TL;DR:
- Traditional in-school suspension (ISS) remains ineffective, sharing negative outcomes with out-of-school suspension. It also correlates with a greater than 25% chance of standardized test failure.
- Trauma-Informed In-School Suspension (ISS) is proposed as a more successful alternative, emphasizing four pillars: safety, transparency, collaboration, and empowerment.
- This approach, seen in rare “unicorn” ISS programs, offers structured consequences while providing academic and behavior support, achieving significant reductions in referrals for both in-school and out-of-school suspension.
Trauma-Informed In-School Suspension vs. Traditional In-School Suspension
In-school suspension hasn’t changed since its inception in the 1960s, and neither has its efficacy.
As with all failed initiatives in the world of education, in-school suspension, or “ISS,” comes from a place of good intention. Prior to the wide adoption of ISS as a disciplinary option, researchers discovered out-of-school suspension (OSS), the practice of sending students home for misbehavior, did nothing to improve behavior and indeed came with a host of negative outcomes for both the students and the community. Though we still use OSS to discipline students today, ISS was created with the intention to at least reduce the number of students sent home from school.
Unfortunately, traditional ISS does not positively impact behavior outcomes either. In fact, it shares the same negative outcomes associated with OSS. The only advantage of traditional ISS over OSS seems to be that it keeps kids off the street during school hours. Concerning efficacy, traditional ISS is neck and neck with OSS. Both are 99% ineffective.
Most alarming for teachers and administrators alike is that a single placement in ISS correlates with a greater than 25% chance of failure on standardized tests.
Any other method of teaching associated with such a high rate of failure would be highly scrutinized or banned altogether. A single day of traditional ISS would be treated as a last resort, a nuclear option, reserved for extreme cases only. Yet the data I’m looking at reveals mass numbers of ISS placements, on nearly every middle and high school campus, every year.
There are outliers of course.
Researchers were able to find a few ISS programs where the right conditions and practices converge, resulting in a substantial decrease in referrals for both ISS and OSS school-wide. This indicates an effective ISS program can significantly reduce behavior issues. But such programs are rare. Approximately 1% of them are achieving what we hoped they would. This means there are at least some “Unicorn” ISS programs out there doing what they were originally intended to do.
What are these programs doing differently?
Enter Trauma Informed In-School Suspension.
What the “unicorns” of ISS are doing, whether they’re aware of it or not, is trauma-informed in-school suspension. Get ready to hear this term a lot over the next few years. Of all the behavior interventions schools are trying to piece together to find something, anything, that will have an impact, trauma-informed ISS is an easy fix. It doesn’t require massive buy-in from staff or a radical culture shift. Plus, it’s as much an academic intervention as it is a behavior intervention.
Two birds, one stone. Or perhaps two unicorns…
The first thing you should know about trauma-informed ISS is that it retains its function as a consequence. Implementing trauma-informed practices in ISS allows for more academic and behavior support, but not to the extent that students enjoy or prefer it to their regular school day. In other words, it should still feel like a consequence to the student. Trauma-informed ISS is actually more structured than its traditional counterpart.
For my own campus and the schools I work with, we have a minimum standard for the outcome of a day of ISS. We call it “Targeted behavior intervention, zero loss of instruction.” To us, this means every student in ISS completes all daily assignments while being provided behavior support specific to their need. This is our minimum expectation.
It’s easy to meet and even to exceed that minimum standard provided the right systems are in place. A detailed examination of those systems would be too long for this one article, but learning how to build them begins with understanding the four pillars of trauma-informed ISS.
The Four Pillars of Trauma Informed ISS
1. Safety
Start with a predictable environment. Students have a right to feel safe in every classroom, and ISS is no different. They should feel secure that the environment is free of yelling, sarcasm, insults, and hostility. A facilitator trained in de-escalation and neutral/calm redirection is paramount. The teacher/facilitator must also provide an atmosphere of safety by ensuring there are no surprises or unexpected redirection. This leads nicely into our second pillar, transparency.
2. Transparency
“Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”- Brene Brown
Trauma does not respond well to unexpected changes or shifts in the school environment. Therefore, we must be as transparent as possible with our learners. Transparency in ISS is simply a matter of communicating our expectations clearly. Not only should students know how we expect them to perform in the ISS environment, but they should also know exactly how we are going to respond when they fail to meet those expectations. Nothing about ISS should ever be unclear to the student.
3. Collaboration
By collaboration, I mean both teacher to student and teacher to facilitator. The student must receive academic support from the ISS facilitator. This means one-to-one help and tutoring whenever possible. For the student to remain connected to the learning environment, teacher-to-facilitator collaboration is also crucial.
Busy work should not be a thing in school; this includes ISS.
Students should be working on current assignments in every subject with assistance as required. This is how we achieve zero loss of instruction. Once current work is completed they should be directed to complete make-up work or spend time with the facilitator backfilling skill deficits. Without collaboration between the facilitator and the student’s teachers, this level of collaboration between student and facilitator would be impossible.
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4. Empowerment
Don’t mistake this for empowering students to break the rules or fall short of expectations. Structure and accountability must always be maintained. However, allowing students to have a voice in how they choose to navigate their day of ISS is a simple form of empowerment that works well to motivate students toward our goal of targeted behavior intervention with zero loss of instruction.
If we collaborate (third pillar) well with a student’s teachers, we should have access to all current assignments for every class. Once this is accomplished, we can allow the student to choose the order they will complete said assignments. There are of course exceptions for time-sensitive priority assignments like campus assessments, but for the most part, students get to have some control over their day.
This final pillar goes far toward helping the student achieve full assignment completion. Then we can go further into makeup work and backfilling deficits. Generally, students will either begin with their most preferred subject or their least. Either way, momentum is generated so each student can achieve more academically than they would in a regular school day.
Utilizing the four pillars of trauma-informed ISS—safety, transparency, collaboration, and empowerment—pays big dividends in behavior and academic improvement for the most at-risk students on your campus. In comparison to other big, high-level buy-in programs like PBIS and restorative practice (both are worthy initiatives that complement trauma-informed ISS), the investment is tiny. All it requires is properly training your ISS facilitators.
Now that you’re aware of what trauma-informed ISS can do, is this something you want to see on your campus?
About Johnathan Cranford
Johnathan spent his first seven years in education teaching on a therapeutic campus for students with emotional disturbance plus five more years as an in-school suspension teacher. After discovering how in-school suspension programs are failing to meet the needs of our most at-risk students, Johnathan created a trauma informed in-school suspension program to address the current disciplinary, academic, and restorative requirements of our students. After successfully coaching other campuses in trauma informed ISS, he made the decision to create a roadmap for others to follow in his latest book The Art of In-School Suspension.
