We are once again at battle with my kid's school. Chris is on a rampage, though the school has not responded to his email yet. He will take it further and further until they do.
Some genius decided that the schools must create a creative "Positive Behavior" program to meet certain requires of "No Child Left Behind". I'm sure some of you have read my opinion of No Child Left Behind and it's utter failure to do anything to help the problems it was intended to "fix". So, over the extended Christmas break (those "Staff Development Days" that required me to take extended vacation days from work), the school came up with a program to teach our kids positive behavior.
It STINKS!!
The first school day of each month, the kids are given a plastic wrist band. This is the newer kind of hospital bracelet - like something you would see in a water park to indicate you've paid for a day or two of fun. They are temporary tags. YET - our kids are expected to wear these wrist bands for an entire month. They don't come off (or are not SUPPOSED to come off), so they have to wear this thing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Needless to say, the kids are breaking them off - sometimes on purpose (Zachary used his teeth - he wanted to see how they were put together), sometimes they break. Again, not intended to be worn for 30 days, all day every day. Philip's was attached too loose. It slides off of his wrist. We can't adjust the size once it is fitted on the wrist (a staple was tried - but the staple kept poking him and hurt).
The purpose of this bright orange lovely plastic jewelry that must not be removed from my kids wrist? Each time they have a behavior infraction, they receive a big X on the bracelet with a Sharpie. After five X's, the wrist band is cut off. You don't get a new one until the next month.
Where is the positive? Each Friday, the kids receive some sort of treat for still having their wrist bands. The first week it was ice cream. The second week, it was popsicles. They get rewarded for not having lost their wrist band due to disciplinary action.
Zachary's band was "broken" the first day. He was to carry it in his pocket for a while - some teachers said to do that, some said that doesn't count! He missed out on the ice cream party the first week because the band wasn't attached to his wrist.
Philip's kept falling off. One night he couldn't find it. I couldn't find it. The next day, he came home with a note "your child did not have the behavior wrist band on today and therefore could not receive the X that was earned. He is now out of the positive behavior program for the remainder of the month. He will get a new wrist band next month". We could not send the wrist band back to school the next day to obtain the X.
I found it in the laundry, it was SO LOSE that it came off with his sweatshirt and was stuck inside of the sleeve. It only had 2 X's. Now, with the 3rd X he was unable to continue and lost all priveledges despite not having reached the 5 X marks. When he came home from school Friday, he sobbed because he was unable to have a popsicle with his class even though he only had 3 infractions in the month. At that point, Chris was LIVID. He wrote a long email to the school.
This was it:
I just wanted to say congratulations. The new positive behavior reward system utilizing the bracelets is a real success. Zachary's bracelet broke the first day, and Philips fit so poorly it constantly fell off. The result for both children has been being denied reinforcement despite having maintained adequate conduct to earn the rewards. The effects upon their perceptions are simple, even for the slow to grasp.
Philip has come home crying twice because he did not get his reward, and was nearly inconsolable when we informed him he has been excluded for the rest of the month because of a design flaw -his ill fitting bracelet fell off, and because it wasn't present to get an X when one was earned he is now excluded. You may also be interested to know that it is quite easy to remove the X's (i.e. with a bit of solvent, with a dry erase marker, and so on). Zachary's bracelet broke the first day. Though we received no note indicating exclusion, questioning Zachary in regards to his receiving rewards has yielded the same answer over and over- I cant get them because my bracelet broke.
Let's examine what lessons were taught. Both boys have received excellent training that they are held accountable for the flaws in the plans of others. Both boys were lied to when they were told that positive behavior will be rewarded. Both boys have had their frustration levels increased. Both boys have been angered and hurt. Both boys experienced punishment they perceive as overly harsh rather then reward -this elicits cheating and many other negative behaviors according to the experts. And both boys are in a learning environment that is extinguishing the link between positive outcomes and self control. The latter typically elicits overt aggression and noncompliance. I invite you to examine either child's conduct grade for this past week if you need conformation of possible negative effects. You can also query Zachary about the program. His answers should indicate he is learning indifference very well now.
If you think my analysis is unfair, and tainted by anger you may be right. And what do I know, right. I am just a career scientist with extensive education and training in behavioral psychology, learning and neuroscience. I am therefore willing to send a very long list of peer reviewed publications to provide strong support for the above analysis. I can also have something written up for you all by an educational psychologist buddy of mine.
I will close by saying that it saddens me that the faculty committee that developed this program apparently did not bother to digest the data and concepts present in classroom management texts (you know, the required texts for anyone getting certified to teach in this state). It also saddens me that there has been no improvement by faculty in using behavior modification despite my having complained in Zachary's kindergarten year at the rampant lack of understanding of positive/negative reinforcers and positive/negative punishment and their proper use in operant/cognitive behavioral modification paradigms.
You know, mindlessly implementing a behavior program because the parish requires it has consequences that can be long lasting. Perhaps you should now consider taking me up on the offer I made years ago to give a seminar on this topic.
Yours,
Christopher S. LeBlanc, PhD
The school has not responded. Not a word. He sent it to the main school email, so he forwarded it again last night, directly to the principal's email address. The next step is the school board (I thought he should send it to them automatically). This time, he added some additional information. Our friend Paula provided some inspiration (thanks Paula!!) ... The Scarlet Letter. I hadn't even thought of it from that perspective. And that got Chris thinking about school record privacy laws. It includes discipline. This practice may even be illegal.
I ran across the following while reading up on FERPA. I was prompted me to do a bit of on-line reading after running across a reference to the book The Scarlet Letter and also recalling a statement by Zachary a few weeks back that one of his classmates misread his writing when grading his paper.
I want to begin by stating that I've decided the "positive behavior" program involving the bracelets is best categorized as a punishment system. The reasons for that conclusion are simple. Both reinforcers and punishers exert their strongest influence on contingent behavior if delivered within in milliseconds of the behavior whose frequency is being manipulated. Since, in the current system, an X is given at the time a teacher/staff member observes an undesired behavior, that X is best viewed as a punisher. The X is best viewed as a punisher because it is serving to reduce the frequency of some behavior. Stimuli that reduce the frequency of a contingent behavior are by definition punishers (reinforcers increase the frequency of a behavior). And while its true there are weekly/monthly rewards possible within the system, it is also true that delayed gratification is not a concept elementary school aged children are capable of grasping according to the literature I've read. It therefore seems most reasonable to conclude that the behavior management system the school has adopted has punishment rather than reward at its core.
The second thing I want to mention is that the X on a bracelet may also be considered as representing a student record. Records are very broadly defined by the DOE and the courts (see below). Viewing bracelets and any X's recorded on them as a student record is supported if behavior outcomes are in anyway used to affect conduct grades, or if bracelet related info is reported to the parish as proof of having implemented a "positive behavior" system in the school. My kindergarten teacher friend, who works at a Jefferson Parish School, is using a similar system. She records the info for use in conduct grades and also has to submit the number of student infractions to the school board. If that is true for our school, then it is more likely then not that the wrist band constitutes the type of student record protected by FERPA.
I will close by saying that while teaching at Delgado, I was forbidden from allowing students to grade one another's papers/quizzes/tests. Such actions, according to my dean, were blatant FERPA violations.
The text below was taken from the Dept of Ed. website, and italics are not mine. The last one made me wonder of bracelets constituted a disciplinary record. What do you think?
Christopher S. LeBlanc, PhD
Wish us luck! The school already hates us!
