Vague school rules cited in millions of student suspensions

Disorderly. Insubordinate. Disruptive. Disobedient. Defiant. Disrespectful.

School districts have cited one of these types of vague violations as a reason for suspending or expelling students more than 2.8 million times from 2017-18 to 2021-22 across the 20 states that collect this data, a Hechinger Report investigation found. That amounted to nearly a third of all punishments recorded by those states.

Because categories like defiance and disorderly conduct are often defined broadly at the state level, teachers and administrators have wide latitude in interpreting them. That opens the door to suspensions for low-level infractions. For instance, students were regularly suspended for being tardy, using a cellphone during class or swearing.

“Those are citations you can drive a truck through,” said Jennifer Wood, executive director for the Rhode Island Center for Justice.

States let school districts define punishment

Many states use unspecific language in their discipline codes, if they provide any guidance at all, a review of state policies found.

For education departments that do provide definitions to districts, subjectivity is frequently built in. In Louisiana’s state guidance, for instance, “treats authority with disrespect” includes “any act which demonstrates a disregard or interference with authority.”

Ted Beasley, spokesperson for the Louisiana Department of Education, said in an email that discipline codes are not defined in state statutes and that “school discipline is a local school system issue.”

Officials in several other states said the same. The result is a broad interpretation of the categories.

In a review of more than 7,000 discipline records from a dozen school districts across eight states, The Hechinger Report found that students were suspended for shoving, yelling at peers, throwing objects, and violating dress codes. Some students were suspended for a single infraction; others broke several rules.

“What is defiance to one is not defiance to all, and that becomes confusing, not just for the students, but also the adults,” said Harry Lawson, human and civil rights director for the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union.

In Rhode Island, insubordination was the most common reason for a student to be suspended in the years analyzed. Disorderly conduct was third. These two categories accounted for half of Cranston’s school district’s suspensions in 2021-22. Disorderly conduct alone made up about 38%.

Behavior that led to a such a suspension there in recent years included:

● Getting a haircut in the bathroom.

● Putting a finger through the middle of another student’s hamburger at lunch.

● Writing swear words in an email exchange with another student.

● Throwing cut up pieces of paper in the air.

● Stabbing a juice bottle with a pencil and getting juice all over.

● Leapfrogging over a peer and “almost” knocking down others.

School officials in Cranston did not respond to repeated requests for comment.