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Students with disabilities more likely to be snared by subjective school discipline rules

For students with disabilities, broad and subjective categories of misbehavior justify removing students from school hundreds of thousands of times a year, a sign their federal protection is failing.

Sarah Butrymowicz, Fazil Khan and Sara Hutchinson
The Hechinger Report
In this photo illustration, a teenager poses for a picture in Arlington, Virginia, June 11, 2021.

Corrections & Clarifications: An earlier version of this story from The Hechinger Report misspelled assistant principal Julian Saavedra's name.

For the first 57 minutes of the basketball game between two Bend, Oregon, high school rivals, Kyra Rice stood at the edges of the court taking yearbook photos. With just minutes before the end of the game, she was told she had to move.

Kyra pushed back: She had permission to stand near the court. The athletic director got involved, Kyra recalled. She let a swear word or two slip.聽

Kyra has anxiety as well as ADHD, which can make her impulsive. Following years of poor聽 experiences at school, she sometimes became defensive when she felt overwhelmed, said her mom, Jules Rice.聽

But at the game, Kyra said she kept her cool overall. Both she and her mother were shocked to learn the next day that she鈥檇 been suspended from school.聽

鈥淥K, maybe she said some bad words, but it鈥檚 not enough to suspend her,鈥 Rice said.聽

The incident鈥檚 discipline record, provided by Rice, lists a series of categories to explain the suspension: insubordination, disobedience, disrespectful/minor disruption, inappropriate language, noncompliance.聽

Broad and subjective categories like these are cited hundreds of thousands of times a year to justify removing students from school, an investigation by The Hechinger Report found. The data show that students with disabilities, like Kyra, are more likely than their peers to be punished for such violations. In fact, they鈥檙e often more likely to be suspended for these reasons than for other infractions.

For example, between 2017-18 and 2021-22, Rhode Island students with disabilities were, on average, two and a half times more likely than their peers to be suspended for any reason, but nearly three times more likely to be suspended for insubordination and almost four times more likely to be suspended for disorderly conduct. Similar patterns played out in other states with available data including Massachusetts, Montana and Vermont.聽

Federal protection has limits

Federal law should offer students protections from being suspended for behavior that results from their disability, even if they are being disruptive or insubordinate. But those protections have significant limitations. At the same time, these subjective categories are almost tailor-made to trap students with disabilities, who might have trouble expressing or regulating themselves appropriately.

Districts have wide discretion in setting their own rules and many students with disabilities quickly earn reputations at school as troublemakers. 鈥淯nfortunately, who gets caught up in a lot of the vagueness in the codes of conduct are students with disabilities,鈥 said attorney Robert Tudisco, an expert with Understood.org, a nonprofit that provides resources and support to people with learning and attention disabilities.

Students on the autism spectrum often have a hard time communicating with words and might yell or become aggressive if something upsets them. A student with oppositional defiant disorder is likely to be openly insubordinate to authority, while one with dyslexia might act out when frustrated with schoolwork. Students with ADHD typically have a hard time controlling their impulses.

Kyra鈥檚 disability created challenges throughout her school career in the Bend-La Pine School District. 鈥淣obody really understood her,鈥 Rice said. 鈥淪he鈥檚 a big personality and she鈥檚 very impulsive. And impulsivity is what gets kids in trouble and gets kids suspended.鈥澛

Kyra, now 17, said that too few teachers cared about her individualized education program, or IEP, a document that details the accommodations a student in special education is granted. She鈥檇 regularly butt heads with teachers or skip class altogether to avoid them. Her favorite teacher was her special ed teacher.聽

鈥淪he understood my ADHD and my other special needs,鈥 Kyra said. 鈥淢y other teachers didn鈥檛.鈥

Scott Maben, district spokesperson, said in an email that he could not comment on specific disciplinary matters because of privacy concerns but that the district had a range of responses to deal with student misconduct and that administrators 鈥渃arefully consider a response that is commensurate with the violation.鈥澛

In Oregon, 鈥渄isruptive conduct鈥 accounted for more than half of all suspensions from 2017-18 to 2021-22. The state Department of Education includes in that category insubordination and disorderly conduct, as well as harassment, obscene behavior, minor physical altercations, and 鈥渙ther鈥 rule violations.聽

Disruptive behavior is the leading cause of suspensions because of its 鈥渋nherently subjective nature,鈥 the state Department of Education鈥檚 spokesperson, Marc Siegal, said in an email. He added that the department monitors discipline data for special education disparities and works with school districts on the issue.聽

Behavior almost always connected to a disability

The primary protections for students with disabilities come from the federal government, through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. But that law only requires districts to examine whether a student鈥檚 behavior stems from their disability after they have missed 10 total days of school through suspension.聽

At that point, districts are required to hold a manifestation hearing, in which officials must determine whether a student鈥檚 behavior was the result of their disability. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 where it gets very gray,鈥 Tudisco said. 鈥淲hat happens in the determination of manifestation is very subjective.鈥

In his experience, he added, the behavior is almost always connected to a student鈥檚 disability, but school districts often don鈥檛 see it that way.聽

鈥淢anifestation is not about giving Johnny or Susie a free pass because they have a disability,鈥 Tudisco said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a process to understand why this behavior occurred so we can do something to prevent it tomorrow.鈥澛

The connections are often much clearer to parents.聽

A Rhode Island mother, Pearl, said her daughter was easily overwhelmed in her elementary school classroom in the Bristol Warren Regional School District. (Pearl is being referred to by her middle name because she is still a district parent and fears retaliation.)聽

Her child has autism and easily experiences a sensory overload. If the classroom was too loud or someone new walked in, she might start screaming and get out of her seat, Pearl said. Teachers struggled to calm her down, as other students were escorted out of the room.聽

Sometimes, Pearl was called to pick up her daughter early, in an unrecorded . A few times, though, she was suspended for disorderly conduct, Pearl recalled.聽

Between 2017-18 and 2020-21, students with disabilities in the Bristol Warren Regional School District made up about 13% of the student body, but accounted for 21% of suspensions for insubordination and 30% of all disorderly conduct suspensions.聽

The district did not respond to repeated requests for comment.聽

Broad and subjective categories are cited hundreds of thousands of times a year to justify removing students from school.

