In close to three decades of teaching special education at the Nicholson STEM Academy in Chicago, Winnie William-Halls had never taken a long break from her career. That changed last year—and it was student behavior that put her over the edge.
A student she had worked closely with, supported, and cheered on swore at William-Halls when the teacher gave her a 10-week progress report. She hadn’t performed well. The normally poised William-Halls, frustrated from dealing with a group of defiant students—without, she said, much direct support from her administration—lost her cool. She screamed back.
“It hurt my feelings because not only do I give as much of myself as I can in the classroom, I spend money out of my pocket to bring snacks, treats, pencils. I didn’t understand why this young lady said that to me,” said William-Halls.
Willam-Halls took a six-week sabbatical to work on her mental health and think about whether she wanted to continue teaching or pivot to another job.
She isn’t alone. Nationwide, both new and veteran teachers report grappling with deteriorating levels of student behavior in classrooms. Students are abrasive, disrespectful, refuse to complete tasks, and in some severe cases, violent towards their peers and teachers.
Over the last 30 years, the prevailing discourse on how to discipline students has swung wildly. In roughly the two decades that followed the year 1990, “zero tolerance” policies recommended a clean barrier between those who transgressed and those who were able to follow rules. Students might face more serious consequences like out-of-school suspensions or being placed in alternative schools. But these policies, research showed, could often overlook inherent economic and social fractures—students of color and those with disabilities were typically disciplined at higher rates than their white peers.
More recently, schools have tried to follow a gentler, more “restorative” approach to student discipline. The idea is to keep students in classrooms and extinguish conflict through conflict-resolution practices and in-school suspensions. The second approach, while more inclusive and arguably kinder, has had limited success in curbing behavioral issues, and it has garnered criticism—largely from teachers—for letting students off the hook with few to no consequences.
As schools grapple with the best approaches for disciplining students, teachers and principals have found that when parents get involved in the conversation, they act as a third rail. Parent involvement, teachers note, can help reinforce good behavior at home and in school. Yet it can also derail the school’s efforts to discipline students. When schools enforce consequences—suspensions, detentions, or exclusion from extracurriculars—it’s often parents who try to shield students.
“When you call parents to speak to their child or sit in the classroom with them, either you’re not getting an answer or you’re getting negative feedback,” William-Halls said. “As if you’re saying something bad about their child. We’re just looking for their support to change the behavior.”
Why parents defend bad behavior
New national data appear to back up teachers’ anecdotal perceptions about a downward slide in student behavior. In a nationally representative survey of more than 5,800 teachers by the EdWeek Research Center, part of our The State of Teaching Project, 35% of respondents said their students’ behavior was “a lot worse” than last year. Reports of improvement were scant.
Educators have offered any number of explanations for these patterns. For one, habits developed during the pandemic, when students weren’t bound by school rules or structures have lingered. Students lost the ability to interact with peers or their teachers, and had too much unsupervised screen time, said Mike Perry, the principal of Greenville Middle School in Greenville, Ga.
“We noticed that students went from 0 to 100 very quickly. They didn’t have the skills to cope when they got upset,” he added. He and his staff have had to consciously rebuild, or introduce what is acceptable: “We had to reteach how school works.”
Another potential factor is the academic fallout from the pandemic, which put many students behind grade level on reading and math. Students often behave poorly to shield what’s going on with them academically, said William-Halls.
But there’s another, overarching factor at work, educators say: Students just aren’t scared of consequences. “It’s absolutely amazing the things students will say and do just to see if they can get away with it,” said William-Halls.
Teachers, for one, largely fault parents for that. Asked as part of the EdWeek survey what could have a “major positive impact” on student behavior, over half of respondents wanted limits on how much parents can undermine the consequences their kids get. And 58% said parents need instruction on how to teach their kids how to behave appropriately in a school setting. The only factor topping that they saw positively influencing student behavior? Smaller class sizes.
Why do parents seem so resistant to backing up educators when it comes to misbehavior? Often it can feel like pointing fingers at their parenting style, said Whitney Aragaki, a high school science and career-technical education teacher from Hawaii. It can make parents defensive and generally unhelpful in getting to the root cause of why their kids are acting out.
“[It] stems from this idea that they think I’m judging them based on their child’s behavior, and I’m not,” Aragaki said. “I try to maintain this throughline with parents.”
Stuck in the middle: School leaders
Teachers can’t manage disgruntled parents alone. They expect their administrators to step in when disciplinary issues escalate. As part of the same EdWeek survey, close to half the teacher respondents said that “more support” from school leaders in dealing with discipline would have a major impact on how well they manage student behavior in their classrooms.
But lending unwavering support to teachers is tricky for school leaders when parents disagree with a consequence or assign blame elsewhere. School leaders must negotiate peace—but they also must ensure that students learn their lesson from disciplinary matters.
Rahsheem Hollis bumps up against this problem often as the assistant principal of the 1,200-student Hodgson Vocational Technical High School in Newark, Del. With an office right at the school’s entrance, Hollis often becomes the first target of an irate parent storming in with a complaint.
