“Student disconnection” spurred on by mental health factors, disproportionate discipline and a lack of in-school supports plays its part in driving ���󾱴�’s absenteeism rate, according to a new report from an Ohio think tank.

That absenteeism, and the contributing factors of it, can create “an entry point in the school-to-prison pipeline,” according to Policy Matters Ohio, who released a new study on the issue this month.

“Mental health factors such as depression, anxiety and chronic stress reduce kids’ desire to attend school,” Policy Matters stated. “Trauma and violence exacerbate those issues, increasing the likelihood that a student will become chronically absent, defined in Ohio as missing 10% of the school year for any reason, excused or unexcused.”

Chronic absenteeism feeds a “negative cycle” that can lead to the juvenile justice system, which disproportionately impacts Black students and economically disadvantaged families, according to the study.

In the analysis of state data, Policy Matters found that students who have been “adjudicated, or found guilty, in the juvenile court system” graduated at a rate of just 23.2% in 2022.

“Young people who encounter the juvenile justice system face challenges that follow them throughout their lives,” wrote researcher Tanisha Pruitt, Ph.D. “They have more difficulty accessing education, economic security, health care and other opportunities to live healthier and happier lives.”

Those disproportionate numbers of students of color and low-income students are fed by the connections between attendance, economic security and school resources, the study found.

“These are the unsurprising consequences of locking communities out of broad public investments through segregation, red-lining and the legacy of chronic inequitable school funding,” Pruitt wrote.

Also feeding the absenteeism rate, its implications for engagement with the juvenile justice system and lowered student outcomes, is “exclusionary discipline,” including expulsion and suspension. Those types of discipline are “often counterproductive, leaving excluded students further behind their peers and more likely to leave school altogether,” according to the report.

Using data from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, Policy Matters found that out-of-school suspensions made up more than 53% of 394,582 cases of exclusionary discipline used between 2022 and 2023. In-school suspensions made up 29%. Expulsion was used in 1.13% of cases.

The study cited a discipline analysis done by Children’s Defense Fund of Ohio from 2022 to 2023, which found “significant racial disparities” in exclusionary discipline, with Black female students found to be six times more likely than white female students to be suspended or expelled, and Black male students found to be 4.3 times more likely than their white counterparts in the state.

“Despite the increased scrutiny, potential consequences and state-level policy reforms, exclusionary discipline is still too common and disproportionately distributed,” Pruitt wrote in the report.

Pruitt brought up 2018’s “Supporting Alternatives for Fair Education Act,” a bill that sought to change school discipline practices by prohibiting expulsions and suspensions, but only for pre-K through third grade students. An exception was allowed in the act that allowed those types of discipline in those grade levels if conduct threatened the safety of school personnel or students.

But for any student older than third grade, there were more options in terms of discipline, including emergency removal and in-school “alternate discipline.”

Pruitt praised the law for requiring Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS), a method she said is part of “restorative justice approaches,” which “are more effective than exclusion at supporting student achievement” and could be expanded in Ohio.

“The PBIS model, if expanded and accompanied by funding to hire staff, implement programming and establish needed health services at school, would be a sure step in securing more kids’ futures and closing the school-to-prison pipeline,” Pruitt wrote.

Other recommendations included in the report focused on improving employment practices for parents to create manageable work schedules and create more connection with their children, urging more refundable tax credits to help economically disadvantaged families, along with pushing an increase in staff and student support funding (including full funding of the Fair School Funding Plan for public schools).

“To meet (student) needs, schools need funding,” the study stated. “Kids need more school counselors and nurses, more mental and behavioral health services and a more holistic approach to education.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

Across the United States, arrest rates for young people under age 18 have been declining for decades. However, the proportion of youth arrests associated with .

According to , K-12 schools referred nearly 230,000 students to law enforcement during the school year that began in 2017. These referrals and the 54,321 reported school-based arrests that same year were mostly for minor misbehavior like marijuana possession, as like bringing a gun to school.