The Rhode Island Department of Education collects annual data on school discipline from districts, but special education and discipline reform advocates in the state say that the agency rarely acts on these numbers.聽

Department spokesperson Victor Morente said in an email that the agency monitors discipline data and is 鈥渧ery clear that suspension should be the last option considered.鈥 He added that the department has published resources about alternatives to suspension and discipline specifically for students with disabilities.聽

A 2016 state law that limits the overall use of out-of-school suspensions also requires that districts examine their data for inequities. Districts that find such disparities are supposed to submit a report to the Department of Education, said Hannah Stern, a policy associate at the Rhode Island American Civil Liberties Union.

Her group submits public records requests for copies of their reports every year but has never received one, she said, 鈥渆ven though almost every single school district exhibits disparities.鈥

Pearl said that her daughter needed one-on-one support in the classroom instead of punishment. 鈥淪he鈥檚 autistic. She鈥檚 not going to learn her lesson by suspending her,鈥 Pearl said. 鈥淪he actually got more scared to go back. She actually felt very unwelcome and very sad.鈥

Kids with disabilities rarely connect punishment with actions

Students with autism often have a hard time connecting their actions to the punishment, said Joanne Quinn, executive director of The Autism Project, a Rhode Island-based group that offers support to family members of people with autism. With suspension, 鈥渢here鈥檚 no learning going on and they鈥檙e going to do the same thing incorrectly.鈥

Quinn鈥檚 group provides training for schools throughout Rhode Island and beyond, aimed at helping teachers understand how the brain functions in people with autism and offering strategies on how to effectively respond to behavior challenges that could easily be labeled disobedient or disorderly.聽

Federal law provides a road map for schools to improve how they respond to misconduct related to a student鈥檚 disability. Schools should identify a student's triggers and create a behavior intervention plan aimed at preventing problems before they start, it says.聽

But, doing these things well requires time, resources and training that can be in short supply, leaving teachers feeling alone, struggling to maintain order in their classrooms, said Christine Levy, a former special education teacher and administrator who works as an advocate for individual special education students in the Northeast, including Rhode Island.聽

Levy recently worked with a student with disabilities who was suspended after he tickled a peer at a locker on five straight days. But, she said, the situation should have never reached the point of suspension: Educators should have quickly identified what the boy was struggling with and set a plan in motion to help him, including modeling appropriate locker conduct.聽

Had this boy鈥檚 teachers done that, the suspension could have been avoided. 鈥淭he repair of that is so much longer and so much harder to do versus, let鈥檚 catch it right away,鈥 she said.

Repeat behavior, repeat punishment

Many parents described similar situations, though, in which a child routinely got in trouble for repeated behavior. When Michelle Gomes鈥 daughter became upset in her kindergarten classroom, she鈥檇 often run out and refuse to come back in. Sometimes, she鈥檇 tear things off the walls.

鈥淲henever she gets like that, it鈥檚 hard to see,鈥 Gomes said. 鈥淚 hurt for her. It鈥檚 like she鈥檚 not in control.鈥

Cranston Public School officials would regularly call Michelle Gomes and tell her to come get her daughter for misbehaving in class, she said.

Gomes received regular calls from Cranston Public School officials to come pick her daughter up. A couple of times, the child was formally suspended, Gomes said. The school described her as a safety risk, Gomes recalled.

鈥淪he obviously doesn鈥檛 feel safe herself,鈥 she said.聽

Cranston Public Schools did not respond to requests for comment.聽

Gomes鈥 daughter had a speech delay and anxiety and qualified for special education services. A private neurological evaluation concluded that she was compensating for that delay with her physical responses, Gomes said.聽

This can be a common cause of behavior challenges for students with disabilities, experts say.

鈥淏ehavior is communication,鈥 said Julian Saavedra, an assistant principal and an expert at Understood.org. 鈥淭he behavior is trying to tell us something. We as the IEP team, the school team, have to dig deeper.鈥澛

On her own, Gomes found strategies that helped. Gomes鈥 child struggled with transitions, so they鈥檇 go over her day in advance to prepare her for what to expect. A play therapist taught both her and her daughter breathing exercises.聽

Her daughter was switched to another district school where a social worker would sometimes walk the girl to class. When the child got worked up, she鈥檇 sometimes be allowed to sit with that social worker or in the nurse's office to calm down. That helped, but sometimes, those staff members weren鈥檛 available.聽

In the end, Gomes moved her daughter to a school outside the district that was better equipped to help the girl deescalate. Her behavior problems lessened and she started enjoying going to school, Gomes said.

But Gomes still can鈥檛 understand why more teachers weren鈥檛 able to help her child regulate herself. 鈥淒o we need retraining or do we need new training?鈥 she said. 鈥淏ecause this is mind-blowing to me, not one of you can do that.鈥

Note: The Hechinger Report's had nearly completed the data analysis and reporting for this project when he died in a fire in his apartment building. 91影视 Senior Data Editor Doug Caruso completed data visualizations for this project based on Khan鈥檚 work.

This story about was produced by 91影视 publishing partner , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

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