Over his 20-year career, he’s realized that most of the time, angry parents aren’t driven by personal ire: “They’re not yelling at you. They’re yelling at the situation,” he said.
Still, it can be uncomfortable. In February, Hollis had to get the school resource officer when a parent approached him, screaming. It turned out that a student had felt picked on by their teacher who had told them to pay more attention in class. The student told their parents that they felt unsafe around the teacher.
“It was hard to de-escalate them. But sometimes parents just want to be heard,” said Hollis. He invited the student, the parents, and the teacher to a conference in his room, which allowed the parents to discuss the statements that caused their child to react. The teacher, in turn, had the opportunity to explain his intentions, and made it clear to the parents that he hadn’t intended to single out the student.
Like Hollis, Perry, the Georgia principal, has had to broker peace between parents who offered excuses for their child’s disrespectful behavior and a teacher who insisted it stop.
“At first it was very teacher-against-parent. But as we talked more, the parents opened up and we learned the child was dealing with a lot of grief. They’d lost someone close,” said Perry. The solution was to connect the family with a mental health counselor.
Even if they disagree with the eventual consequences, having teachers join and be part of the solution helps Perry show that he has his teachers’ backs. Sometimes, Perry said, it’s just a matter of perception. What teachers perceive as disrespect may just be the student’s way of expressing themselves.
“We want teachers to view us as allies, not enemies. We want our teachers to feel supported, but at the same time, we can’t just put every kid that acts up in class, out of school. We’ve got to work through the process,” Perry added.
Getting parents on board with consequences
Another way school leaders can show teachers they’ve got their back: Head off behavior problems before they reach the classroom. That takes a bit of data work and scouting, said Elizabeth Nelson, the associate principal of Pilgrim Park Middle school in Elm Grove, Wis.
In the 2022-23 school year, the school saw 822 referrals come up in a student population of 900, said Nelson. Close to half the referrals came from the same group of 20 kids, the data showed. These students had disrupted class, been insubordinate with a teacher, or refused to follow school routines.
“Teachers were frustrated ... it was scary [for them] to not be in control of their classroom,” said Nelson.
Nelson had to act quickly to curb referrals. She used data to identify the 20 students who had racked up the most complaints and invited them and their parents into a “Strong Start” meeting at the beginning of the new school year. Nelson asked students simple questions about their experiences: What are they looking forward to? What makes them nervous? What was a highlight from last term?
“It’s a really positive meeting. I try to give students a voice and the parents can see what I’m all about,” said Nelson.
The Strong Start meeting establishes a base to have more complex or difficult conversations later. “If at some point, I’m going to be correcting your child’s behavior this year, I want you to know that I’m a person who cares about them,” she added.
Nelson preps carefully for the meetings—she dresses down and puts candy out to make the families more comfortable. She eases students into the conversation with a few non-sequiturs before moving into talking about any conflict or concerns the students may be dealing with. Parents watch and are invited to react to what their children are saying, or how they’re feeling. This is key for everyone to start the school year on the same page.
Referral rates at Pilgrim Park fell by 40% between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. In-school suspensions fell by 59%, and out of school suspension by 69%.
Nelson advises her teachers, too, to call or meet parents face-to-face to hash out their disagreements about student behavior. That can mean a difficult shift in mindset, said Nelson. “I think important that we remember that as parents, it’s their job to be their child’s biggest advocate. [When they disagree] they’re not giving us a hard time, they’re having a hard time,” Nelson added.
Teachers need training on behavior. They want administrators to step in
Finally, teachers say they too need training on student behavior before things get too bad—or an angry parent gets involved.
William-Halls, the teacher from Chicago, ultimately decided against quitting the profession. She came back refreshed after her sabbatical and found that the student who had pushed her past her limits was apologetic. They hugged it out at the student’s 8th grade graduation, William-Halls said.
While she’s put a lid on this particular case, William-Halls said student behavior remains an issue in her school. She was one of the few teachers at her school to be trained on restorative conversations with students and parents. The high rate of teacher turnover at the school means there aren’t many like her.
More training, especially for new teachers who struggle to control or navigate student behaviors in their classrooms, would help, said William-Halls. A good beginning might be to create explicit training modules—with examples and exercises—to put more generic social-emotional learning curricula into practice. She follows simple practices like checking in with her students as they walk into the class or keeping a close watch on a student who may be struggling academically and exhibiting their struggles by being defiant or rude.
Perry, the principal from Georgia, has woven some of these SEL practices into planning time with teachers. He’s created a school-wide culture where teachers focus first on all the positive things about their classroom and get students to list them out. It’s helped to create a “culture of celebration” among students and teachers, which helps improve the mood in classrooms.
And ultimately, when it comes to parents, William-Halls said administrators have a role to play in establishing a good rapport from the beginning in just making schools places where parents want to be.
“We could even offer some space in the school for a parent group to meet once a week. I think that would make parents feel like they’re part of the school community,” said William-Halls, “instead of just hearing from us when their child has done something wrong.”