“Fernando” was a special education student. He could not read or write for all intents and purposes. He was placed in a bilingual math class that I taught a few years ago. When I pointed out that he did not fit, I was told that we “had a legal obligation to meet IEP (individualized instruction plan) demands but also provide as much regular curriculum as possible.”

More and more often, special education students are being placed in regular classes so they can receive instruction in the curriculum we use to get ready for the standardized tests the district must take. Teachers in other states report the same. The intent is to maximize test scores.

But the math in that class was far beyond anything Fernando could tackle. I wrote multiple referrals for this kid because he cursed, he bothered other students, he wrote on his desk, etc. “F” words were flying, gouges were appearing in wood, and hallway shoves were requiring regular, futile conferences about behaviors that only worsened as the year continued. He glared around the room regularly at boys who would wait to cause trouble outside of the classroom.

Eduhonesty: Fernando acted out because he had been placed in a totally inappropriate environment. He should have had a teacher’s aide at the very least to read him the material he could not read himself. After awhile, he had social problems because he was an outsider and his disruptions annoyed the class.

I threw this situation into the blog, although I don’t group Fernando with students in the last few posts. Fernando was only a difficult student because of a wacky administrative decision. In an appropriate math class, I suspect he might have been a genuine pleasure to teach.

I consider the story of Fernando a cautionary tale about what happens when we make desisions based on tests and broad-based policies rather than individual students. Kids don’t just sit still while we spout gibberish at them. If the curriculum has been set too far out of line with the students in the room, misbehavior will be a natural result.

It’s important to understand that many students will go through middle school and high school without a single referral. Just as some students rack up referrals, others rack up academic awards and extra credit points.

Eduhonesty: The posts on referrals are intended to present snapshots of real teaching challenges. Taken out of context, they might make that classroom seem unpleasant or even threatening. For the most part, though, a classroom will be working and learning.

We are sending all of America’s children to school, no matter who they are or what they are like as people. Every year, then, teachers get to see the luck in their draw. In a lucky year, I hardly write any referrals at all. I think I wrote maybe four total for my last group of students. I received solid work to post on my walls, showing effort and creativity.

Some past years have proven less fortunate. A few years have been golden. Teachers say to each other, “It only takes two or three kids.” In a good year, you don’t get those kids and learning proceeds with only a few glitches. When you do get disruptive students, learning depends tremendously on the administration and procedures set up to deal with misbehavior. A well-run school can rescue the learning environment.

Sometimes the numbers of referrals for misbehavior in a school can sound horrifying, especially if we only have the gross numbers. A school may have thousands of referrals over the course of a year. It’s important to remember that a relatively small number of students may generate a great many of those referrals. Dennis from a few posts back was a regular when he bothered to come to school.

Bob was another repeat offender. He used his phone when he felt like it. He used my desk phone when he felt like it. He refused to go to his desk. He refused to get or do his work. He cursed. He yelled. He lied. He had recently been forced to move. He did not like the move. He wanted to go home. He did not like the new school and just about any authority figure in that school.

He was an adolescent in high school throwing the biggest, longest temper tantrum I have ever seen. His only chance to make it through high school will be placement in a special education class for students with behavioral/emotional disorders. In the meantime, all his classes regularly lost learning time due to the latest need to deal with “Bob.” School administration tried valiently to help the kid. He yelled at them too.

Eduhonesty: I see no win here, none at all. Bob is off the chain. I doubt he is going to get to go home, although I might be wrong. Parents in similar situations have caved and sacrified all the money they used to move, returning to the old home for the one child who won’t stop screaming. But if Bob succeeds in getting his family to move with this behavior, I pity anyone who ever gets in the way of something he wants. Bob will be an emotional bully for the rest of his life.

Some referrals are tiny. Tina asked to go to the bathroom. I asked if she had finished her opening work. She said yes and left. I checked. Zero work. This might not even have been a referral except she borrowed a workbook to copy that day (with permission) and then wrote in it, tore out pages and denied she had done so.

Eduhonesty: A small lie would likely never hit the Dean’s office. That’s a classroom management issue with a call home. Two in one day, especially with property damage, ups the stakes and she deserved her referral and detention.

Tina missed many days of school and skirted the edge of failure often. She has fallen years behind in her classes. I doubt she will finish high school. First, you have to care. She doesn’t care, not about academics anyway. She goes to school almost exclusively to socialize and pursue boys. This approach to education hardly ever ends well.

I reread my last post and I thought readers might be upset. You let that kid leave unescorted? You said yourself he might be dangerous.

Eduhonesty: Especially in urban and financially disadvantaged schools — but in schools everywhere — all teachers have kids like Dennis in their classes. The Dennises are a fact of life. In poor districts, so is the lack of security at times. Security guards (or Dean’s Assistants as they are called in some upscale buildings) can only manage so many situations at the same time. Certain times of day are also more problematic, especially lunch times and late afternoon classes. One good food fight can suck up the whole security staff. As I noted earlier, we guarantee an education to everyone who does not bring a gun to school. Drugs and other weapons may also get a kid thrown out, but cursing at teachers is generally safe, at least until you take a punch at the poor teacher. Cursing at teachers carries an added benefit; this behavior makes an in-school detention likely. Dennis liked in-school detention. A lot of kids do. They prop a book open and get left alone.

So teachers regularly make judgement calls. I never would have let Dennis out by himself if I thought he was dangerous that day, even with a teacher to watch his progress. I thought he just wanted some quiet time free of expectations and responsibilities. He got it.