School-based arrests are one part of the , through which students – especially Black and students and those with disabilities – are pushed out of their schools and into the legal system.

Getting caught up in the legal system has been linked to negative , and outcomes, as well as increased risk for .

Given these negative consequences, public agencies in states like , and have looked for ways to arrest fewer young people in schools. Philadelphia, in particular, has pioneered a successful effort to divert youth from the legal system.

Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program

In Philadelphia, police department leaders recognized that the city’s school district was its largest source of referrals for youth arrests. To address this issue, then-Deputy Police Commissioner a school-based, pre-arrest diversion initiative in partnership with the school district and the city’s department of human services. The program is called the , and it officially launched in May 2014.

Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker named on Nov. 22, 2023.

Since the diversion program began, when police are called to schools in the city for offenses like marijuana possession or disorderly conduct, if that student has no pending court case or a history of adjudication. In juvenile court, an adjudication is similar to a conviction in criminal court.

Instead of being arrested, the diverted student remains in school and school personnel decide how to respond to their behavior. For example, they might speak with the student, schedule a meeting with a parent or suspend the student.

A social worker from the city also contacts the student’s family to arrange a home visit, where they assess youth and family needs. Then, the social worker makes referrals to no-cost community-based services. The student and their family choose whether to attend.

Our team — the at Drexel University — evaluated the effectiveness of the diversion program as not affiliated with the police department or school district. We published four research articles describing various ways the diversion program affected students, schools and costs to the city.

Arrests dropped

In our evaluation of the diversion program’s first five years, we reported that the annual number of : from nearly 1,600 in the school year beginning in 2013 to just 251 arrests in the school year beginning in 2018.

Since then, school district data indicates the annual number of school-based arrests in Philadelphia has continued to decline — dropping to just 147 arrests in the school year that began in 2022. That’s a 91% reduction from the year before the program started.

We also investigated the number of serious behavioral incidents recorded in the school district in the program’s first five years. Those , suggesting that the diversion program effectively reduced school-based arrests without compromising school safety.

Additionally, data showed that city social workers successfully contacted the families of through the program during its first five years. Nearly 90% of these families accepted at least one referral to community-based programming, which includes services like academic support, job skill development and behavioral health counseling.

Fewer suspensions and expulsions

We compared data from 1,281 students diverted in the first three years of the school-based program to data from 531 similar students who were arrested in schools before the program began but who would have been eligible if the diversion program existed.

Diverted students were to be suspended, expelled or required to transfer to another school in the year following their school-based incident.

Long-term outcomes

To evaluate a longer follow-up period, we compared the 427 students diverted in the program’s first year to the group of 531 students arrested before the program began. Results showed arrested students were significantly more likely to be arrested again .

Although we observed impacts on arrest outcomes, the diversion program did not appear to affect long-term educational outcomes. We looked at four years of school data and found no significant differences in suspension, dropout or on-time graduation between diverted and arrested students.

Finally, a cost-benefit analysis revealed that the program saves taxpayers .

Based on its success in Philadelphia, several other cities and counties across Pennsylvania have begun replicating the Police School Diversion Program. These efforts could further contribute to a nationwide movement to safely keep kids in their communities and out of the legal system.

, Assistant Research Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and , Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences,

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Democrat Wes Moore cruised to a 22-point victory over Republican candidate Dan Cox. He will become Maryland’s first Black governor. In an election night interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, the governor-elect touted “big things” in store for Maryland, including “offer[ing] a service year option for every single high school graduate.”

Throughout the Maryland gubernatorial race, GOP candidate Dan Cox has done his best to keep education culture wars issues front and center. 

The state legislator named a right-wing parent leader as his running mate after her group lobbied to remove a Queen Anne’s County schools superintendent who . And in his only public debate against Democratic challenger Wes Moore, the Trump-endorsed candidate railed against “transgender indoctrination in kindergarten,” a problem he blamed on books that “depict things that I cannot show you on television, it’s so disgusting.”

