SCHOOLS: RETHINKING ZERO TOLERANCE

A Few Educators Are Inching Away From One-strike Policies

Feb. 12 issue - When Joe Marchese arrived at the Westtown School, a private
Quaker day and boarding school in a suburb of Philadelphia, he found a
one-strike policy in effect toward drug and alcohol offenses: a kid caught
with illegal substances was expelled.

THE EFFECT, says Marchese, who runs the 385-student upper school, was to
often drive the offenders underground. "Students would want to get help for
themselves or their friends, but feared the possibility they'd be thrown
out of school," he says. That was nine years ago. Soon afterward Westtown,
with advice from the drug-prevention nonprofit FCD Educational Services,
moved toward a "two track" system of discipline and treatment. There's a
mandatory two-week suspension for anyone caught with drugs on campus, but
instead of just going home to watch game shows and smoke pot, the student
receives counseling and support. When he returns to school, a support plan
is in place that includes random drug testing and counseling. "It's good to
know that people have a second chance, says senior Nneka Nwosu, a student
representative on the school's discipline council. "It's: 'I made a
mistake, but I'm not a bad kid. I get to come back and prove that I'm still
a good kid'."

Westtown is one of a relative handful of schools that have begun to rethink
their "zero tolerance" policies toward substance abuse. The policies, which
began coming into fashion around 1990, have sustained ridicule over the
absurd outcomes they occasionally lead to, such as the suspension of a West
Virginia seventh grader for sharing cough drops with a classmate. No one
keeps statistics on how many schools have zero-tolerance policies, and
there's no uniform definition; an automatic expulsion for a first drug
offense, which is what many people probably assume it means, appears to be
fairly rare anyway. But even suspension is now being questioned, on the
grounds of both fairness and efficacy. A policy meant to protect the school
may not be in the best interests of the larger society, or the offender
himself.

"If a child leaves school, where does he go?" wonders child psychiatrist
Elizabeth Berger, author of "Raising Children With Character." "He goes
somewhere and becomes someone else's problem." Even some teachers are
beginning to feel uncomfortable with the one-strike policies, says Kyle
Pruett, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Yale University, who
consults with many schools. "They begin to feel their hands are tied. It
cuts out the ability to judge each circumstance on its own merits."

The argument in favor of a tough, uniform code of drug penalties hasn't
changed: it sends a strong, unambiguous message to students. That's been
the experience at Benedictine High School in Richmond, Va., a Roman
Catholic military academy, which started random drug testing for all
students (and faculty and staff) last year. Nick Cornwell, a junior, says
he supports the policy because it makes it easier for students to turn down
drugs, since they can plausibly claim to be afraid of being caught. But
even here, a student who flunks a drug test once is offered counseling and
a second chance; expulsion is mandatory only after a second offense. Like
many schools, Benedictine is drawing a distinction between the troubled
kid, the drug abuser who may progress to dealing and a kid who may
experiment once with a joint but isn't going to let it ruin his life. "Most
kids are going to experiment at some level," says Harvard University child
psychiatrist Timothy Wilens. "If experimentation is the norm, where do you
draw the line? Who will be left?"