Students Suffer Abusive Restraint, GAO Says
Struggling to control special-needs students sometimes leads teachers to use risky techniques
Clarification added on 07/10/09: The article was expanded to note that since changing to the positive reinforcement system, Centennial School has rarely had to call for police assistance.
George expected policies that promote positive student behavior to work at Centennial because the system had been successful at his old school, but when he told teachers of his goal to eliminate the use of restraint and seclusion altogether, they laughed. "Some teachers thought I was turning the institution over to the inmates, so to speak," George says. "My detractors placed bets on how long I would last."
By the end of his second school year at Centennial, George had achieved his goal of decreasing the number of restraints to zero and getting all of Centennial's teachers to take the positive reinforcement method seriously, an accomplishment detailed in the 2005 article. Some teachers unwilling to change left the school, but those who stayed learned to address their students and one another with a new attitude. Today, teachers say, "I really like how you did that" when a student behaves properly, and teachers make sure students feel valued by telling them, "We care about you and your future," Miller says. If students behave aggressively, teachers do not restrain them. Instead they make every effort to calm students, reminding them of their strengths as individuals, not their misbehavior. In the rare case of an emergency when a student continues behaving aggressively and that student's disability does not prevent him from understanding right from wrong, teachers reserve the right to involve local authorities. And the teachers' consistency is working. The number of student suspensions has decreased by half compared with 10 years ago, George says, and Centennial students' achievement on standardized tests now surpasses the scores posted by many average public school students.
George prides himself on Centennial's success, but he worries that few other schools are willing or able to replicate it. Many of the educators he consults with about Centennial are impressed with the school's achievements but skeptical that they could make the positive method work as well for their kids. "People ask, 'Do you have kids with ...' and list off a host of medical diagnoses, and I tell them, 'Yes, we have kids with all the same conditions your kids have,' " George says. "But the students' conditions don't matter. We treat them all the same, encourage them all the same, teach them at a level where they can be challenged but also achieve all the same because when they walk in the door they are ours. We will work with them, and we will succeed with them, no matter the circumstances."
Reader Comments
Centennial School physical restraints
My name is David N. Miller, and I was one of the co-authors mentioned in the article above by U.S. News and World Report. I think its important to provide a piece of clarification regarding this article, specifically in reference to its statements about the use of physical restraints at Centennial School. In the note added on 7/10 that begins the article, it states that "Centennial School has rarely had to call for police assistance". To put this in better perspective, the reader should know that Centennial School almost never calls the police - this occurs perhaps once or twice per year on average(many public schools call the police much more often). Further, on those (extremely rare) cases where the police have been called, it has often been at the request of parents rather than the school. Centennial School is a model program for schools serving students with emotional and behavioral disorders in the nation and attracts visitors from all over the country.
restraints, positive behaviour program, biological causes
I would be much more impressed with George's results, if they weren't calling the police, and telling the child that "they are sorry that their behaviour caused them to have to call the police, and that they will miss them while they are gone."!!!
This is NOT part of a positive behaviour approach! It is just substituting one negative response for another negative response. Are the police restraining them? Putting them in hand-cuffs? Putting them in juvenile detention center, or jail-where they are more likely to learn additional poor behaviours, or, especially if they are on the autism spectrum, to be at risk of being abused (physically, mentally, emotionally, sexually), further traumatized, drugged excessively/inappropriately, and be at a higher risk for suicide.
I am not impressed that suspension rates are down, after hearing this information. It makes me wonder what kind of games may be played with manipulation of the statistics! For example, what happens when you factor in the days missing, due to being placed elsewhere (detention center, jail, hospitalization program, etc.)? Is there an increased drop-out rate?
As a teacher, I know the difficulty of teaching when there are large numbers of children with severe behavioural issues. As an advocate, I am appalled at the number of people with autism, MR, mental/emotional health issues, etc., who end up in jail, instead of getting appropriate treatment! Google Pfeiffer Treatment center, or other studies regarding medical treatment for heavy metals, (such as lead and mercury, which can cause MR, and look at links between metsls and anger/violence), and vitamin supplementation, and how it can affect behaviour. As a parent of a child with autism, I would advise Kilmer to google the Autism Research Institute, the DAN protocol, the Feingold diet, TACA, biomed or alternative interventions, etc.
P.S.-I am NOT trying to minimize the effects of trauma, or to say that the school was making a good choice in placing a 4 year-old in that type of restraint,especially without even discussing it with the parent! I believe that schools should try for a positive approach. However, I also believe that changing the behaviours should begin with healing the body, including the brain, and that it is appalling that our society is not studying these issues in a meaningful way (I believe this is due to the fact that big pharma companies can't make money on these interventions, so there is no reason for them to spend millions of dollars setting up studies- and many reasons for them to discredit these ideas-especially if components of vaccines, such as thimerosal, aluminum, etc., or antibiotics, or commonly used over the counter drugs,or antibiotics, or drugs used to induce or speed up labor, or various psychiatric meds, could possibly be shown to have links to, or be causative factors in autism, or other severe behavioural or cognitive problems).
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