Decatur Revisited: Expelled Youth Face Life Adrift

When seven students here were expelled last year for fighting at a high school football game, the case exploded into a national debate about zero tolerance and what the U.S. does with youth who get banned from school. With network cameras focused on Decatur as the Rev. Jesse Jackson led protesters down its streets, this small city came to illustrate the nations’ practice of dumping disruptive youth out of school with little to keep them busy, educated or out of more trouble.

One year later with the protestors gone and the cameras off, the fate of those youths illustrates that not much has changed.

Two of the expelled youths received diplomas in June. But of the other five, Decatur officials say, only one re-enrolled in school this fall. Two spent 12 hours a week in a GED program last year without getting a GED. Three were arrested last month for allegedly beating and robbing an acquaintance of $120. The federal government rejected the school district’s bid for fund to improve alternative education for such students. Money promised by the state never came.

The saga illustrates a nationwide struggle. Despite zero tolerance legislation and speeches about getting tough on disruptive students, questions persist about how to educate them, discipline them or modify their behavior. Many states report record rates of suspensions and expulsions under zero tolerance policies. But what happens to these youths?

“A lot of these kids getting expelled are ending up at home or out on the street,” says Angelo Ancheta of Harvard University’ Civil Rights Project, co-author of a recent study on zero tolerance policies. “The [state] legislature are lagging behind in terms of trying to either turn back zero tolerance policies or trying to deal with it in some other way.”

A look at Decatur raises questions about the fate of students who are expelled, and about the availability, quality, and funding of alternative education programs to educate them and steer them away form more trouble.

‘Expulsion Happy’

The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights estimates that 87,000 students were expelled in the U.S. during the 1997-98 school year. State-level data suggest that expulsions have soared in recent years—a phenomenon most often attributed to the proliferation of zero tolerance policies intended to make schools safer. In Illinois, for instance, 1,182 students were expelled from school in the 1990-91 school year. By 1998-99 that number had more than doubled, to 2,744.

“We’ve gotten expulsion happy,” says Barry Krisber, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Many mark the federal Gun-Free Schools Act (GFSA) of 1994 as the birth of zero tolerance fever—and of the rise in expulsions and suspensions. That legislation required states to pass laws mandating that local school districts expel for one calendar year any student bringing a gun to school. The act carried its own zero tolerance enforcement: States that failed to pass legislation would lose their federal education funding. All 50 states passed legislation.

Some states and school districts took the federal requirement further, ordering expulsion for weapon or drug possession, for fighting and for threatening violence. “We then had a proliferation of local policies that were broader and more sweeping—sweeping kids out of schools,” says Joan First, director of the National Coalition of Advocates for Students.

The number of students expelled for bringing a firearm to school has actually gone down since passage of the GFSA—to 3,930 in the 1997-98 school year, form 5,724 the year before. However, federal officials admit that record-keeping problems may have inflated the initial numbers. Nonexistent, incomplete, inconsistent and inaccurate student expulsion data are rife in school districts as well as at the national level.

Decatur illustrates how hard it is to grasp the size of the problem. Asked how many students were expelled in the last school year, top school district officials provided three different numbers: 14 (Superintendent Kenneth Arndt), 10 (his administrative assistant, who keeps the records on expelled students) and 12 (Decatur’s report on the state.)

As for what happened to those expelled students, the superintendent says except for the high-profile Decatur seven, he has “no idea.” The district keeps no such records.

Nowhere to Go

When the seven students were expelled last October, their educational option barely outnumbered the two years for which they were initially banished. They could leave the state, enroll in private school, or stay home for two years, then come back to high school (at which time they’d be 18, 19 and 20 years old.)

Limited data suggest that fewer than half of all expelled kids enter alternative education programs. According to the annual GFSA report of 1999, just 43 percent of all students expelled for bringing a firearm to school during 1997-98 school year were referred to an alternative educational placement.

But students expelled for firearms represent only about 4 percent of all expulsions. A 1997 U.S. Department of Education survey found that for possession of drugs, alcohol or a weapon other than firearm (which includes everything from a rock to a knife), only about 20 percent involved transfers to alternative schools. Besides expulsions, the U.S. Office of Civil Rights documented about 3.2 million suspension in 1997-98.

“The three million children suspended or expelled in a given year may well represent a much larger problem than the threat posed by serious school violence,” suggests that D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute and the Children’s Law Center in their April 2000, report “School House Hype: Two Years Later.”