The approach takes its cue from several recent GOP campaigns, most notably that of Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. The Republican’s 2021 win over high-profile Democrat and former governor Terry McAuliffe was propelled largely by controversy over K-12 curricula and COVID school closures, said University of Maryland political science professor Michael Hanmer.

“You don’t have to go too far to see what happened in the Virginia governor’s race. There, education was a really big deal,” the professor said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Cox campaign was trying to leverage some of the same themes that the Youngkin campaign was able to.”

But so far the strategy has not traveled well across state lines.

As of late September, Moore led Cox by a 2-to-1 margin with a 32-percentage point advantage, according to a of 810 registered voters carried out by the University of Maryland and The Washington Post.

“The times are different, the candidates are different and there’s a lot of differences between Maryland and Virginia,” said Hanmer, whose Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement co-sponsored the poll. “It’s a really steep climb for Cox.”

Democratic candidate Wes Moore is a Rhodes Scholar, combat veteran, anti-poverty advocate and best-selling author. Sporting an endorsement from the state’s largest teachers union, he says he plans to boost educator pay, reduce the number of youth that schools send into the criminal justice system and fund tutoring initiatives to help students recoup learning they missed during COVID.

In their Oct. 12 debate, following Cox’s attack on what he called queer “indoctrination” in schools, Moore locked eyes with the camera and delivered an alternate message.

“I want to say to all of our LGBTQ youth and families, I see you and I hear you and all policies that will be made will be made in partnership,” he said.

On the issues

Nearly a quarter of Republican voters say they plan to cross the aisle and cast their ballot for Moore, which could prove a death blow for Cox in a state where there are already twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans.

Among the Frederick County lawmaker’s GOP opponents is the state’s popular term-limited incumbent Gov. Larry Hogan, who has repeatedly called Cox a “” and “.”

Cox did not respond to requests for comment, but his running mate Gordana Schifanelli said public opinion surveys do not phase their campaign.

“I am not paying attention to the polls, which are very biased and steered towards narratives some people want to promote,” she said in an email.

In a race that “revolves around people/parents who are very concerned about education,” she said the GOP ticket is advocating a pivot away from “BLM [Black Lives Matter] curriculum and equity outcomes” in schools. Instead, “turning back to basics: logic, foreign languages and, yes, cursive writing.”

sharlimar douglass, leader of the Maryland Alliance for Racial Equity in Education who does not capitalize her name, doubts whether Cox’s and Schifanelli’s “parental rights” agenda includes the rights of Black families like hers.

“This whole piece about the ‘parents’ rights’ to me falls into what we’ve seen nationally, like white parents’ fear and people not wanting children to learn the true history,” she said.

The lieutenant governor candidate dismissed the criticism.

“This is not about Black or white,” she said, explaining she does not oppose kids learning about slavery but rather the “political push to segregate children into oppressors, oppressed and depressed.”

Moore’s education agenda largely steers clear of curricular concerns around race and gender, focusing instead on policy issues like addressing the state’s teacher shortage and expanding access to early childhood education. 

“We are going to … honor the people who fight for our kids — teachers, administrators, custodial workers, cafeteria workers — the people who make our schools places where children can thrive,” Moore said in a statement emailed to The 74.

He also says he plans to by creating $3,200 savings bonds for every Maryland baby born on Medicaid, lifting the prospects of children who are disproportionately Black and Latino. He has not said how he plans to pay for the roughly $100 million-a-year program.

The Democratic candidate’s campaign has not been without setbacks. In early October, the reported Moore’s Baltimore home had an unpaid water and sewage bill of over $21,000, which was then paid off within hours of the story’s publication. And details regarding his Baltimore roots presented in his 2010 memoir have been .

However, if those issues don’t dissuade voters and Moore cruises to victory, not only will it be his first time in elected office, he also would become the Old Line State’s first governor of color and quite possibly the following the midterms.

