The Impacts of Student Behavior

We need help. This was the spring 2023 front page story of The Oregonian in which Portland middle school principals pled for help to manage student behavioral problems. Similar headlines of teachers and schools desperate for help with student behavior have become a more frequent occurrence in the news since students returned to school buildings from the pandemic. However, these very headlines may be misleading the general public.

Brittany Beebe, an educational assistant at South, has worked in schools for around eight years and has had a generally positive relationship with South students. With Beebe being new to South this school year, students were a little unsure of her role at first. 

“When [the students] see me with the radio and the iPad and the keys, some of them, not everyone, may or may not run from me or get a little salty with me,” Beebe said. “But I think once they get to know me, things change for the positive.”

Beebe believes the claim that behavior in schools is getting worse is “true to an extent.” However, her perception “is a little skewed” because she has worked at schools where she’s seen the “worst of the worst,” when it comes to behavior.

Jim Moore, South’s athletic director and assistant principal, has worked in education for 20 years, spending 11 years as a teacher and six years as an elementary school principal. 

“One of my strengths [as a teacher] was classroom management,” Moore explained. “I never really felt a lot of misbehavior in my classroom because I had a lot of good systems in place.” 

However, during his time as a principal at Edgewood Elementary school, behavior problems were relatively steady. When Moore first started working in District 4J, there were many school options with “programs that were specifically for kids who were experiencing a lot of behavior challenges.”

Unfortunately, over his time as Edgewood principal, “the district started getting rid of those programs and keeping kids at their neighborhood schools,” Moore explained. 

Due to programs being cut, Moore admits that there may have been a slight increase in behavior problems when students, who were benefiting from alternative programs, were simply returned to their neighborhood schools. These students were likely not getting the support they needed, possibly leading to further behavioral problems later down the road; case in point: when the student gets to high school.

While behaviors differ between elementary and high school, there are themes that remain similar. A common link between behavior problems at the elementary and high school levels is that students don’t want to be in class. The issue is that when high schoolers don’t want to be in class, they aren’t in class. One of the biggest challenges at South, according to Beebe, is students skipping class by spending extensive time in the bathroom or wandering the halls, along with students skipping class and leaving campus. South’s open-campus policy makes it possible for students to leave campus at any time they want, and the school doesn’t necessarily need to have resources to get those kids back in class. When elementary students don’t want to be in class, they will often leave the classroom but this causes a bigger disruption than a high school student not attending class. 

Moore believes that “at the elementary level, it can be, at times, more challenging because kids are coming every day,” as opposed to just skipping class on arrival as some high schoolers do. Valuable resources, like educational assistants (EA), are needed to get elementary students back to the classroom and to keep them there. The EAs may be needed in other spots around the school, say, for monitoring the cafeteria during lunch, being a recess monitor, or working with special education (SPED) students. Unfortunately, resources at the high school level don’t seem to prioritize sufficient numbers of EA staff, making it harder for students to be monitored consistently.

Moore explained that the role an elementary school plays is vastly different from that of a high school. 

“Elementary schools play a really important role for families in that… parents can go to work, and their kids are kept safe for six and a half hours,” Moore said. It is exactly this care aspect that is the reason why elementary schools are able to have EAs. Teachers and office staff alone are nowhere near enough staff to monitor students and keep the school up and running. EA’s are a valuable resource for elementary schools to have and to deploy to situations that occur throughout the school day.

In addition, the role of an elementary school principal is similar to that of an investigator. 

“Five- to eight-year-olds are still developing their ability to regulate their emotions,” Moore said, “and when you’re that little, you have a hard time articulating what needs aren’t being met. As the adults in the building, we’re constantly trying to figure out what is the cause of the behavior, because it is almost certainly something, you just don’t know what it is.” 

SPED students often need more help articulating these feelings’ but without an adequate number of EAs and staff to help figure out those needs, it is far more difficult to create a safe and productive environment for these students to thrive and progress. 

When compared to the high school level, where students are more likely able to fully articulate their feelings to counselors and administrators, it is less likely for these older students to need additional resources.

As students grow older and are better able to regulate and articulate their feelings, it makes it potentially easier for administrators to understand the roots of the problems. The headline of The Oregonian story was focused on middle schools, which is the physical and developmental transition between elementary school and high school. Middle school students can be grouped into three entirely different developmental stages: one where students are more mature and able to articulate emotions, similar to being in high school; another where students are still starting to learn how to articulate emotions, like in elementary school; and a last category that is a mix of the two and where the majority of middle school students fall into.

A possible conclusion for the misleading headlines is that behaviors aren’t necessarily getting worse, but that the number of students experiencing challenges is increasing. This increase in students facing more severe challenges is likely what is creating the effect of more and more teachers and schools reporting behavioral issues in the classroom. 

The types of behaviors students are exhibiting are the same as they were 10 years ago: disruptions to other classes, physical violence toward other students, resorting to substance abuse, etc. The difference is, however, that more students than ever are experiencing these challenges. Saying that behaviors are “worsening” may be the root cause of the many misleading headlines. A potentially better word would be “increasing,” putting the emphasis on the actual issue at hand. The reasoning for the increase in student behavior can be traced back to the pandemic, which both Beebe and Moore alluded to in their interviews. During the pandemic, students at the elementary level, where the most support is now needed, were not able to receive this support. SPED students specifically suffered the most during these times. Unable to receive in-person educational support with the human interaction needed to progress developmentally and academically some SPED students struggled. Unfortunately, the lack of in-person support during the pandemic just couldn’t be completely compensated for in the return to middle school. Many students simply forgot how to interact with others and have struggled to varying degrees ever since. 

Another possible factor contributing to the increase in challenging student behaviors is that the ratio of students to staff has drastically increased, especially in SPED classrooms. For example, say that ten years ago, an elementary school SPED classroom had five kids and five staff members, a 1:1 student-staff ratio. Today, that same SPED classroom may now have 15 kids, but the same number of staff members, a 3:1 student-staff ratio. This means that there are more students – with more and varying needs – for staff to support, making it very difficult to supervise the range of student behavior in the classroom.

Another point that was made abundantly clear by Moore was that schools and families need to work together. 

“If all schools and parents could commit to wanting what’s best for the kids, and make it so we’re all committed to working together to make that happen, we could likely help support kids better,” Moore said. 

Collaboration between families and schools would help decrease outbreaks in student behavior. 

“If we, the schools, have really strong relationships with our families,” Moore said, “we are better able to support our kids.”

If schools can help to communicate with families and build critical, trusting relationships, they will begin the process of figuring out what students need to succeed at school after the universal trauma of the pandemic. Figuring out what supports students need will begin to decrease the behavioral problems in schools, and help with finding long-term solutions.

By Elliott Hunt

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