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Suspended in School: Punished But Still Learning

Gilbert Orellana, a psychiatric social worker, answers questions from Angelica Lopez during a lunch detention group at Garfield High School in Los Angeles. Lunchtime interventions are among the strategies the school is using to reduce out-of-school suspensions.

—Katie Falkenberg for Education Week

By Nirvi Shah

Baltimore

Some of the students at Success Academy here are doing International Baccalaureate-level work. Most of the classes have just five or six students. And every nine weeks, groups of students are required to make major presentations to their classmates and hand in thick binders full of even more- detailed reports.

But this Baltimore public high school isn't for elite students. Admission depends on whether students have done something so serious a regular district school won't have them anymore: assaulting classmates or staff members, possessing or distributing drugs, or wielding weapons.