Almost three years since California joined the vanguard of a burgeoning national movement to sharply curtail the use of student suspensions and expulsions, nearly 9 in 10 Golden State teachers say they still need more training and support for utilizing alternative-discipline techniques, reports EdSource.
In that same survey—an online poll of 3,500 members by the California Teachers Association—40 percent of teachers reported they had received “little or no training” on so-called restorative practices like peer mediation.
The results of the survey underscore a national trend: Educators, both fans and foes of the recent student-discipline-reform efforts, say they aren’t getting the kinds of training and support they need to manage their classrooms without employing exclusionary discipline techniques such as suspensions.
