Leadership: Reducing suspensions or building relationships? Reframing the problem

Questions about student suspension rates require educators to balance the fact that students’ misbehavior can disrupt their classmates learning with the reality that schools tend to punish Black and Latino students more harshly than White and Asian students. Joshua Starr describes how he confronted this problem in Montgomery County not by setting a numerical goal for reducing suspensions but by encouraging educators to look at the data and find ways to improve relationships between teachers and students