Schools Within Schools

In seconds, we can all think of those one or two students who make us negative about the whole school. The ones who make excited when they are absent. The ones who make your class better by not showing up. Do they deserve to learn too? Do they need our help? Absolutely,  but are we helping them by writing them up daily and letting them disrupt our other students? Absolutely not.

If we separate out students with learning disabilites, if we have special class periods for students learning english, if we have entire class periods for our athletes, then why don't we have separate classes for the students that routinely disrupt the learning of our other students?

Would it be so wrong to isolate our chronic misbehaving students in a wing away from the other students and rotate the teachers in? What if they had one less elective and instead had a class that helped develop their social skills and academic behaviors? Why are our AVID students the only ones receiving that extra skills work?

If we're supposed to different instruction, then we should take it all the way and make the entire day different for students that need the extra support. ISS isn't the answer. Alternate programs within schools may be.