Investing in education: Maryland’s Blueprint

Moore has promised to fully fund the , landmark legislation that, when fully implemented in 2032, will infuse an additional $4 billion annually to help schools in the state boost achievement and close equity gaps. 

“My opponent is a danger to our state. His plans would certainly defund our schools, and I’m going to do the opposite by ensuring that every Marylander has access to a world-class education,” Moore said.

Robert Ruffins, who has advocated for the Blueprint for years as assistant director of state advocacy at EdTrust, said there are “incredibly high stakes” for education in this gubernatorial election because the implementation of the 10-year plan could hinge on whether it sees support from the state’s top officeholder. In Maryland, he explained, the governor has broad power over funding levels because they put forward the state’s working yearly budget.

“The governor being committed to the Blueprint, and to the funding of the Blueprint, and to being a partner in having it implemented properly is going to be absolutely critical to our success,” added William Kriwan, who chaired the legislative commission that crafted the policy and is now vice president of the board responsible for overseeing its rollout.

As a member of the House of Delegates in 2020, Cox the legislation. Even so, it passed with bipartisan support.

But while the Maryland policymakers orchestrating the Blueprint’s implementation have their eyes on plans a decade or more out, the Democratic governor hopeful said he’s focused on what happens between now and Nov. 8.

“We’re not taking anything for granted and will continue to run as if we’re 10 points behind,” Moore said.

At Black Mothers Forum, our mission is to end the school-to-prison pipeline by focusing on young Black boys in grades K-8 who were subjected to harmful exclusionary discipline in their local schools in and around Phoenix. At Eight Million Stories in Houston, we re-engage older youth who are no longer enrolled in school and, in many cases, have become involved in the judicial system. 

While our models differ in many ways, they are similar in that they are rooted in care, connection and affirmation, which in order to learn. We provide full-time learning settings outside of traditional schools where students feel like they matter. While schools often suspend students for various behaviors, our programs do not exclude, but use strategies to keep students in school. And we’re seeing results in learning, graduation rates and employment. At a time when so many, including the U.S. secretary of education, are calling for a in American education, our examples offer important lessons for all schools. 

Our students can engage in learning because we have repositioned adults from directing and correcting roles to supporting and affirming. At Black Mothers Forum, we hire learning guides who are mothers, teachers and community members from the same backgrounds as our students and who view them as “their own.” Under their guidance, younger and older students come together each day in a common area where everyone checks in to gauge well-being. It gives them a chance to express themselves. It’s personal. It’s like family. Our guides also use the curriculum as a starting point for more personal, engaging activities like one-on-one support, student-led conversations and enrichment that draw on our community’s rich resources. Guides also adjust daily routines to fit what students need.

This ethos of care and affirmation also guides our approach to behavior. For example, when children can’t manage themselves, instead of punishment, they get a hug. We do discipline by connecting, then redirecting. These strategies have led to learning gains. In February, we noted that students were significantly behind grade levels, so we focused on reading comprehension, recognizing that kids who cannot make meaning of what they are reading have trouble executing math and science problems as well. By June, we saw significant improvement in our students, some increasing one or two grade levels.

At Eight Million Stories, we are working with the most vulnerable, disengaged youth whom traditional schools have pushed out. We match adults to each student and start each day with a one-on-one check-in. We don’t send students away if they aren’t ready to learn when they get here. Rather, we recognize their challenges. We talk about their coursework and how to navigate upcoming court dates, job demands and financial, family and housing issues. We set up job training and enrichment — things that can overwhelm a counselor at a traditional school. 

This has also meant adopting flexible schedules that work around students’ needs. To help them get their diplomas, we create personalized learning plans with academic instruction for GED programming in the morning and optional supplemental tutoring and interventions in the afternoons — when their work schedules allow it. We don’t keep the kids here all day, forcing them to choose between school and work. The goal is to be as responsive as we can to students’ needs to help them develop the tools they need to succeed as adults — education credentials, job skills, stability and a sense of purpose and self-worth. 

