In
my role as the Chief Equity Officer for District of Columbia Public Schools
(DCPS), I have responsibility for managing our student discipline system. In
July of 2018, DC City Council passed the Student
Fair Access to Schools Act of 2017, increased the reporting
requirements for student discipline data. DCPS has taken a very
proactive approach to ensure that the new discipline legislation is
successfully implemented. In addition, the district is working to address the
disproportionate representation of black students and particularly black males
in its discipline data (Lacoe and
Steinberg, 2018). Some of the key ways that the
district is working to support the implementation of the Act can be found on
the DCPS
website.
What is the Student Behavior Tracker (SBT)?
Student Behavior
Tracker (SBT) is the mandatory district-wide system for documenting all
inappropriate behavior actions and for the proper recording, tracking and
provision of due process. DCPS began using SBT in 2016. The graphic
to the right shows the dashboard for the SBT system. SBT allows district
and school leaders to easily pull data charts using a number of drop-down
menus. The SBT data system provides the following benefits:
- Simplifies
documentation process for Chapter 25 (DCPS Discipline Policy)
- Tracks and
provides updates for due process requirements
- Sends
e-mails to appropriate parties (school leader, district leader,
LEA/504/IEP)
- Tracks
manifestation determination processes
- Generates
letters to parents (proposed and final)
- Attaches documents to incidents
How does the Student
Behavior Tracker (SBT) work?
Principals and/or Assistant Principals
in DCPS are responsible for ensuring that all off-site and on-site suspensions
are documented in SBT. W hen an incident happens on a school campus that
requires a suspension, school staff the enter the data in SBT. The school’s designed student behavior POC is
required to check data for accuracy. On
a weekly basis, the Student Culture team provides reports a district-level
report to student behavior POCs. The
report, which is part of the district’s Continuous Improvement Monitoring Framework,
provides feedback regarding data accuracy.
Principals are provided a similar report on a monthly basis. The report compares data trends from the
previous year and also allows schools to see how their data compares to other
schools. Three reports are provide: (1) A report that compares how dates for
suspensions match the absentee code in the attendance data base; (2) A report
that shares the number of students that have suspensions totaling more than 5, more
than 10 and more than 15 days; and (3) A report that disaggregates the data by
race and ability.
What training is required?
Annually all school leaders and at
least one designated student behavior point of contact (POC) are required to
attend SBT training. Staff members new
to using the SBT system are required to attend a 3.5 hour training. A staff member previously served in this role
is only required to a 2 hour annual update/refresher training.
What type of data is generated by SBT?
The chart to the right highlights one of the many data graphs that can be quickly and easily generated in the SBT. Here, one is able to compare month-by-month suspension trend data for the past three school years. A school leader could easily create this report for their individual school or an Instructional Superintendent could create this report for their subset of schools. One could chose to pull data for all suspension or only one type of suspension, like in-school suspension.
The
charts to the left represents another ways that SBT allows users to examine
student discipline data. In the bar graph to the left, one is able to
examine the changes in the type of suspension over the past three years.
In the bar graph below, one is able to examine the differences in the number of
suspension when in the data is disaggregated by students accessing the
general education curriculum, students accessing special education and students
with 504 plans.
What are others saying about SBT?
The feedback from school
leaders and staff regarding the easy of use of SBT is mixed. Several large high
schools with a high number of discipline issues, suggest that the data entry is
too time intensive. Other schools find the system useful in monitoring
the effective of student behavior interventions and data trends.
Instructional Superintendents who have responsibility for monitoring school discipline
goals, are just beginning to build their capacity to use the platform to lean
into conversations with their principals regarding discipline trends.
Last year, the district
contracted for an audit to examine our school-level practices regarding documenting
student discipline data. Many issues were identify and spoke to the need
for better training, clearer expectation and consistent oversight. My team is
working to develop a variety of training (virtual/web-based, face-to-face, and
interactive) to support end-users in developing the skills and capacity to
effectively capture and use student discipline data. Below is a
high-level overview of our plan to improve our discipline data
reporting.
Bren's Final Thoughts.....
Overall, the SBT system does an excellent job of providing useful
data to examine trends and to ensure compliance with DC mandated reporting
criteria. And when school staff are well-trained and participate in
technical assistance, they find the system easy to use. Like most system
that require end users to input data, the output is only as good as the input.
If you are helping your district to manage its discipline data
systems and have found ways to support training for large groups of
stakeholders with varying roles and expertise, I would love to hear from you!
B22-0584-Student
Fair Access to School Act of 2017. (2019, February 1). Retrieved from http://lims.dccouncil.us/Legislation/B22-0594
Johanna
Locoe and Matthew P. Steinberg (2018).
Rolling Back Zero Tolerance: The
Effect of Discipline Policy Reform on Suspension Usage and Student
Outcomes. Peabody Journal of Education,
93:2, 207-227, DOI 10.1080/0161956X.2018.1435047
Student
Fair Access to School Act and DCMR – Chapter 25 Title 5: Student Discipline. (2019, February 1). Retrieved from https://dcps.dc.gov/chapter25
Thanks for
all that you do to positively impact students!
Bren
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