Fewer students are being expelled or suspended from California’s public schools now that state officials are encouraging educators to address misbehavior with less punitive methods.
State schools chief Tom Torlakson said last week that suspensions and expulsions have dropped markedly in the past two years. A little more than 279,300 students were suspended during the 2013-14 school year, 24 percent fewer than two years earlier.
The 6,611 students who were expelled from their schools represented a 31 percent decline from the 2011-12 year.
Mr. Torlakson said the decrease in suspensions was driven by schools’ relying much less on “willful defiance” as a reason to discipline students.