In our programs, we want our kids to know every day that they’re loved, that people care about them and want them to be successful. At Black Mothers Forum, we’ve seen significant changes in our children, even in a few months. For example, one young boy who was often suspended or sent out of the classroom at his traditional school is now able to focus and learn here with us. Students feel supported. They feel loved and respected. When kids feel that way and know they’re not going to be penalized, they can relax, be themselves and learn. Similarly, at Eight Million Stories, so many kids have turned their lives around — and data show we’ve made an impact. Over our three years in operation, 54% of our students are now employed, 40% have completed their GED, 8% are pursuing postsecondary education and only 3% experienced recidivism.  

Creating learning experiences that enable all young people to thrive means a shift in stance from “We’ve always done it this way” to “Why do we have to?” All students need to feel cared about and to know they are a priority. We think our designs and those of some of the other promising models featured in a from the nonprofit organization about community-led learning demonstrate what’s possible for schools. They also demonstrate how the most powerful changes can be imagined by those closest to the challenge.

With Ohio passing legislation that will make it easier for teachers to carry guns in school, educators and youth are sounding the alarm that the bill could make classrooms less safe — particularly for Black and Hispanic students.

“I have no doubt in my mind, it increases the likelihood of school violence,” said Julie Holderbaum, a high school English teacher in Minerva, Ohio. “I have no doubt it would lead to more tragedies.”

The law could raise the stakes on disciplinary policies that already target youth of color at rates disproportionate to white students, said Deborah Temkin, a school safety expert at .

“There is very much a possibility for disproportionate use of force in the event that the decision to use a gun has to be made,” she told The 74. “Making a decision in a split second relies inherently on your biases.”

Gov. Mike DeWine the bill into law June 13. It does not require districts to arm teachers, but gives school boards the option to do so while slashing the required training hours from over 700 to 24.

Ohio joins at least nine other states in explicitly allowing non-security school personnel to carry firearms on school grounds, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Some of those states set no minimum training requirement for armed teachers, but of those that do, Ohio ties Wyoming for the lowest requirement at 24 total hours. Florida, where in 2017 a teen gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School killed 17 students and staff, requires the most initial training, at 144 hours.

The Florida also mandates that armed teachers must first undergo at least 12 hours of diversity training, a nod to the possibility that educators carrying weapons could be prone to racial bias.

���󾱴�’s includes no such requirement. 

In the legislation’s , constituents submitted over 380 written comments; 360 opposed the measure while just 20 favored it. Among the voices urging lawmakers to reject was Kavita Parikh, co-founder of Students Demand Action Toledo. She emphasized that it could harm Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and Asian-American students.

“Arming teachers could lead to a negative culture of fear for students, especially students of color. As students of color are disproportionately disciplined, the notion of arming teachers has also been connected to decreasing high school graduation and college enrollment for these students,” she wrote.

‘You don’t pick threats based upon color’

Nationwide, GOP efforts to “harden” schools in response to the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, have over the negative impact of disciplinary policies and school security staff on students of color. Even in preschool, a disproportionate share of Black students face suspensions, starting a chain of events known as the that increases their risk of entering the juvenile justice system later in life.

Several state legislators who backed the Ohio bill told The 74 either they do not believe racial disparities to be a possible outcome of arming teachers or that they did not consider the issue in the first place.

“It’s not anything that I’ve thought about whatsoever,” state Rep. Tom Young, who co-sponsored the bill. Like Young, the overwhelming majority of GOP legislators who backed the bill are white. 

“No matter who, a threat is a threat. … You don’t pick threats based upon color,” he said.

Ohio, however, is the site of at least two police killings infamous for alleged racial bias. White officers shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014 and 13-year-old Tyre King in 2016, both Black boys who were holding toy guns.

At the time, DeWine, then attorney general, called for an of police training on how to correctly identify an active shooter. 

