‘TGIF Time-saver’: This leader is cracking down on bad behavior

It’s officially back-to-school month for most districts in the U.S. What’s on your to-do list this year? What standards are you hoping to achieve? I can imagine student behavior discipline ranks high on many leaders’ lists. In Louisiana, it’s a statewide affair.

Will new laws prompt better behavior?

State Superintendent Cade Brumley issued a letter to school system leaders this week asking them to “recommit to assertive discipline action” to ensure safe and orderly school environments.

“Students and teachers deserve peaceful schools,” Brumley wrote. He also called their attention to two new behavior-related pieces of legislation that went into effect Aug. 1:

• ACT 400 (Student Discipline & Teacher Rights): Gives teachers the ability to remove disruptive students from their classrooms while prohibiting leaders from being able to discriminate or retaliate against an educator during this process. The law also requires a conference between a teacher and parents before a student returns to class.
• ACT 337 (Mandatory Expulsion in Grades 6-12): Adds expulsion requirements for situations involving knives and drugs. Additionally, administrators can consider expelling 6th- through 12th-graders suspended a third time within the same school year.

“These laws address behavior complications educators and students faced in previous years and aim to improve the school experience,” Brumley wrote. “Affording teachers more disciplinary authority over disruptive students will maintain order in classrooms.”

The state’s Let Teachers Teach workgroup, a coalition of nearly 30 educators around the state tasked with exploring the profession’s challenges, recently published recommendations designed to improve the teaching experience. I encourage you to explore the comprehensive report, which touches on professional learning, required training, student behavior, non-academic responsibilities and other subjects.

Presidential politics cause K12 polarization

K12 education can quickly become a touchy subject when politics enter the mix. New research finds that when U.S. presidents and presidential candidates take positions on prominent issues in education, it leads to stark polarization.

That’s what the researchers of a new working paper suggest. When presidential candidates advocate for issues that are closely aligned with their own party, Americans generally use those comments to learn what either side of the political spectrum believes.

In their experiments, researchers found that when members of a president’s own party learned about the president’s position on a particular K12 policy, they became more supportive of that approach. In contrast, members of the opposite party’s opposition intensified.

“In some cases, people update their own beliefs accordingly,” the researchers wrote in an article from The Conversation. “In our contemporary political context, presidential engagement largely serves to reinforce partisan divisions.”

Why high schoolers don’t return home

Nowadays, many would hope high school graduates would return to their stomping grounds after college—hopefully, to fill teaching and other k12 staff vacancies! However, fewer graduates are willing to return.

Seventy-two percent of high school students say they don’t plan on returning to their hometowns, a new analysis suggests. Instead, young people are more inclined to navigate to traditional “talent magnets”: Texas, New York, Florida, California and others.

However, we’re also seeing folks flock to less-populated areas, perhaps as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic as adults are getting comfortable with remote work and flexible schedules.

College towns are also appealing to undergraduates. Sixty-one percent of college students say they plan on finding a job near where they attended college.

New from DA

As always before you go, be sure to read up on the latest from District Administration, as well as listen to our latest podcast about a high school’s award-winning PBIS program.

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