“School expulsion is a big predictor of more serious and chronic behavior,” says Krisberg of the Oakland, Calif.-based National Council on Crime and Delinquency. “Kids who are expelled from school have bad outcomes in terms of juvenile justice.” He says an analysis of adolescent health data shows that kids who were expelled or suspended from school were much more likely to be victims of violent crime in the subsequent reporting period.

Education Violates Law

As in much of education, what happens to students after they’re expelled depends largely on where they live.

A recent count by the Advancement Project and Harvard’s Civil Rights Project found that 26 states require districts to provide expelled students with alternative education. According to the project’s report, “Opportunities Suspended: The Devastating Consequences of Zero Tolerance and School Discipline,” 18 additional states “authorize” districts to provide such education. But recent assessments by the Education Commission of the States and the National Conference on State Legislatures counted fewer than a dozen states mandating districts to continue educating expelled students.

The Decatur incident sparked a half-dozen initiatives in the Illinois state legislature, including one requiring the immediate enrollment of expelled students in alternative education programs. The measure died in committee.

Colorado passed a law in 1997 requiring school districts to provide services for expelled students upon the request of the student or a parent. “Our sense was that upon expulsion, students weren’t receiving any services at all,” says Dave Smith, director of prevention initiatives at the Colorado Department of Education, who says people began to see a relationship between expulsions and problems like daytime crime. With the mandate, the state set aside funding available to districts on a competitive basis to provide alternative educational services. Smith say about 90 percent of expelled students come from districts that have grant money, and notes that expulsions have gone down since the legislation passed.

Even states that mandate education for suspended and expelled students often exclude certain youths. In Mississippi, the requirement excludes students expelled for possession of a weapon or for commission of a felony. In rural Homes County with a student population of 4,000, between 10 and 20 students are expelled every year – nearly all of them for weapons, drugs or fighting, according to Holmes County Schools Superintendent Judge Nelson. Providing those students with alternative education, says Nelson, would be “in violation of the law.” His small in-school alternative education program is reserved for students who’ve been kicked out for things like “mischief” or refusing to obey a teacher.

Angry Parents

In downtown Decatur, in the back of a former office building, expelled and chronically suspended students from a two-county area (total student pop.: 22,000) attend class at Safe School, one of 126 such schools serving 4,000 students across Illinois. Safe School grew out of 1995 legislation requiring regional educational offices to set up alternative schools for a burgeoning number of expelled and suspended students. Classes are small. Classroom computers provide an opportunity for self-paced learning.

But none of the students expelled for the football brawl attended Safe School. “There was no room in the inn,” says Superintendent Arndt, who says that every alternative program available to Decatur students is filled to capacity. Safe School has slots for 10 high school students, 10 seventh- and eighth-graders and 10 sixth-graders. This year the high school section was full by the fourth day of class.

When the Rev. Jackson took the students to the regional educational office last fall to enroll in alternative programs, protesters were waiting for him. Most were parents of suspended, expelled or academically struggling students whose children were wallowing on alternative programs waiting lists. They were furious that the high-profile expellees were being admitted before their children.

The options in Decatur underscore a reality of alternative education for expelled students across the country: programs run the gamut, from small school-like environments with social workers and counselors on staff to drop-in day centers, home tutoring, and teachers who send assignments home and ask students to turn in work by mail.

Chicago Public School authorities bragged during the Decatur incident that all of its expelled students (about 75 a month) are referred to alternative education programs. But the year before Decatur made news, a Chicago seventh-grader serving a week-long suspension for drawing gang signs in his notebook was arrested for gunning down two teenagers. The only alternative education he got was a reading teacher who paid a home visit to deliver an assignment—just hours before the shooting.

With the Decatur Seven?

One of the seven students initially expelled for the football fight, in victim, was later allowed to withdraw from school to avoid the stigma of an expulsion on his record. He still was not allowed to attend Decatur public schools and had to find an alternative. The remaining six had their expulsions reduced to one year.

Three of the seven went to Futures, Unlimited an alternative school that dates to the 1970s and takes mostly kids at risk of dropping out. Two of the youths graduated on time last May. A third, as well as one of the two graduates, was among the three arrested last month.

One of the seven students attended a program run by the regional education office and the Macon County Probation Department. He was the only high school student in what is essentially a program for 15 middle school students on probation. Classes meet every day in the county building where students’ probation officers work.