Now as governor, his support for the new measure rolls back the preparation required for teachers to arm themselves on campus and respond to threats. 

“My office worked with the General Assembly to remove hundreds of hours of curriculum irrelevant to school safety and to ensure training requirements were specific to a school environment and contained significant scenario-based training. House Bill 99 accomplishes these goals, and I thank the General Assembly for passing this bill to protect Ohio children and teachers,” DeWine said in a statement to The 74.

The specified 24 hours of training are “ideal” for school staff, said DeWine’s Press Secretary Dan Tierney. He did not comment on whether the omission of anti-bias requirements was an oversight, nor on what changed the governor’s mind since calling for increased police training in 2014.

The legislation comes after a June 2021 Ohio Supreme Court decision interpreted an already existing state law on arming teachers to mean school staff were required first to complete over 700 hours of training before carrying guns. While the new bill drops that number to 24, school districts can set a higher bar if they choose. Districts that adopt the policies will have to inform community members that an adult on campus is armed.

Among those opposed to the bill are the Ohio Federation of Teachers, the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio and numerous other groups.

The state did not have any known incidents of gun misuse, nor of teachers unfairly targeting students of color before the 2021 court ruling, Rep. Thomas Hall, the bill’s sponsor, pointed out in a message to The 74.

‘Almost instant accessibility’

With a having gone into effect statewide June 13, teachers in districts that allow them to be armed could come to school with their gun tucked into a pocket, waistband or holster.

“What we don’t want, in my personal opinion, is for [teachers] to have to run down the hall to a locker and grab a weapon. That kind of defeats the purpose. … I would want to have [guns] in the classroom, if it’s the case of a teacher, so that they have access if somebody were to attack an individual classroom,” state Sen. Jerry Cirino, a co-sponsor of the bill, told The 74.

“We’re going to have to find the right methods so that we have almost instant accessibility, because that’s how [school shootings] happen,” he continued, “but also not make it possible for a weapon to be grabbed by the wrong person in school, even accidentally.”

Firearms getting into the wrong hands is a concern held by many of the bill’s opponents. In other states, guns brought to school by teachers have ended up . In one case, a loaded gun fell out of the waistband of a Florida substitute teacher while he was on the playground.

Districts may adopt their own individual protocols for gun safety and storage under the guidance of a statewide advisory team, explained Hall.

He emphasized that the legislation includes mandated de-escalation training to avoid gun use as a means for resolving issues like school fights. 

Cirino, however, said he thinks there could be some circumstances where trained personnel would use firearms not on outside intruders, but on students — including when youth bring knives or guns to school.

When a student is wielding “any weapon that would be capable of threatening somebody’s life or serious injury, I think there could be a justification for an administrator or teacher to use a weapon,” he said.

He expects large buildings to have 10-12 staff carrying guns and smaller ones to have “not more than a half dozen” in districts that adopt the policies. Other legislators, like Rep. Young, stressed that he only expects smaller rural districts who do not have school resource officers on staff to move forward with arming educators.

Holderbaum, the Minerva English teacher, has been thinking about the potential real-world implications of the legislation in her 1,800-student district. 

A few years ago, her school did a police demonstration with live gunshots in the gym so staff could recognize the sound. From her classroom, she said, the noise seemed like bleachers being pulled out. It troubled her that the sound didn’t seem out of the ordinary. If teachers were wielding guns, she wondered, how would they differentiate between everyday noises from the gym or cafeteria and gunshots? Would they have to step into the hallway with their finger on the trigger every time they heard something loud? 

Doing so, she thinks, would create a culture of fear at school that undermines learning and student well-being.

“If I’m in the middle of teaching Emily Dickinson poetry and I hear this noise and I decide to draw a loaded gun and go into the hallway, that’s going to traumatize my kids,” she said. 

“I don’t want that to become commonplace where they’re used to seeing a teacher pull a gun out.”