School discipline and mental health support are mostly addressed at the local level; still, state leadership sets expectations for accountability and transparency in disciplinary actions, says Richard Welsh, founding director of the School Discipline Lab, in a K-12 Dive article.
States are using measures from proactively providing mental health supports to loosening restrictions for exclusionary discipline, says Welsh. New proposals and laws aim to allow or ban corporal punishment, remove violent students from classrooms, and restrict preschool suspensions.
- In Arkansas, a $7 million program aims to support students’ mental health by restricting their cellphone use and using telehealth to connect more students to mental health providers.
- In Texas, a multiyear effort to study student mental and behavioral health recommended putting Medicaid funds toward school-based mental health supports and better tracking of interventions, among other initiatives.
- In West Virginia, the state and partnership organizations have collected a wealth of resource documents and expanded training to help schools address student mental health challenges.
All three states are also considering or expected to pass laws allowing schools to implement tougher discipline policies.
And many states are tweaking discipline policies as they put more resources toward supporting students’ mental well-being.
Post pandemic, “we did have an uptick in student misbehavior,” Welsh says. “But I think what also gets missing in that was we also had an uptick in student and teacher needs.”
Research by the American Psychological Association last year found an increase in violence against K-12 educators in the past decade. A survey of 11,814 school teachers and administrators conducted after COVID restrictions ended in 2022 found that 2% to 56% of respondents reported physical violence at least once during the year, with rates varying by school staff role and aggressor.
Students’ mental health needs ballooned during and after the pandemic, according to studies. Making matters worse, administrators and other school staff lacked resources to properly address students’ needs, according to studies.
There is concern that stricter student discipline policies will undermine evidenced-based practices for decreasing challenging behaviors and keeping students in school. And after several years of using more positive behavior supports and restorative practices, there are fears that focusing on tougher discipline policies will disproportionately affect students from marginalized groups.
States can address disparities in discipline through accountability measures and by not mixing school discipline with school safety, says Welsh. “When that happens, we tend to bring safety reforms as a response to student behavior,” he said.
Leaders should view school safety and school discipline concerns as distinct issues with overlapping yet separate potential for improvement and interventions, according to a recent National Education Policy Center report. This means investing in supportive measures to behavior management; providing resources to educators and interventions for students; and addressing causes for students’ challenging behaviors and educators’ perceptions and responses to misbehavior, the report said.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 97 state bills concerning school discipline and behavioral supports have been introduced so far this year. Ten have become law as of June 13.
Some of the bills strengthen discipline policies:
A West Virginia bill allows teachers to remove from the classroom students who are threatening or intimidating other students.
A Texas bill soon to become law extends in-school suspensions from a maximum of three days to the length of time administrators deem appropriate, although they would need to evaluate on the 10th day whether to extend the suspension or bring the student back. A teacher would also be allowed to remove a student from a classroom who “demonstrates behavior that is unruly, disruptive, or abusive toward the teacher, another adult, or another student.”
Arkansas’s “Teacher and Student Protection Act” restricts a student removed from a classroom for violent behavior from re-entering the classroom that has the teacher or student who was the target for the violent behavior.
There is a mix of legislation in other states, including reforms to encourage discipline data analysis, expand behavior interventions, and provide student protections during discipline or emergency situations.
There are 23 states that permit corporal punishment in schools, according to a 2024 National Education Association report.
K-12 Dive
