The cover of the local tab, the Philadelphia Daily News, blares, "Schools' Rules - Time to Get Serious". It should come as no surprise to anyone that order and discipline are thorny issues in Philly's overburdened and underperforming public schools, but the district insists that it's going to start cracking down:
TRASH TALK. Extra-baggy clothes. Beeping cell phones and pagers. Arriving fashionably late for class.
These aren't capital crimes, Philadelphia school officials acknowledge.
But they are the type of infractions that often lead to big problems, such as vandalism, fighting and wholesale disrespect of teachers and students. To stomp out this kind of nuisance behavior, the School District of Philadelphia is launching an ongoing action and information campign.
The action will take the form of stepped-up enforcement of the Student Code of Conduct and new rules for the 2004-05 school year. For example, school uniforms must fit properly, students of any age caught with weapons will be arrested and turned over to the police, and cell phones will be taken and not returned.
Smells like zero tolerance is in the air. Not that, properly applied, it's necessarily a bad thing; it certainly avoids charges of racism, favoritism, and whatnot. Past experience, though, leads one to be suspicious; when reading the sentence, "students of any age caught with weapons," it's hard not to think, what age is too low? What does "with" mean here - does the student actually have to have it on his or her person? What about situations where the weapon could have been placed by a third-party? And how loosely are we defining "weapons"?
The small points are arguable, but the "broken-glass theory" is not:
[Schools CEO Paul Vallas] To really get at the type of things that create environments that are conducive to disruptive behavior. It's the broken-glass theory - if students are disrespectful, if children are chronically disruptive, if they're following the uniform policy, but yet they're not. The colors may be right, but the clothing may be totally inappropriate. There are so many things in the schools that we have to tackle. So, the objective is to begin to undertake a number of initiatives designed to get at the problem of poor behavior in the schools, and I like the name you came up with, because this is about old-fashioned manners and civility and without them we cannot have safe school climates.
The number of "alternative" schools will be increased, and those schools will have room for more students. A Saturday morning alternative program, called SMART, will also expand. Police officers will patrol elementary schools in addition to the upper grades. Philly has already tackled the issue of dangerous students, and has apparently traced it back to the issue of chronically disruptive kids.
Q: Elaborate on what you call disruptive behavior.
Vallas: Coming to school late. Not wearing the proper uniform. Bringing jewelry and cell phones and electronic gear into the schools. Using foul language, bullying and being disrespectful are all out. All those things. The bottom line is, we're not going to tolerate any of that stuff. But let's be clear, and let's communicate it to the students and parents up front. Let's be very specific about what we want, what we expect and what we don't want and what we don't expect.
Essentially, this amounts to putting some muscle behind a lot of rules that were already in place. The new guidelines include:
"Chronically late students will be locked out of school unless they arrive with a valid excuse note." Well, that certainly gets them out of the classroom, but what does one do with an 8-year-old who can't get back home and doesn't have a key to his house anyway?
"Phones, beepers and text-messaging devices brought to school will be confiscated...A parent or guardian must come to school to reclaim the device." Some enterprising businessman should set up a $0.25 locker system in a building adjacent to the school, so that kids could check their gear. And hopefully parents will be gracious about retrieving these items, which can be a menace in a chaotic classroom.
Students must dress in the manner, colors and style adopted by their school.
What's out: Oversized T-shirts. Exposed undergarments. Stocking caps, doo rags, bandanas, hats. Muscle shirts, halter tops. Spaghetti straps. See-through clothing...Students dressed inappropriately may be offered school-issue clothing or sent home to change.
While I can empathize with parents who have little money (hand-me-downs rarely fit perfectly, and today's cheap teen fashions aren't exactly modest), it's not that difficult to find clothes that are neither obscene nor baggy. And the "school-issue" clothing should be the ugliest, goofiest stuff from the Goodwill bin.
Ah, here's the weapons definition:
Weapons include guns, knives, any cutting tool, any household item that could be used to cut or stab another person, any blunt weapon and any other item that could be used to inflict serious bodily injury.
Hmm. There's room for stupidity aplenty there, but perhaps Philly's admins will have enough to do without sending home kids who have butter knives or GI Joe guns in their possession.
Vallas says more about the community involvement:
Q: You mentioned the community in general will also be involved.
Vallas: We want to have real faith-based partnerships. Everybody talks a good game about faith-based partneships...and then not much happens. In the past year we've really begun to get some real help from the faith-based community doing crisis intervention. But we want to take a step further. The faith-based institutions are some of the largest and dominant institutions in our neighborhoods. We're asking them to set up SMART programs, and we have developed a template of activities that we want the faith-based institutions to establish in the schools. We're asking all of them to set up after-school gospel choirs and after-school clubs. They can even be Bible clubs or prayer clubs. It doesn't make any difference as long as it's after school and it's voluntary. We're asking them to set up rights-of-passage programs.
Q: Why the religious approach?
Vallas: Schools are isolated in their own communities. Children do not have access to strong institutional supports. A lot of children are being raised by single parents who are struggling just to make ends meet. I visited a school in South Philly last week that had fewer than half the students living with their biological parents. The objective here is to look for strong community institutional supports - clubs, associations, organizations - who can in effect become the big brothers and sisters for the children.
Sounds like Philly is talking the talk when it comes to school discipline. But can they walk the walk?
"The devil's in the details of how you implement and enforce," said Jerry Jordan, vice president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers.
Safe Schools Advocate Harvey Rice asked, "How are these going to be enforced?"...
Teachers in some schools have complained of problem students and the fact that it can be hard to punish them or get them out of the classroom. Jordan, of the teachers' union, said "the teachers' number one demand is to do something about discipline problems they're dealing with in the schools."
He added that if the new rules aren't enforced, students will quickly lose respect. "The first time the child walks in with the baggy pants and the teacher says something and there is no follow-up - what do we do?" he asked.
...one high school teacher said he had little faith in new rules, since the current ones aren't followed.
"Have they shown that they're willing to be accountable for what they have in place today?" he asked. "Why should anybody think that something new is going to change?"
Posted by kswygert at June 14, 2004 11:38 AM