatory for incidents with significant safety concerns such as weapons offences, drug trafficking, physical assaults that require medical treatment, robbery, extortion, sexual assault, repeated bullying, and discretionary suspensions are motivated by bias, prejudice, or hate.
Last year, nearly 90 per cent of suspensions at the board were discretionary, the report finds.
The rate at which discretionary suspensions were issued, particularly for only one day, points to “larger issues, including lack of student engagement and threats to feelings of safety and sense of belonging,” the report says.
“Behaviour that is deemed to be inappropriate should be viewed as an opportunity to understand the underlying needs of the student. Rather than using suspensions to manage student behaviour, the focus of our work must shift towards creating learning environments for students where they: are comfortable expressing themselves without fear of retribution; are truly engaged in their learning; and, see themselves reflected in the curriculum and in the staff who are responsible for supporting their learning and well-being
while in school.
“It is through these actions and the use of a progressive discipline approach that we teach children the skills necessary to self-regulate and facilitate their understanding of the consequences of their actions.”
The board uses a policy of “progressive discipline.” It's important for staff to incorporate Indigenous knowledge, diversity fundamentals, anti-racism and awareness of unconscious bias in that process, staff said at the meeting Tuesday.
Director Camille Williams-Taylor said some people mistakenly believe that discipline is meant to be punitive. The purpose of discipline is “restorative, corrective and educative,” she said.
Trustee Chris Ellis said students with special-education needs have had higher suspension rates for years, and they need more support.
Ottawa Technical Secondary School vice-principal Andrew Cumberland said it's important to find out what might trigger suspensions and try to mitigate or change those conditions.
For instance, suspensions fell off dramatically this year at Ottawa Tech, which has many students with special-education needs.
Cumberland speculated that the reasons might be related to the fact students take only one course each week, have a shortened school day and are not “roaming around.” Teachers, meanwhile, do not emphasize lateness. All of those organizational changes were triggered by the pandemic.
Chairwoman Lynn Scott said she wondered how much subjectivity exists in decisions on discipline.
Consider a child who talks all the time and is in constant movement, she said. Would he face different discipline based on whether he was racialized or had specialeducation needs, or whether his mom was rich and volunteered a lot at school?
“I would really like us to start asking ourselves the question whether it is the issue of behaviour that we have seen as unacceptable is an issue on the part of the student or whether it is a situation where we should be admitting that what we are attempting to do to support and engage the student has failed, and that we need to do something different, because it just doesn't work for all kids.”
The data supports these concerns and indicates that some student populations are suspended at a disproportionate rate.