Teachers have experienced many bad directives over the years, and this series has been highlighting the worst of them.

No to Zero-Tolerance Policies

Rebecca Alber teaches in the School of Education at UCLA. She has been a high school English teacher, literacy coach, and consulting editor at Edutopia:

A zero-tolerance stance in schools is not effective. Let me explain. Children are developing human beings—cognitively, emotionally, and socially. They make mistakes. Sometimes big ones and more than once.

Consequences when they make a mistake are important so they are held accountable and learn and can continue to grow and take responsibility for their actions. Unfortunately, a zero-tolerance stance does not allow for that. Kids get into fights, or disobey dress codes, or cheat on tests. After that warning or two, kids will still take out cellphones during class to text best friends. These wrongs all create an opportunity for them to learn when a reasonable consequence follows.

But with a zero-tolerance stance, the child is “dealt with” using harsh punitive measures. If the zero tolerance leads directly to suspension or expulsion, this means they are banned (for a few days or forever) from the school. How do youngsters learn from this? I doubt they do.

In one high school where I worked, the administration decided to instill a zero-tolerance policy for wearing baseball caps because it was seen as a way for students who were in gangs to show their gang affiliations. Students were told that if they wore a cap, it would equate to an immediate three-day suspension.

Who ended up primarily responsible for monitoring and reporting (policing) this zero-tolerance stance on caps? Teachers. Was the policy effective? Not for long because it was not manageable for teachers (we were overwhelmed). Ultimately, it created a substantial riff between teachers and administration and administration and parents. And I don’t think any lessons were really learned by kids from their suspensions.

What is the alternative to a zero-tolerance stance? Restorative-justice practices implemented in schools offer better results and a healthier school community than punitive tactics such as zero-tolerance policies. Restorative practices are humanistic, acknowledging that as humans we all make mistakes, while at the same time requiring accountability and responsibility from those who have done the harm.

Restorative practices create an opportunity for a student who has done harm to take responsibility and act in repairing the harm they have done. This is something we hope all children learn to do as it is a trait that will serve them well while in school and throughout life.

Using ‘Retakes’

Amber Chandler is the author of several education books, as well as a blogger for ShareMyLesson.com. She was the 2018 AMLE teacher of the year and a finalist for New York state Teacher of the Year in 2022:

The worst rule I ever had to live with was that if I were giving a retake of a test or quiz that I must average the two together. This rule was long-standing, and it has taken many years to sway others to my way of thinking: A grade should measure the student’s
knowledge or ability at a particular time, but if that knowledge or ability grows, that number should be what is recorded as their grade, not the average of the two.

For me, it is simple. An average of the two grades is not an accurate representation of what they know, and that is why I have had no problem taking the new grade. Some may argue that there has to be a penalty because they didn’t learn it at a specific time, but I’d argue that differentiation comes in many forms, and one that is often overlooked is process.

If the process for learning a certain set of knowledge for one student can occur within a week, that is great, but if the process for learning that same set of knowledge takes more practice, then the latest iteration of the grade should reflect what they actually know, not penalize them for taking longer to learn.

Those who disagree with me—and there are many—often argue that the retake puts an added burden on the teacher. With the plethora of materials online, it is easy to help students find suitable tools to use in studying and then after remediation give them another, similar test (also readily available online or to generate with AI).

For example, if students don’t know literary terms, I can ask them to create a Kahoot or Blooket and share it with me, or they can make a slideshow review that I can share with other students who might be struggling. When they are actively creating as a part of their remediation, they often perform much better. While retakes are sometimes considered controversial in the first place, the score recorded in the learning-management system (LMS) should accurately reflect their current level of expertise.

Most LMS have a notes section for each assignment, and I always make a note that says “Original grade 55; current grade reflects remediation,” which will clue in anyone who might want to understand what a grade represents. If the goal is for students to want to learn and grow, we can’t tell Johnny that we finished that unit last week and not offer a way forward.

Treat Teachers as Professionals

Ryan Huels is an elementary school principal in Oregon, Ill.:

One thing that continues to dumbfound me as a new administrator that I experienced as a teacher and saw fellow administrators do is to dictate what professionals in the field of education wear to work.

