Over 40% of California public school suspensions are for ‘willful defiance’ or disruption
By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie
California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye
Unfortunately, that is far from the case nowadays in our society which increasingly criminalizes students for engaging in childish behavior, which obviously should be expected, to a certain degree, from children.
Students are now just as likely to get suspended from school for so-called “willful defiance” or any other activity which could be considered disruptive, like rolling eyes, coming to class late, or talking back to a teacher.
According to some critics, these tactics are disproportionately used against black and Latino males, thus alienating the people who most need to stay in school.
They also charge that it is actually a catchall term which can be applied to even the most trivial of offenses.
“It’s so broad it’s not useful” Marqueece Harris-Dawson, the president and chief executive of the non-profit South Los Angeles Community Coalition, said to CBS.
“You can’t quite define what it means, [and] what it doesn’t mean,” Harris-Dawson added. Indeed this is quite accurate and unfortunately has become a hallmark of how our government operates in the modern day.
They purposefully make everything as ambiguous and flexible as humanly possible, thus allowing for legislation to be exploited and used in many more situations than it might otherwise be used in.
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012 is a great example, with its wildly vague definitions which allow many people to be indefinitely detained by the military.
Earlier this year, a California State Assemblyman by the name of Roger Dickinson introduced AB 2242, a bill which would completely remove “willful defiance” as a reason for both suspension and expulsion.
Dickinson’s legislation would replace that reason with much more specific behaviors like harassment, threats, intimidation, along with the creation of a hostile environment or substantial disorder.
Obviously, all of these designations are significantly more specific than the hard-to-define label of “willful defiance.”
This is being scrutinized along with the so-called “zero tolerance” policies in place in many schools since the 1990s, with a focus on how they are affecting minority students.
A U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office put out a report last year which evidenced a major gap in how suspensions were used against so-called “students of color.”
This disparity is evidenced by the fact that 18% of public school students in America are black, while 35% of suspensions and 39% of expulsions involve black students.
This is becoming such a prominent issue that the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye, addressed it in her State of the Judiciary speech to the California legislature in March.
She noted that she was alarmed by the fact that the state ordered 700,000 suspensions and students just last year.
“You might ask, ‘Why is school discipline a justice issue?’ The answer is obvious – when students are not in school, studies show that they are at risk of entering the juvenile justice system,” she stated.
“Studies show that one suspension triples the likelihood of a juvenile justice contact within that year,” Chief justice Cantil-Sakauye added.
In other words, the state made tripled the likelihood of an encounter with the juvenile justice system 700,000 times in a single year.
While this is obviously a shocking statistic, most school districts in the United States also have “defiance” or “insubordination” as a cause for discipline, they just differ on how they punish alleged offenders.
For instance, public schools in Baltimore cut suspensions from almost 27,000 in the 2003-2004 school year to 11,000 in the 2010-2011 school year.
They did this through a large-scale revision of their code of conduct and disciplinary guidelines, leading to a suspension for defiance only being handed out if it is a repeated offense.
A report from the University of California Los Angeles showed that “students of color” are the most likely to be suspended for allegedly disrespecting, defying or disobeying someone in school.
According to Harris-Dawson, this can largely be blamed on profiling, although considering the way it is framed, it sounds a lot more likely a textbook case of racism.
“There’s a bit of profiling that goes on, particularly with low-income African-American and Latino boys,” Harris-Dawson said. “A white girl can scream and slam books on the desk and not be seen as threatening, but a black boy can do half of that and it can be taken as ‘he’s going to hit me.’”
If that is not a blatant case of racism, I’m not sure what is.
Frank Wells, a Southern California representative of the California Teachers Association, on the other hand, defends these practices.
He claims that sending alleged troublemakers to the principal’s office is a necessary tool to maintain discipline in the classroom, adding that he has not noticed an excessive use of defiance and that the union has to actually remind teachers that they have the ability to use “willful defiance” as a reason to discipline a student.