Two other students went to the Adult-Teen GED program, where they attended class three hours a day, four days a week. Charles Shonkwiler, regional school superintendent for Macon-Piatt Counties, describes the two football fight students as “third-year freshmen” unlikely to graduate. A third student, who initially moved to Tennessee, returned and attended the GED program for about a month before dropping out. None of the three took the GED, and none are enrolled in the regular Decatur high schools.

Ironically, this GED program is housed in the same building as the filled-to-capacity Safe School, intended for expelled and suspended students. “I never heard of Safe School,” said one of the Decatur seven assigned to the GED program. The GED program handles 700 students a year, most of them high school age. Director Nanci Day-Lemaster estimates that 90 percent of Decatur’s expelled students who continue their education end up in her program.

On a visit to the GED program last month, about 90 percent of the approximately 30 students were black, as were the football youths. At Safe School that day, only three of 21 kids were black. While critics have documented racial disparities in discipline policies, Decatur raises questions of whether there may also be racial disparities in programming for expelled youths.

New Attitude?

The country may be turning a corner in terms of how it deals with disruptive youths. In August the U.S. Education Department awarded $10 million in “Alternative Strategies” grants to 14 school districts and nonprofit organizations to develop programs to reduce suspensions and expulsions, and to educate students who have been suspended or expelled. That’s a strong change in emphasis. A few years ago the Clinton administration was applauding expulsions under the Gun-Free Schools Act as proof that schools were being made safer.

Now William Modzeleski, director of the Education Department’s Safe and Drug Free Schools program, says, “It’s vital that we try to reduce the number of expulsions because we know that denial of educational services has a significant impact not only on the individual, but in the long-term it has an impact on the family and the community. … Denial of educational services should not be used as a punishment. That’s short-sighted.”

In the reauthorization of the Early and Secondary Education Act, the Education Department has proposed modifying the Gun-Free Schools Act to require that students who bring guns to school “be assessed to determine whether they pose an imminent threat of harm to themselves or others. To ensure that these students remain connected to stable supervised environments, students would have to receive appropriate counseling, supervision, and educational services while they are out of school, and appropriate treatment before they can return to school.”

Ronal Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center in Westlake Village, Calif., says the nation’s awakening to the reality that it has thousands of expelled students without the capacity to educate them “underscores the need to think through a much more comprehensive master plan for youth development. This may be one of the next waves that we go to.”

Decatur, like much of the country, hasn’t caught that wave. The school district applied for an Alternative Strategies grant. “They didn’t fare well,” said program coordinator Ann Weinheimer. Decatur scored 50.3 out of 100, ranking 182nd of 220 applicants. Decatur Superintendent Arndt complains that most of the money went to the big-city districts. But winners included the Upper Darby School District in Drexel Hill, Pa., schools in Bryson City, N.C., and the Thompson R2-J School District in Loveland, Colo.

So what would happen if the football game fight broke out this year? With the policy of expulsion for fighting unchanged, and the regional alternative school for suspended and expelled students filled in the first week, school officials say the answer is: same thing.

Resources

Bill Modzeleski
Director
Safe and Drug Free Schools Program
U.S. Dept. of Education
400 Maryland Ave., S.W.
Washington, DC 20202-6123
(202) 260-1856
www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/SDFS/

Kenneth Arndt
Superintendent
Decatur School District #61
101 W. Cerrogordo St.
Decatur, IL 62523
(217) 424-3010
www.dps61.org

John Danielson
Vice President
Community Education Partners, Houston
3003 South Loop W. #530
Houston, TX 77054
(615) 366-0566

Ronald D. Stephens
Executive Director National School Safety Center
141 Dusenberg Dr., Ste. 11
Westlake Village, CA 21962
(805) 373-9977
www.nsscl.org

Barry Krisberg
President
National Council on Crime and Delinquency
1970 Broadway Ave., Ste. 500
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 208-0500

Sidebars:

Decatur Revisited: Expelled Youth Face Life Adrift: Schools for Expelled Youths: Who Pays?
Decatur Revisited: Expelled Youth Face Life Adrift: Suspensions Soar
Decatur Revisited: Expelled Youth Face Life Adrift: Changing Tunes
Decatur Revisited: Expelled Youth Face Life Adrift: Alternative Strategies Grants

Lutton, Linda. "Expelled Youth Face Life Adrift." Youth Today, October 2000, p. 1.

©2000 Youth Today. Reprinted with permission from Youth Today. All rights reserved.