Worse yet, I have seen administrators charge money for staff to wear jeans or other preferred clothing to work. Nothing is more degrading and disrespectful to staff than trying to micromanage what they wear to work and then demand they pay money to wear what they want to work.

My message to my staff is clear: Wear what allows you to best do your job each day, whether that be jeans and a T-shirt or business casual attire. A happy staff is often a more engaged staff who will find it refreshing to be able to focus on what really matters—impacting the lives of others as opposed to archaic dress-code policies.

The Need for Flexibility

Cecelia Gillam, Ed.D., is an author of a motivational book called Black Girl, Black Girl You are Amazing!:

The worst directive that I have experienced as a teacher was being told that I could not continue using a lesson-classification system in my classroom. The classification consisted of naming assignments according to must-do, should-do, and aspire-to-do in my classroom.

This is important so learners know what skills they absolutely must master in order to move forward to the next lesson. When a lesson has the distinction of must-do, those are the essential assignments that will allow a student to gain mastery in the lesson. Think of this as acquiring the basic level of knowledge for the lesson to help the student meet mastery. A lesson activity that moves into should-do are activities that will allow the student to delve more deeply into the concepts. This level is moving up from the basic level of achievement into synthesis and analysis if we were likening it to Bloom’s taxonomy.

Finally, assignments that are aspire-to-do are those that will be at the highest level of Bloom’s taxonomy. Once a student makes it to this level, they truly have a great command over the concept and have achieved a distinction of being advanced on the lesson content.

This verbiage had to be removed from my lessons, my LMS, and my speech in the classroom according to my administrators. There was no explanation as to why this was problematic. The only thing I was told was that I had to discontinue providing student choice in my classroom effective immediately. I was devastated because I could not understand where this directive was coming from.

I was also told that if I disobeyed this order, I would be written up. Sad to say, I was written up for standing up for what I believed in. I no longer felt the traditional model of teaching was meeting the needs of my students. With a desire to seek more clarity on this erroneous directive, I decided to conduct my own personal investigation.

I learned that a child of a prominent district leader had complained to the school administration. The student complaint was based on their own misunderstanding of the process despite the training all students received.

To resolve this matter in a professional way, rather than shutting the entire process down with little regard to how the lesson classification was impacting other students, administration should have afforded all parties involved a conversation about the concerns. I had evidence that the structure was working.

This past school year, I did a case study on two special education students using the classification system. Both students showed great academic growth in science. The model afforded each of them the capability of working at their own pace. In turn, the students earned A’s in the course. Most students praised the process and spoke highly of the autonomy they had to access the learning no matter the level of knowledge - they could choose which of the three types of lessons they wanted to do when they wanted to do them.

I made the decision to move on to another school and leave the community I loved and called home for 18 years because of my displeasure with the current administrative team. It is my hope that more administrators start supporting their teachers.

The best-case scenario here would have been for the administrators to take the time to learn about the pedagogy behind the process to make an informed decision based on facts and not feelings. Too many decisions in education are based on feelings and not facts. Too many times administrators make quick decisions before fully taking the time to vet the information.

The students at this school are now going to miss out on a teacher who was bringing an innovative approach to teaching. The students who needed this structure the most are going to be left behind to struggle and their voices go unheard. It all goes back to social capital and socioeconomic status. Which continues to cause the great divide in education.

Using the lesson-classification system of must-do, should-do and aspire-to-do, students are able to work at their own pace thereby leveling the playing field and truly ensuring equitable outcomes for all students.

Thanks to Rebecca, Amber, Ryan, and Cecilia for contributing their thoughts!

Today’s post answered this question:

What has been the worst rule or directive you have ever experienced as a teacher, why was it such a bad rule or directive, and what should have been said, instead?

In Part One, Bobson Wong, Larisa Bukalov, Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Alexander F. Tang shared their experiences.

In Part Two Vernita Mayfield, Marcy Webb, and PJ Caposey offered their choices.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

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