Principals Need Latitude on Discipline — Not Micromanagement from Activists
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that principals should have the professional discretion to make discipline decisions without interference from advocacy groups.
Key Takeaways
- Professional discretion is essential - Principals who know their students and school community are best positioned to make discipline decisions
- Activist pressure distorts decision-making - External pressure to reduce suspensions leads to decisions that prioritize statistics over safety
- Trust school leaders - Just as we trust doctors to make medical decisions, we should trust principals to make discipline decisions
Transcript
We've got to give school administrators the latitude they need to exercise their professional judgment, to keep schools safe, to give consequences for unsafe or disruptive behavior.
And I was very disappointed in this article from the Hetchinger Report today, which is normally a very good publication, but the quality of this research I think is really lacking because the data that it was based on is lacking.
If you take a look at this article, the problem here is that they're studying FOIA request data right they they requested under public records laws data about suspensions especially and of course there's very little information in those records right as a principle when you put in a suspension you don't put in like the whole backstory and like everything that this kid has done and everything that you've intervened you know to like try to improve the behavior short of suspension you include like very very little information and they're inferring from that database that they put together what happened with any given kid, and they're pointing out ridiculous things like, oh, this kid was suspended for sticking his finger through another kid's hamburger at lunch.
And like, yes, if you take the one thing out of context, that might seem a little extreme, but we don't have the story.
And school administrators cannot tell the whole story, right?
School administrators are not going to fill in for any member of the public who is interested exactly what this kid did and all the things that the school had done leading up to that event, we have got to give school administrators the latitude they need to impose consequences, to keep kids safe.
And this idea that we can just kind of bully administrators into not giving consequences is only going to make schools unsafe.
And the frustrating thing about this is this story could have looked at the many states that have already restricted administrators from taking this type of action, from having this type of latitude that they need to do their jobs.
In California and in lots of other places, There are already lots of restrictions on so-called subjective offenses.
And of course, there are going to be subjective offenses.
And even for things that are fairly objective sounding, there is always going to be a need for professional judgment.
That is why we hire professionals to do this job.
That is why you have to have a certification.
You have to have a master's degree.
We need professionals to exercise professional judgment.
So let's not train people and hire them to be professionals and then take away the tools they need to exercise professional judgment to keep schools safe.
So very disappointed in this article.
Read it.
Let me know what you think.
Thank you.