Saturday, January 5, 2013

Our student information system has a discipline component. Do we still need Discipline Manager?

Yes. Student information systems provide the critical function of collecting data required for state reporting. For discipline, for example, states typically require reporting of discipline consequences where students are removed from their normal classroom activities such as for suspension or disciplinary alternative placement. But suspension and disciplinary alternative placement is a very small part of a school's discipline process.

Discipline Manager is designed to help the school implement their discipline process, not just with satisfying state reporting requirements. The discipline process includes making behavior expectations clear, enforcing misbehaviors quickly and consistently, keeping teachers aware of assigned consequences and fulfilled consequences, keeping parents informed about discipline issues, maintaining individual student discipline histories, making essential information about a student such as behavior plans, individual education plans and others available at the point of decisionmaking, making school and district policies available at the point of decisionmaking, collecting assignments from teachers for students who will be removed from class, easy escalation of consequences for students who do not fulfill discipline consequences, and more. All of these things are essential to an effective discipline process and none are addressed by the discipline reporting function that most student information systems provide.

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Keywords: FAQ: Discipline Manager, using discipline manager