For the past three years, teachers have cited student misbehavior as one the top causes of low morale in Education Week’s State of Teaching Project. More than 1 in 3 teachers reported student behavior was “a lot worse” in the 2025-26 school year than in the prior year, according to a survey of more than 5,800 teachers conducted by the EdWeek Research Center.
Helping aspiring teachers build better student discipline strategies can improve teacher retention and reduce exclusionary discipline for students, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality.
The group has released a new framework calling for preservice teacher education programs to give aspiring teachers both explicit instruction in behavior management techniques and opportunities to practice responding to challenging student behaviors before they enter the classroom.
The NCTQ framework recommends every teacher preparation program explicitly show educators how to:
- Understand their own and students’ behaviors, emotions, and cultures;
- Establish clear expectations and structure for the classroom; and
- Respond to student behaviors, including reinforcing good behavior and treating misbehavior as “a skill gap rather than a character flaw.”
The framework also calls for preparation programs to give future teachers more opportunities to practice specific intervention strategies for different groups of students.
Estefani Robles learned and practiced classroom management in her teacher residency in the Fresno Unified school district, located in California’s San Joaquin Valley. She has spent this year working with her district coach to test different strategies and classroom structures to improve her students’ social skills. While working through an assignment in Second Step, a social-emotional-development curriculum, Robles listened to her students explain what help they’d want if they fell out of a chair.
While most students wanted a hand to help them get up, one boy said he wanted no help. “I really took that moment to be like, OK, sometimes people really don’t need that physical help; maybe they just want space,” she says.
Practicing intervention strategies for students with disabilities and getting to understand her students better has helped her improve their behavior in class, Robles says.
“They know it’s OK to feel whatever it is that they’re feeling, but they also know that there are expectations once they are back and regulated,” Robles says. “Building trust and being firm but kind has been really important with them.”
Education Week
