Zero Tolerance Policies Make Zero Sense

Schools are responsible for educating millions of children across the United States. One element of that responsibility is to maintain the safety of children while they are at school. Restricting the presence of weapons at schools is a good policy, it's hard to learn when you know that several of your classmates have knives, guns, or other lethal weapons in their backpacks. Unfortunately, some school districts and administrators have gone overboard in the application of laws designed to restrict the presence of weapons in schools and have involved the criminal justice system inappropriately in the punishment of these children. This is usually accomplished through the creation of a "zero tolerance" policy for the district.

A zero tolerance policy provides a mandated minimum penalty to ANY student who brings anything that can be construed as a weapon into a school. This may be suspension, expulsion, or referral to the police depending on the district.

For one incident last year, a 6 year old boy was suspended for bringing a camping utensil to school to use for lunch. The school district claimed that it had no discretion in the matter because the code of conduct of their district mandated a suspension for any type of knife regardless of possessor's intent. No flexibility allowed.


Apparently the face of a potential murderer

For another example,

In Denton County, Texas, a 13-year-old was asked to write a "scary" Halloween story for a class assignment. When the child wrote a story that talked about shooting up a school, he both received a passing grade by his teacher and was referred to the school principal's office. The school officials called the police, and the child spent six days in jail before the courts confirmed that no crime had been committed.

Spending time in jail for writing a fictional story is certainly an example of appropriate punishment for a thirteen year old!

There are at least a few dozen of these types of stories that draw media attention every year, as students are suspended, expelled, or even jailed because school administrators don't apply common sense to these cases. There are certainly many more that go unrecognized.

A bit of background on the origin of many of these district policies:

In reaction to a series of school shootings, Senators Dianne Feinstein and Byron Dorgan introduced the Gun Free Schools Act. The law's actual wording:

(1) In general.--Except as provided in paragraph (3), each State receiving Federal funds under this Act shall have in effect a State law requiring local educational agencies to expel from school for a period of not less than one year a student who is determined to have brought a weapon to a school under the jurisdiction of local educational agencies in that State, except that such State law shall allow the chief administering officer of such local educational agency to modify such expulsion requirement for a student on a case-by-case basis.

Feinstein after the bill passed

The federal law itself stipulates that local educators are supposed to regulate penalties for students on a case by case basis. Thus, common sense is written into the law. I don't think it was the intent for students to be expelled for bringing butter knives or plastic knives into school for the purposes of cutting food.

However, the event that greatly accelerated the spread of zero tolerance policies was the shooting at Columbine High School. Parents demanded that their school districts keep their children safe. Unfortunately, the route that many schools took to do this was to adopt these policies, thinking that a harsh penalty would deter violence.

This goes against recommendations made by the secret service based on an investigation of 37 school shootings. The investigation showed that kids do not go on a killing rampage on a whim, there is a pattern of behavior beforehand. In most cases, they had told multiple people and made plans before the incident. Instead of banning anyone who brings weapons to school, it is better to focus on educating students to tell teachers or administrators when someone has made plans to attack. Additionally, these reports must be taken seriously and investigated appropriately.

The real effect of zero tolerance policies is shown in increasing rates of suspensions and also expulsions:

While students are reporting school crime at the same level as in the 1970s, the number of youth suspensions has nearly doubled from 3.7% of students in 1974 (1.7 million students suspended) to 6.8% of students in 1998 (3.2 million students suspended). In Michigan schools, 3,500 students were expelled during academic year 1999-2000.

All of those suspensions and expulsions are not related to zero tolerance policies, but they are certainly part of the reason behind the dramatic increase in a few decades.

The goal of school is to provide an education for our youth. Numerous studies have shown that suspensions lead to increased dropout rates.


As suspensions increase, so do dropout rates

Children who leave school early do not get an effective education and are more likely to be involved in crime. It is in the best interests of our children and the country to provide children with every opportunity to get the best education possible. The decision to suspend or expel a child from school needs to be made very carefully and ideally provide the child with a chance to correct their behavior.

It makes no sense to remove a child from school entirely simply because they made the error in judgment of bringing a butter knife, aspirin, ibuprofen, or other innocuous object to school only to discover that it is considered a "weapon." This is especially true when the federal law itself indicates that these policies should be considered on a case by case basis-indicating that common sense needs to be applied to punishing children for violations.

As the American Bar Association puts it:

Zero tolerance policies for students adopt a theory of mandatory punishment that has been rejected by the adult criminal justice system because it is too harsh! Rather than having a variety of sanctions available for a range of school-based offenses, state laws and school district policies apply the same expulsion rules to the six-year-old as to the 17-year-old; to the first time offender as to the chronic troublemaker; to the child with a gun as to the child with a Swiss Army knife.

Adults - especially those who teach children - are expected to have the skills and knowledge to teach behavior in age-appropriate ways. Unfortunately, zero tolerance as practiced today is not rooted in theories of pedagogy or child or adolescent development. It teaches children nothing about fairness, and often creates injustice.