This assertion is hilariously imbecilic and patently false, showing that Wells is either simply choosing to lie or he wildly ignorant and unaware of the statistics be it by choice or circumstance.
“It’s something that should be studied,” Wells said of the statistics demonstrating a disproportionate use of “willful defiance” against certain groups. “But we hate to limit teachers’ authority to discipline,” he added.
Students, on the other hand, see it as a way for teachers to silence students and not allow them to voice their opinions and concerns.
Brett Williams, a senior at South Los Angeles high school, told CBS, “It’s like sit down and shut up. You’re not even able to tell your story. That to them is being defiant.”
Williams recounted a story where he was not wearing his uniform shirt under a sweater after playing a game of basketball a few weeks ago.
He was ordered to go to the dean’s office, but he said that he was putting on his shirt and wanted to stay in class for the rest of the lesson.
He was then sent home and threatened with suspension for being defiant. If Williams’ account is accurate, it sounds more like he was sent home for trying to stay in class and learn.
Even more ludicrous is that he was sent home again the next day after a “run-in” with the dean, after which he was told that he was being disrespectful, rude and defiant.
“It escalated into two days of missing school over a uniform shirt,” Williams said.
Despite his alleged defiance problems, Williams said that he is determined to graduate in June.
“You can’t even be treated fairly so what’s the point of going to school. That’s the way they made me feel,” Williams said, mirroring the disillusionment many students feel when facing the now monstrous American public school system.
This is obviously not the only way that kids discipline can be handled, as other schools have already implemented different systems which show positive results.
Take the East Los Angeles high school Garfield High School for example. There the school administration took a different approach after witnessing a whopping 600 suspensions in 2004.
They now have a system where both teachers and counselors intervene in a matter before the issue ever reaches the principal and dean.
The 2,700 student strong school now contacts parents and orders offenders to write apology letters, apologize publicly, or spend their lunch time in the dean’s office to consider the consequences of their actions.
Thanks to this new system, they have completely removed defiance as a cause for suspension.
“We took the suspension quick-trigger off the menu,” Assistant Principal Ramiro Rubalcaba said.
Rubalcaba noted that before this was in place he would have students ordered to see him for everything from forgetting to bring a pencil to class to chewing gum to napping.
While teachers initially balked at the decision, the school system now offers them additional classroom management training if they continue to report a great deal of student behavior issues.
The system appears to be working thus far as they had only a single suspension last year and one so far this year as well.
Garfield High School’s model has become an example of how discipline in public schools can be reformed to great effect and now administrators from other schools visit regularly. Even some state legislators have made time to pay Garfield a visit.
An example of how this model works came up earlier this year when two senior girls, Jamie Rodriguez and Janaye Esparza, got into a fight during drill team practice, which would likely get them suspended at any other school.
Both Rodriguez and Esparza’s parents were called in, they were suspended from their team for a week and forced to spend lunch in the dean’s office along with getting counseling on how to get along with each other.
“We learned to keep our distance and respect each other,” Esparza said. “We ignore our differences.”
Both Esparza and Rodriguez noted that the worst part of their punishment was being suspended from the team.
“That was hard,” Rodriguez said. “It was something I really worked for.”
Rubalcaba made a phenomenal point by saying that he has noticed that students respond much more to having their privileges removed rather than simply being sent home to watch television or play video games.
“They like being suspended on Thursday so they have a three-day weekend,” he pointed out. “Suspending is now the last option.”
Since this is working so well for Garfield, it seems imbecilic to not follow this model at other high schools.
We have seen that so-called “tough on crime” policies don’t work when it comes to real criminal activity – evidence by the failure of the so-called “three strikes” laws in California – so who in their right mind would think that schools are any different?
It is very saddening to see our children become increasingly criminalized, often for wholly innocuous actions. Maybe if more schools follow Garfield’s model we won’t see so many children being locked up and abused in our public school system, as all this is doing is creating a new generation of customers for the private prison complex.
