The United States Department of Education has recently begun focusing on the problem of informal removals. An informal removal is when a child is sent home early or removed from the learning environment for days or even weeks but not suspended or expelled. The concern is that informal removals often go uncounted, are not reported as suspensions, and bypass the protection provided by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

My child was informally removed from public school in 6th grade, 7th grade, and 8th grade. Each time, the decisions came from increasingly powerful school officials: initially, a school counselor, then the school principal, and eventually the head of special education. The decisions were justified as mental health related. However, formal removals in 9th grade (into a digital charter school) and 12th grade (again, from the public school) indicated that at every turn, the wrong problem was being addressed with the wrong solution. As a parent, I trusted the school and had no idea until it was too late that school removal would exacerbate challenges and, worse, that it might be an endemic solution affecting scores of children across the country.

Education is easier when “difficult” students are not there.

Who are the most “difficult”? Students with IEPs, especially those labeled “emotionally disturbed”- that is, “students who exhibit a number of characteristics over a long period of time that negatively impact their educational performance.” Science also demonstrates that loneliness is damaging. How could we think that sending children with depression and anxiety to isolated learning environments will solve their- or our- problems?

Who else seems to be “difficult” for schools? Students with black and brown skin. That is, students whose experiences in the world differ from the overwhelming majority of educators who are white. Who else is “difficult” for schools? Students with a history of trauma.

So, as things stand currently and are hidden from the public view, schools can legally (and illegally) remove vulnerable students, thinking removal solves students’ behavior challenges. In my experience, there were only glimpses of moments when overworked educators could listen to and address the problems my child and I articulated were causing the behaviors. Interestingly, when they were seen and addressed, the behaviors disappeared.

Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics made a statement against suspensions: science has demonstrated that suspensions are harmful to students, are not effective in changing behaviors, and backfire. That was our experience. Removal caused increasingly difficult behaviors. We must collect data on informal removals to confirm (or refute) the anecdotal evidence that informal removals- like suspensions- are harmful to students, not effective, and backfire.

Educators are overworked. Undue burden is the primary reason schools do not want to report information about informal removals to transparent and publicly accessible databases. However, we may find that they have been busy doing the wrong things. We need to solve the right problems. A little more reporting now could lead to a more reasonable educator workload tomorrow.

Children who need help in school need to be at school. Suspension, expulsion, and informal removals don’t work.

The United States Department of Education Office of Civil Rights is currently seeking feedback on future civil rights data collection. One of the suggestions being made is the addition of data related to informal removals. There is now an opportunity for interested parties to provide feedback by submitting comments on or before December 16, 2024.