Toll: “Continued progress.”
Two of New Haven’s charter schools have until May to show the state how they plan to suspend fewer of their students.
Elm City College Prep had an 18.3 percent suspension rate and Amistad Academy a 27.9 percent rate in 2015 – 6, well above the state average (7 percent) and New Haven Public Schools average (8.2 percent).
The state Board of Education approved three-year extensions of charters for the schools, New Haven’s Elm City College Prep and Amistad Academy, at a meeting this past Wednesday. But site visit findings flagged the schools for their suspension rates. Memos attached to the renewal recommendations cited a 18.3 percent suspension rate for ECCP and 27.9 percent suspension rate for Amistad in 2015 – 2016 — both of which exceed the state average (7 percent) and New Haven public school system’s average’s (8.2 percent).
The schools, both part of the Achievement First network, must now submit a plan to the state which aims to “minimize behavioral incidents resulting in suspensions and expulsions by adopting a restorative discipline model” by May 1. AF is also required to report year-to-date number of suspensions and expulsions, and the concentration of students with one or more suspension or expulsion to the state twice a year, in September and January.
In recent years, national and state studies have shown suspensions to have a detrimental effect on students’ academic performance, and to disproportionately affect minority students, special education students and low-income students.
Although it received a staff recommendation for four-year extensions, the board opted to renew the two New Haven charters for three years with conditions, said department spokesperson Abbe Smith. Both schools must also work to ensure more staff members are properly certified by state standards.
“We’re committed to making continued progress,” Achievement First co-CEO Dacia Toll said.
Toll stressed that the reported suspension rates encapsulate both out-of-school and in-school suspensions — anything that takes a student out of the classroom for 90 or more minutes.
High suspension rates have dogged Achievement First charter schools in recent years. In 2013, the state board of ed investigated “alarming” numbers of elementary school suspensions in the Achievement First school network. At that time, Toll acknowledged the rates were too high and promised to do better.
Since then, ECCP’s rates have dropped from 28.2 percent (in 2013 – 2014) to 14.8 percent (2014 – 2015). Amistad’s suspension rate has also declined since the 2013 – 2014 year, when it was 35.8 percent. ECCP has a 10.2 percent 2016 – 2017 year-to-date suspension rate, while Amistad’s sits at 19.8 percent. And network-wide, Toll said, Achievement First schools have reduced suspensions by 50 percent over the last three years.
Toll called Achievement First’s reforms — which include a “combination of alternative consequences, teacher and leader skill-building in de-escalation, de-escalating students effectively if they are upset, greater support for our most struggling students, and more restorative practices” — a multiyear effort.
She added that addressing the state’s May 1 deadline is “less about inventing lots of new practices, and more about ensuring that the effective practices happening across some schools are happening more consistently across all our schools,” she said.
Last year, Toll touted the network’s progress in cutting suspension rates at an AF board meeting, also citing a drop in the network’s attrition rates — approximately 3.7 percent of AF students left the network in 2015, a drop from the 4.3 percent in the prior year.
Critics said the current suspension rates still disproportionately affect students’ emotional, social and academic lives.
Former ECCP teacher Jenna McDermit, now a teacher at Lincoln-Bassett School in Newhallville and a member of a teachers organization called the New Haven Educators’ Collective, suggested that a high number of young, inexperienced educators teaching large classroom sizes at charter schools leads to more behavioral problems in the classroom. She called the system’s way of dealing with these problems unnecessarily harsh.
“I saw how earnestly [teachers] tried to do right by students” in her four years at ECCP, McDermit said. “But I think Achievement First has some really, really serious systemic problems.”
Last May, when Amistad students staged a mass walk-out on complaints of a poor racial climate, a central concern was the school’s disciplinary system. Almost all Achievement First students are black and Latino; most of the teachers are white.
Meanwhile, in New Haven Public Schools, suspension rates have steadily dropped thanks to a “restorative justice” campaign that stresses in-class remedies to behavioral problems. The city average hovers below 10 percent. Adults work with students to discuss the impact of their misbehavior and come up with in-school consequences and remedies.
Gemma Joseph Lumpkin, the district’s director of youth, family and community engagement, said the strategy aims not to exclude students from learning environments but to focus on — and respond to — the root causes of behavioral issues.
“Often times, these are related to trauma in the child’s life, emotional issues that have not been dealt with,” Joseph Lumpkin said. “We as a school system need to better understand those issues as we work on reducing exclusionary practices.”
Joseph Lumpkin’s office has spearheaded a shift in disciplinary methods across the district in concert with the Harp administration. The district launched a “youth stat” program at schools in which teachers, administrators, cops, social workers, and probation officers meet regularly to figure out how to help kids who are getting in trouble.
It has also established a peer-to-peer youth court and a juvenile review board composed of community volunteers who review conduct among students. “We try to have a plethora of alternatives,” Joseph Lumpkin said.
Joseph Lumpkin calleds restorative practices not just a means to reduce suspensions and expulsions but rather “a larger social approach to restore relationships from peer to peer harm,”
And if Achievement First needs help putting together a plan for the state?
“We would be thrilled,” Joseph Lumpkin said. “We have a good relationship with the charter schools. We’re happy to work them, share some of things we’re doing.”