Is Your School a Hospital or a Courthouse?

What does the current criminal justice system, the future health care system, school discipline, and education have in common? Blend them up in the Education Innovation blender and take a look.

Today I was thinking about the school wide behavior plan I have been working on as part my school improvement program I call the Victory Project. The past behavior system could be compared to the Criminal Justice System. I wondered if there is a better model. Then it hit me; we need to model the ideas of health care.

 I previously wrote about how education should model the ideas set forth for improving health care.       (4 Ps For Innovation in Education) Education should be Predictive, Preventive, Participatory, and Personalized. If you add two more Ps such as Positive and Progressive then you have the makings of a new behavior plan that better influences positive behavior and deals with negative behavior on an individual basis.

The health care model is a better comparison for what we should be seeking in school behavior plans. Which would you rather have to go through?  When you are in the Criminal Justice system, there are no relationships developed, it happens to you, releasing the student from participating and reflecting on their behavior.

The health care model is much better at being predictive, preventive, participatory, personalized, positive, and progressive. Schools, teachers, administrators, parents, and even students should be thinking about these traits.

Predictive:
What sorts of issues and behaviors are likely to occur? Think ahead and plan for a response or prevention.

Preventive:
What steps can be taken to prevent negative behavior from happening. For example, engaging students, or giving students the attention they need and crave, or moving a student's seat, reminding students of what is expected are all examples of being preventive. Be pro-active not re-active.

Participatory:
Teachers, administrators, staff, parents, and students need to participate in the system. Students, especially, need to participate in reflecting on their own behavior and even choosing the appropriate consequence or developing prevention ideas for future negative behavior.

Personalized:
Consequences should be matched to the individual student. Just as student have individual learning needs and teacher differentiate their instruction, so too do students have differing needs when it comes to influencing positive behavior and giving consequences for negative behavior. This is not always possible (ie; drugs, weapons, sexual harassment, etc.) but to the extent possible prevention and consequences should be personalized.

Positive:
Discipline with dignity. We must not make the situation personal. School staff does itself a disservice when they give up the power of their position and get personal with a student in reaction to their behavior. Students need to know we care even when they make mistakes and bad decisions.

Progressive:
Common sense needs to be a priority when it comes to dealing with negative student behavior. Jumping to most extreme consequence forces you give an even greater consequence when if the behavior occurs again. Where is one to go?  There must be a menu or continuum of consequences that allow flexibility from one end of the scale to another in dealing with negative behavior. If a student doesn't do their homework and they receive detention, what happens when they do it again? Do you suspend them? No, you need room to move and a progressive system of low to high severity provides this.

School discipline meets the health care system. That is Education Innovation.

Comments

[Phil Burns]

The article was interesting. It would be nice to have some strategies on the participatory aspect of this plan. We have parents that make
the decisions to keep their child home. Some decisions are questionable.
They could bring them to school for a half day, if they are not sick
anymore or improving. Some do not view attendance as important as others.It is an ongoing struggle. These are the same students that arrive tardy 10-15 times per semester or have 10 or more absences.

[Rob Jacobs]

Attendance is an eternal struggle and frustration for schools, especially since our funding is based on the kid being in the seat. No kid = no $$