Dennis kept talking to his neighbor so I asked him to change desks. He responded with “a string of profanities” and was asked to go to the Dean’s office. He never arrived.

Eduhonesty: We call this “abusive language” and “defiance.” I assure readers that the whole class was riveted to this interchange by the end. In an ideal world, a security guard escorts Dennis to the Dean’s office, but sometimes security is too busy to arrive quickly (Frankly, I’ve experienced a number of times when they never arrived at all.) so I’m pretty sure I just sent him out the door, referral in hand, to staunch the flow of curse words and get the class back on track. I’m not allowed to leave the classroom for liability reasons. I most likely asked some other teacher to watch his progress down the stairs, if anyone was in the hallway, but somehow he made his escape before he reached the Dean’s office.

He got one hour of in-school suspension for cursing me out, a fairly typical penalty. I could have raised a ruckus about that, but we were all clear this boy had some real emotional issues. A coworker once said that he thought this student would be the one to shoot up the school if it ever happened. I did not disagree. That boy entered school angry every day. The social workers were unable to help much. He reacted much better to men than women — but the available social workers were all women.

The saving grace to this situation — this is a sad, sad post — was that Dennis missed an enormous amount of school. On a good day, he stayed home.

I don’t write many referrals compared to some of my peers, but I have collected a fair number over time. In the next few weeks, I plan to change names and some details as I lay out the problems these referrals highlight. I started with “Deirdre” in the previous post.

Eduhonesty: A referral may represent one student but it rarely represents one learning loss. Deirdre did little harm to the classroom environment when she skipped, although she’s a bright girl and her contributions would have improved my class, but most of these referrals represent time lost from learning for the entire class. Any time the disruption box is checked, which is most of the time, the entire class lost learning, not just the student who I referred to the Dean’s office.

She skipped a lot of classes this year. Because this was her senior year and she had already been admitted to a state college, no one did much about this skipping. Teachers wrote the occasional referral. Deans talked to the girl. But in a school desperate to get students into any college, a school where entry into community college earns you a big blown-up poster on the hallway walls, Deirdre was a success story. Counselors talked to the girl. Teachers talked to the girl. She went her own way, regularly turning in late assignments in a school where the penalties for late work are minimal to nonexistent.

Eduhonesty: I’m hoping it all works out for Deirdre. She’s a smart girl and when the bar is raised, she may be able to adjust. She is going to be slammed up the side of the head by the academic requirements coming at her, though, and this girl has a poor work ethic. She was able to function in high school without a better one. Will she adapt in time? She will have to get herself up next year and will have to make it to class without nagging from concerned authority figures. She will have to make herself complete assignments on time.

Those big-money majors? I am guessing they are out of her reach. The rigorous demands for engineering and computer science majors are likely to be too big of a shock. If she survives college, she’ll probably end up in a social sciences major. We did not do right by this girl, but teachers knew better than to mess with this willful student. She had a lot of attitude and the administration loved Deirdre. She needed a firmer hand. Instead, the authority figures in her life endlessly told her not to do something she already knew she should not do anyway.

Let’s hope college works out better than I think it will.

We are not all equal.

A classroom is not a democracy.

It’s no surprise if kids don’t understand this fact, though. We negotiate too often. We allow class votes too often. This sharing of power has become embedded in our culture. Some parents let the children pick where to go to dinner, which is perfectly reasonable if parents make it clear that this choice is a treat, not a right. Parents let their children walk out of the house in outfits that barely cover the essentials, wearing fabrics so sheer that any coverage may be moot. Parents encourage children to question authority, often without realizing they are doing so. They argue with the principal over dress code violations, sometimes in front of their child.

“If you need to go to the bathroom you go don’t worry what the teacher says,” they tell their child in text messages that break the no-phone-in-the-classroom rules.

Eduhonesty: This post is for parents. If you make it clear that you will back your child regardless of the rules he or she has broken, that child will not follow the rules. After awhile, your child will be regarded as difficult. What happens afterwards depends on staff, rules and administration. I can tell you that teachers tend to give more attention to less difficult children, whether they ought to or not. Administrators tend to believe the worst of difficult children, even before the facts are in.

Adults are still in charge and most of them realize this. Children benefit from understanding they need to follow the rules, even rules that may not make sense to them or sometimes their parents, rules such as the one that forbids skin-tight pants. Learning to obey rules helps prepare students for future life. Picking and choosing rules to follow can only be a loser for a child, and in the long-run for a parent. It’s a short step from rejecting the school’s leggings rule to rejecting a parental curfew. To a child who learns it’s OK to disobey one adult, after awhile all adults may come to look pretty much alike.

Admin: “How much testing did you do this year”

Teacher: “We had one week of tests in April. To prepare for the April test, we had approximately 10 days of testing before that. After our standardized test, we still had another six days of testing.”

Admin: “What was that for?”

Teacher: “Uhhh, to be honest, I don’t really know. The writing test was perhaps useful because the kids are not tested in writing in 8th grade, but why we had to have three additional reading and math tests is beyond me.”

Admin: “How do kids feel about this?”

Teacher: “Especially at the end of the year, many are angry. Kids realize that all the testing cannot be justified by teachers and administrators as preparation for the state test because testing continues until almost the last day of school. The state test is over in April.”

Admin: “About how many days did your district spend on testing this year?”

Teacher: “Around twenty-one days.”

Admin: “That’s more than one-tenth of the average school year.”

Eduhonesty: My own students spend more than 10% of the school year testing too. The opportunity cost in lost instructional time is staggering. The testing juggernaut needs to be stopped.