The perceptions of teachers and administrators towards the effectiveness of the in-school suspension program and its impact on student discipline and learning in a large Metro Atlanta school district, 2002

The purpose of this paper was to examine the effectiveness of an In-School Suspension program to improve student discipline and learning. The program required teachers to send their discipline problem cases to the in-school suspension classes rather than seeking out of school suspension. The in-school suspension classes were taught by paraprofessionals and supervised by the assistant principals for discipline. Theoretically, it was expected that teachers' perceptions of the effectiveness of the plan would be related to improvement in discipline and learning in the classrooms when controlled by school and demographic variables. Data were collected by a questionnaire constructed by Persaud (01) for this purpose. The Cronbach Alpha reliability for the scales in the instrument was in the range of .92 to .98 except for one scale (.82). The instrument was administered to all teachers in all middle and high schools in a large metro Atlanta school district (over 100,000 students) with over 500 teachers responding. The results indicated that in a factor analysis of the data, teachers' rating of the in-school suspension plan is negatively loaded in Factor I with student discipline and learning, leadership style, parental cooperation, leadership supervisory practices, workshops, and student responsiveness to teaching, indicating an inverse relationship. Apparently, teachers rated student discipline, learning, and parental cooperation as attributing to the leadership supervisory culture when they rated the in-school suspension plan ineffective. In regression analysis, in-school suspension plan effectiveness was inversely explained by student discipline and learning, leadership supervisory style, and parental cooperation, in that order, while student discipline and learning was positively explained by parental cooperation and inversely explained by in-school suspension programming effectiveness, followed by smaller but significant contributions by student responsiveness to teaching and the administrators' perceptions about the effectiveness of the in-school suspension program. It is recommended that a long-term plan is required for making teachers less dependent on the in-school suspension program by increasing their cooperation with parents and improving the quality of teaching to obtain the responsiveness of students