Fostering safe, engaging classrooms to maximize learning and protect students

Why This Matters for Minnesota Students

Families and teachers alike want safe, engaging classrooms where kids can learn. To achieve this, educators need training and tools to manage their classrooms effectively, maximizing student learning and minimizing disruptions. Minnesota schools and policymakers should advance discipline approaches that keep kids in school, where they need to be in order to learn, and where they can receive meaningful supports and interventions to develop the skills to thrive.

Extreme discipline measures like suspensions and expulsions—quick fixes that do not improve behavior or classroom dynamics long-term—should be a last resort, and should never be used with our very youngest learners. Suspending and expelling kindergarteners, for example, removes them from exactly where they need to be to build the key social and emotional skills that will help them interact appropriately with their educators and peers in the future. We should focus instead on building effective in-school systems that help students learn from and correct their behavior. At the same time, families deserve clear information on how schools are approaching discipline and assurance that teachers are well-supported to keep children in school and improve classroom environments long-term. Finally, schools should notify families right away if their children are removed from class, and invite families to be partners in finding strategies to keep their children better engaged in school moving forward.

Policy Solutions

Advance non-exclusionary discipline practices the support student development

As a state, we must take urgent action to address Minnesota’s persistent discipline gaps. This includes moving to limit practices that push students out of class, and expanding the use of more effective practices that work better in the long run. We’ve made some progress as a state: In 2023, a broad coalition of advocates, parents, and community members advocated to pass a new policy that limits suspension for students in kindergarten through third grade, and prohibits the use of seclusion. The use of recess detention is now also prohibited statewide. Despite these policy wins, significant work remains to ensure educators have the tools and supports they need, and state leaders should not defend and implement progress to date, but continue to make both investments and policy change a priority.

Protect students from being placed in dangerous holds by adults

Recently, legislators rescinded important and common sense limits on the use of dangerous prone restraints in schools. These holds are not appropriate means of discipline for any child, especially when you consider Minnesota’s stark racial disparities in school discipline practices—yet the issue became a flash point when School Resource Officers (SROs) decided to pull their contracts in some districts once they learned of the new law. The new law now allows SROs to put students in dangerous holds for any reason. That law also requires the state to develop a model policy for school-based police officers. Tracking how this policy is implemented and applied will be critical to ensuring student safety.

Our Partners

EdAllies does not tackle this work alone. To ensure our discipline work happens alongside impacted communities, we are a core Solutions Not Suspensions partner—a coalition of students, families, community members, and organizations committed to changing policies, practices, and mindsets to end exclusionary discipline practices that disproportionately impact students of color and instead foster positive school climates for all students. To learn more about the coalition and get involved, visit https://www.solutionsnotsuspensions.org/