School Discipline Policy Context: An Analysis of the Federal Policy Return to Punishment and California's Policy Responses

• In Event: Where Are We Now? School Discipline Policy and Practice in the Nation's Most Populous State

Abstract

In December 2018, US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, published the Federal Commission on School Safety report, signaling a change in federal policy concerning school climate, culture, and discipline in the nation’s schools. The report includes recommendations to rescind all Obama Administration’s guidance to schools on discipline, reject the principle that racial disproportionality in punishment is a form of discrimination, encourage the prescription of psychotropic drugs to troubled youth, increase the presence of current and previously employed military and law enforcement in the field of education, soften privacy protections that have previously limited data-sharing between schools and law enforcement, and promote character education. What are the social and political forces that came together to create this policy? What are the likely implications of this policy for the nation? What are the likely implications of this policy for a state like California that has seemingly stood firm against new federal policies under the Trump Administration?

To answer these questions, researchers utilized a critical policy approach (Ball & Junneman, 2012; Diem, et al, 2014; Dumas & Anyon, 2006) consisting of two parts. First, researchers conducted a content analysis of the Federal Commission on School Safety Report and California state policy texts, including AB 420 passed in 2014 and SB 419 and AB 392, which are currently before the state legislature. The content analysis identified the ways in which the authors of these policy texts framed the problem and the solutions they advocated (Benford & Snow, 2000). Next, researchers conducted network ethnography (Ball, 2016) to examine the social and political forces, as well as financial interests, that constitute the present policy network at the federal and state-levels and identify the social and political forces that have been excluded.

The emerging findings suggest that the Federal Commission on School Safety Report represents a return to many of the policy preferences of previous Bush Administrations, including opening school house doors to increased law enforcement, school psychiatry, Character Education, and behavioral management programs like Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. However, the new federal report advocates for a new and distinct influence in schools – the military. Federal policy guidance suggests that school districts hire more staff with previous experience with firearms, including military veterans, and provide career pathways from the military into education. Emerging findings also suggest that although California state policies related to school climate, culture, and discipline seem on their face to resist the return to more social control and punishment modes of school discipline espoused by the Federal Commission report, they include compromises that align with the federal shift towards social control, including more funding for school police.

Authors suggest that the present federal and state policies on school climate, culture, and discipline mark a return to a policy network dominated by law enforcement and behavioral psychologists and suggest that those with military training will be encouraged to have increasing influence in schools.

Author

• Danfeng Soto-Vigil Koon, University of San Francisco