Child Advocates are charging Texas public schools with punishing the state's youngest students too harshly.
As The Austin American-Statesman reports,last year Texas passed a law saying that students in Pre-K through second grade could only be suspended if they brought a gun to school, or committed drug offenses or acts of violence.
However, the law did not stipulate how often the students could receive in-school suspension, better known as ISS. And critics are saying that many very young students are being overloaded with in-school punishments.
Stephanie Rubin is the CEO of the nonprofit Texans Care for Children. She says the policy can do developmental harm to Young Texas students. “Just as they’re figuring out what they think about school and if they fit in, a suspension tells them they don’t fit in and they’re a bad kid,” Ruben said.
During the 2015-2016 school year, Texas students in the pre-kindergarten through second grade received over 100,000 suspensions.
