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Strategic Objective
School Climate and Community
Strategic Objective
Progress Update
Strengthening school and classroom climate in preschool through 12th-grade settings is an essential precondition to scalable improvements in the academic achievement, socioemotional wellbeing, and college and career readiness of American public school students. While states, districts, and schools across the country have made real strides reforming approaches to school discipline and climate in order to ensure effective environments for more students, significant challenges remain to guaranteeing safe and supportive schools in which to learn and grow for all students. More than one in five students report being bullied in school; national data continue to suggest that suspensions and expulsions disproportionately impact minority students and SWDs; and too few schools are employing school climate data and interventions as part of their continuous improvement strategies. Maximizing instructional time to prepare all students for the rigors and opportunities of meaningful postsecondary educations and careers requires that these issues are addressed at every level of the P–12 system.
During FY 2015, the Department has pursued a vigorous strategy to improve school climate and community and encourage the nationwide adoption of evidence-based practices to ensure safe and supportive learning environments for all students. In June 2015, the Department hosted a two-day convening for 19 high-needs school districts to support their local implementation of “early warning systems” to identify and support students at-risk of falling behind in school and/or dropping out. This convening served to highlight effective local practices to use data strategically to identify students in need of additional support. To shine a light on effective reforms in school discipline policy and practice, and in support of the administration’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative, the Department sponsored—in collaboration with the White House and DOJ—a major summit on school climate and discipline, entitled “Rethink Discipline,” on July 22, 2015. This summit brought to the White House over 45 school districts and a coalition of public and private partners to elevate effective reforms of school discipline in schools, with the goal of highlighting best practices in eliminating disproportionalities and bias in the administration of school discipline. At the summit, the Department also released a new resource for school district superintendents and their leadership teams—“Rethink Discipline: A Resource Guide for Superintendent Action”—that provides suggested action steps and links to free resources to support communitywide efforts to reform and improve the efficacy of local school discipline and climate policy and practice. The Department also supported the development of new school climate survey resources that states, districts, and schools can use, free of charge, to systematically collect and act on school climate data from multiple stakeholders, including students, teachers, noninstructional school staff, and parents and families (to be released in FY 2016). The Department also laid significant groundwork for the launch of “Every Student, Every Day: A National Initiative to Address and Eliminate Chronic Absenteeism,” which aims to raise nationwide awareness of and encourage action to combat the serious problem of chronic absenteeism affecting between five and seven and a half million students each year. In collaboration with HHS, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), DOJ, and a coalition of public and private partners, the Department released on October 7, 2015, a Dear Colleague letter and community toolkit for states, districts, and schools that includes actionable strategies to address and eliminate chronic absenteeism within communities.
