IX. Best Practices: Effective Discipline for Students with Disabilities

Students with disabilities-like all students-need safe, secure school environments in which they can effectively learn. Corporal punishment cannot function as part of that environment: it causes pain, injury, and degradation of the student's medical condition, and it is ineffective. Best practices for school discipline for students with disabilities incorporate many of the same techniques as best practices for students without disabilities.[209] Positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) are proven to allow educators to respond to each child, teaching them why what they did was wrong and how they can correct their behavior.

Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports

Nationwide, educators are moving toward positive behavioral interventions and supports  for students with and without disabilities as a way of creating effective school cultures.[210] These practices respond to the underlying reasons for the child's misbehavior, and are consistent with the school's mission of education.[211] Within this structured environment, children can change their behavior and return to class ready to learn.[212]

Students with disabilities can benefit from PBIS and other best practices.[213] As reviewed in a recent report by the Congressional Research Service, the IDEA provides that when the behavior of a child with a disability impedes the child's learning or the learning of others, the IEP team must consider "the use of positive behavioral interventions and supports, and other strategies, to address that behavior."[214] Positive behavior systems create environments where rules and expectations are clear and consistent, are understood and accepted by everyone in the school, and are reliably enforced.[215]

In 46 states around the US, there are schools currently using the school-wide positive behavioral support model, implementing three levels of positive behavior supports:[216]

• Universal: rules, routines, and physical arrangements for all students developed to prevent initial problem behavior;
• Secondary: small group or individual responses for students at risk of problem behaviors, such as mentoring programs and staff support teams for students; and
• Tertiary: more intensive interventions tailored to meet the specific needs of individual students with patterns of problem behaviors.

The PBS approach has been proven to be a highly effective method to reduce problem behaviors and disciplinary referrals.[217] The Centennial School of Lehigh University, which provides educational services for children classified under the IDEA as emotionally disturbed or autistic, implemented PBS and went from having over 1,000 restraint incidents per year to having zero restraint incidents and zero "seclusionary time-outs."[218] Positive behavior systems can also improve academic achievement and teacher job satisfaction. For instance, use of a PBS framework has been correlated with improvements in both math and reading performance.[219] Formal evaluations of PBS have found increased satisfaction among teachers; they feel more effective in their teaching and management of student behavior.[220]

The National Disability Rights Network suggests best practices for implementing PBS and reducing the use of restraints and seclusions in schools.[221] These include: first, leadership and commitment at the highest administrative levels to establishing and actively supporting clear policies with respect to the PBS framework. Second, continuous training of staff, so that all staff working with students with emotional or behavioral disorders are trained in behavioral management that emphasizes crisis prevention and de-escalation. Third, the development of individualized, comprehensive, and relevant behavior intervention plans for individual students, relying on involvement of parents. The goal of PBS and interventions is more than control of problem behavior; it also includes the enhancement of each student's living and learning choices.[222]

Successful Experiences with School Discipline

Many of our interviewees felt that corporal punishment was deeply inappropriate for children with disabilities, and that alternatives exist that allow children to thrive. For instance, one special education teacher in Mississippi described her success with positive, individually tailored discipline responses:

If one of my students gets in trouble in the classroom, typically the teachers send them to me rather than send them to the office [to be paddled]. Typically I let them calm down and send them back to class. If that doesn't happen or it gets to the point where it escalates and it needs to involve an administrator then 99 percent of the time I would say I am in there with the administrator helping him make a decision as to what happens to the student ... We might look at schedule changes, or sitting down with the teacher and the student.... We try a wide variety. Each kid is different.[223]

A teacher in another Mississippi district agreed that positive, individualized alternatives helped in her classroom:

There was a social worker as well, someone we could turn to as an intermediary before sending them to the office, especially if you knew corporal punishment was going to be used there. She would talk to them about the way they were behaving, and set up incentives and goals to see if they could change their behavior. This was a successful way to intervene.[224]

Several parents we interviewed reported that their students, who had been corporally punished previously, responded much better when the school reacted to the child's individual needs. Sharon H.'s elementary-school aged daughter thrived when removed from an abusive environment: "The [new] school district is working with me as a parent to get Brianna what she needs. She has a calming down area, for instance."[225] Rose C., the mother of a boy with autism who was repeatedly beaten, reported that her son responded better to positive behavior interventions at a new school: "the para-professionals redirected him by speaking to him. This de-escalated him. And that made it better, then it was fine ... He gets consistency."[226]

Some parents emphasized the need for training of staff members regarding students' disabilities. May R. spoke of harsh restraints used against her nine-year-old daughter with bipolar disorder: "It's inappropriate, the techniques, the length of time. It could have been avoided by redirection. They didn't have the support, the knowledge, the training, the staff to deal with severely disabled kids."[227] Karen W., the mother of an Arkansas boy with autism, commented, "I begged them to get training. I tried to show them the things that the OT [occupational therapist] had taught me, to get him to calm down ... not one person in that whole building had one day's training in autism."[228]

Ultimately, some parents reported happily that their children were thriving in settings with positive behavior systems. Karen W. said of her son, "He's now on the honor roll, straight A student, in a mainstream school. This is remarkable. A year ago or so, they were saying he could never, ever go back to public school."[229] Rose C.'s son now attends a different public school in Florida with more support for students with disabilities: "It's like a therapy for him. He's much less aggressive. They're all around an oval table, they're all interacting. They're constantly giving instructions as a group. He's thrived. He's doing very well."[230]