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Madison Ruppert is a Los Angeles-based independent journalist and researcher as well as the founder, owner, administrator and editor of EndtheLie.com. He has no affiliations with any government agencies, political parties, non-governmental organizations, or economic schools. He is available for freelance writing assignments and appearances or interviews in any format. He can be reached by emailing
this is just ridiculous. basically if you question authority, they can suspend you. this isnt how school should be.
“this is just ridiculous. basically if you question authority, they can suspend you. this isnt how school should be.”
Sadly Anonymous, this is exactly how government schools should be. Forced schooling is right on task with it’s goals and objectives: Unquestioned compliance with authority, conformity, obedience. This my friend is the what schools do. We are very successful in our unstated goals.
I assume the issue is the slipshod formation and application of Administrative Law. Unfortunately, good law and common sense is as rare as Haley’s Comet!
Regarding the secondary issue, the disproportionate application of discipline and denial of education to minorities due to irregular behavior, perhaps a perusal of John Derbyshire’s article on “The Talk” on Takimag.com will help establish the source of the problems.
Sometimes it is difficult to resolve the truth with what the social engineers have conditioned one to “feel”.
I like the way things are in California. I taught in CA for 5 years before coming to Texas. It was much easier and a lot more enjoyable to teach children. I always taught my students not to roll there eyes at anyone. Here in Texas the kids say \#axzz1rUuO3tGx
say “Yes/ No Mam/ Sir,” but that is about it. The student are mean and disrespectful to most. We have a lot of children in private, home and charter school situation. Most parents here are aware of the foul behavior that are tolerated in the public school. I pref. CA system. It keeps a good education free.
CA…you are free to question authority. In fact that is encouraged even with creativity. You must just learn to do it with a nice respectful attitutde.
I do’nt want to comment about california
I was a special ed teacher for one year at a middle school. It was the harderst year of my life. The ‘behavior problem’ students, the ones that have the most extreme and hardened misbehavior, are very difficult for even seasoned teachers to deal with.
My particular school did not allow suspension for back talking, repeated interruptions, disrespectful speech and actions, etc. It was because of fighting–physical violence–that most students received suspension.
I have observed that some of the behavior problem kids are so strong-willed and manipulative that they control the parent–most often they come from single parent homes. I asked the school psychologist if these young people usually grew out of their problems and become productive members of society in adulthood. She told me that studies have followed these individuals into adulthood and that unfortunately they usually ended up in prison. This was like a bombshell for me. I felt like a junior prison guard.
The truth is, these students do need plenty of extra help. But those in the trenches–the teachers in the classrooms–are the ones who know the incredible difficulty of the task. Those who spout wonderful platitudes from their armchairs are not helping. They are like chickenhawks who promote war but have never spent a minute in real battle.
Working with students with behavior problems is more difficult than anyone could ever imagine.
I was hired breifly in a charter school to deal with the disruptive children who were sent out of class. When the administration realized that the ‘disruptive’ kids with me were getting along fine, that they were helping me to instruct other students, that we were actually having more fun and learning more in detention class than in regular class, rather than apply my methods in the regular classroom, they ended my program. There is too much emphasis on negative punishment, and not enough emphasis on keeping the students engaged in learning so that they don’t have time to be disruptive. I observed that the children were imitating the bad behavior of the teachers and administrators, that the school textbooks are full of lies and propaganda designed to diminish the self-esteem of all Americans, but especially certain groups, and that the entire system is so rotten and corrupt from the foundation that it’s a miracle these kids survive it all. I won’t even start on the nasty plastic food that they are given. There are alternatives to the present system, but a whole lot of criminals in office and in administration would have to be removed before any change can be made. Students need to be taught practical skills in school, but with the free enterprise system shut down through rampant legislation, even these practical skills are useless. The term ‘monstrous’ to describe the public school system is precisely correct.