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DISCIPLINE REFERRALS IN

AN URBAN MIDDLE SCHOOL Implications for Discipline and Instruction

H. JEROME FREffiERG

University cf Houston

T. A. STEIN

State University of New York, Plattsburgh

GALE BARKER

University of Houston

The in-between elementary and high school years, the 'middle' years, are years filled with unprecedented change for most students. For many young people, approximately between 11 and 14 years old, these are years with opportunities in which paths to successful futures are already being laid. But for others, the middle years are a time of tunnoil and change from which they never fully recover. This turmoil is reflected in behaviors that disrupt the instructional process and affect the overall learning climate of schools. This article examines some of the issues and implications for discipline problems in middle school and presents a study of discipline referral data collected from one middle school during the month of October 1991.

BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS IN MIDDLE SCHOOLS

A large urban district in the Southwest with nearly 200,000 students reports on the most serious discipline problems by campus and by the level of action taken. In a 1991-1992 districtwide 'Disciplinary Action Report' (Sanchez, 1992a), the district reported that 13,331 middle school students (Grades 6-8) were involved in misbehaviors that resulted in in-school or out-of^school suspensions, expulsions, referrals to the police, and bus suspensions or exclusions. Middle school students in the district accounted for 55.7% of all disciplinary actions across the district and 64.2% of in-school suspensions and 67.2% of out-of- school suspensions throughout the district (K-12). The district also surveyed more than 64,000 secondary students

EDUCATION AND URBAN SOCIETY； Vol. 27 No. 4, August 1995 421-440

copy; 1995 Sage Publications, Inc.

421

from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.

(Grades 7-12) for a school climate study in December 1991 (Sanchez, 1992b). The report found the following:

Only 39% of secondary students responded that their school was a safe place (p. 31). The report followed this finding with: This is significant because the instructional process is facilitated by a physically secure environment. Thus, at the secondary level, instruction may be impeded by an environment perceived by students as unsafe' (p. 31). The report concluded the following for secondary students:

Also, only 30% of secondary students agreed that students at their school get to class on time. In addition, 27% of the secondary students responded that their fellow students were well behaved. These findings are areas of concern since they indicate a classroom atmosphere that would undermine instruction. For instance tardy students as well as misbehaving students disrupt class routine, which detracts from time spent by all students on instructional tasks. (p.31)

Concerns by educators and the public for orderly learning environments has been consistent for many years, as student misbehavior continues to be ranked as a leading problem by the American public (Elam, Rose, amp; Gallup, 1994). There also is accumulating evidence from recent meta-analyses of variables that affect school learning that classroom management has one of the greatest influences on school learning. A meta-analysis of factors that contribute to learning in school by Wang, Haertel, and Walberg (1993) identifies classroom management as being at the top of the list of five factors that influence school learning. Student misbehavior is a contributing factor in teachers wanting to leave the teaching profession.

The National Institute of Educations (NIE; 1978) report to Congress, “Violent Schools—Safe Schools: The Safe School Study Report to Congress,reported that the publics fears concerning lack of discipline and violence in schools are well founded. These fears are especially appropriate in the middle grades, where, according to Lipsitz (1984), schools appear to have the greatest difficulty becoming disciplined communities.

AGGRESSIVENESS AND VIOLENCE

Although school has been traditionally viewed as a safe place for children to be, in actuality, young urban teenagers run a greater risk of violence in school than anywhere else, with the exception of high-crime neighborhoods, according to the NIEs (1978) report to Congress. This trend of violence in schools has continued into the 1990s. More recent statistics based on a national survey of school violence show the following:

Of 11,000 junior high and high school students surveyed nationally in 1987, almost half the boys, and more than one-fourth of the girls, reported having taken part in at least one fight during the previous year that involved fists or weapons. More than a third had been physically threatened, 14 percent had been robbed, and 13 percent had been attacked while at school or on a school bus. (FrankHn, 1991, p. 126)

Gottfredson, Gottfredson, and Hybl (1993) found, in a multiyear study of eight middle schools, that students who have behavior problems in school as adolescents also drop out of school, use drugs and alcohol, and participate in delinquent behavior at higher rates than do their peers (p. 180). A longitudinal Swedish study of early aggressive behavior by Stattin and Magnusson (1989) reported relationships between earlier behavior problems in school and later problems. In a study of 1,102 highly aggressive boys and girls from a Swedish community, data were collected when the students were 10 and 13 years old; the children were then followed through die age of 26 years. Stattin and Magnusson found that approximately 3 times as many boys in the aggressive group were l

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