One year, I decided to write down bullet-pointed notes on all the chaos, violence, and disorder that occurred in my school: Two students held a peer against a wall while a third pummeled them in the face and stomach; another student beat up a special needs child on the bus; a girl brought a hammer to school but it was confiscated before she could use it.
In the end, I stopped my note-taking exercise after two months because such occurrences became too quotidian. Too many other tasks demanded my time for me to bother documenting “another fight today.”
Thankfully, most schools manage to maintain at least basic safety. But prosaic disruptions are a ubiquitous problem. A 2026 union survey confirms what others have before: Student behavior is and has been the number one reason that teachers consider leaving the profession. At the student level, misbehaving peers cause other kids to misbehave and drive down achievement.
That being said, it’s easy to complain about poor behavior, and I’ve made the case for strong behavior policies countless times here and elsewhere. Instead, I want to focus on what school boards can actively do to ensure basic order in their schools—a central and necessary condition for learning.
Strengthen codes of conduct, “broken windows” style
Codes of conduct are the mechanism that either empower administrators to maintain order in schools or restrain them from taking necessary actions. In Milwaukee Public Schools, for example (the large urban district near me), many behaviors have a maximum consequence that curtail building principals. Skipping class, inappropriate dress, leaving class—all plateau at a “level 1” intervention, which limits responses to warnings, conferences, and positive interventions.
Of course, few serious reformers would recommend an out of school suspension for a first-offence class skipper. But what about a second, third, or fourth time? Moreover, are smaller consequences such as detentions, loss of privileges, or academic consequences spelled out in codes of conduct?
I’d advise boards to review and revise their codes of conduct with a “broken windows” theory of schooling in mind. In 1982, George Kelling and James Q. Wilson argued for “broken windows” policing, wherein officers spend more time shooing along loiterers, picking up trash, and apprehending turnstile jumpers than hunting down career criminals. The central idea was that small instances of disorder or chaos create a permission structure for greater disorder or chaos. One broken window signals that no one cares and rules won’t be enforced, so why not break another and rob a house while you’re at it?
Some discipline reform advocates lament “vague school rules” against defiance, disorderly conduct, disrespect, and insubordination. The entire state of California has even prohibited the use of suspensions for willful defiance. Advocates argue that policies should instead focus on clear, egregious behaviors such as fights, alcohol use on school grounds, or throwing furniture—the argument runs.
However, at any school, administrators and teachers either establish the expectation that students must obey school rules or not. If rules are not uniformly enforced, the implicit message then is that students only have to follow some rules some of the time. This degrades a school’s culture.
When I was an assistant principal and students came to my office, regardless of the behavior, I could either support teachers as authorities in their own classroom or not. Regardless of the teachers’ requests or students’ behavior, the fundamental question was whether students had to obey.
The controversial uniform policies of “no excuse” charter schools, wherein students can receive consequences even for mismatched socks, make for an illustrative example. Personally, I’m ambivalent about school uniforms. But if a school sets a uniform policy, they have to enforce it. Otherwise, the message is that “we have rules, but only kind of.” Mismatched socks shouldn’t lead to corporal punishment, but a code of conduct must allow a consequence for a breach, however minor—a school provided pair and a loss of recess time, for example.
Consider other small misbehaviors such as talking out of turn or refusing to sit in an assigned seat. Perhaps one student can whisper during instruction or sit wherever his heart desires, but what happens when every student does likewise? Small infractions compound—either through every student misbehaving or one student persistently disrupting class—such that they interrupt learning far more in aggregate than a one-off fight or outburst.
Hold the line with small consequences on minutiae, and schools will achieve greater order and discipline than keeping it to suspensions for egregious actions. Deal with the small fish so that bigger fish to fry don’t come along. While boards (usually) cannot themselves revise student handbooks or codes of conduct, they can compel superintendents to revise them along the board’s vision and refuse to approve them until district leadership does so.
Compel administrators to use consequences
School board members need to understand that many forces within a school encourage academic mediocrity. No one actually likes high expectations. Sure, everyone mouths rhetorical support for high expectations, but when it comes to high grading loads, the need to assign Fs, tough academic gauntlets, academic eligibility to participate in sports, retention policies, and any practical enforcement of high expectations, most stakeholders bristle.
Discipline enforcement exemplifies this reality. Every time I pressed a button to enter a consequence into our student management software, I knew my life would get difficult for a week. Parents, invariably, contested both the official account of the incident and the subsequent consequence.
Now, parents have every right to question the decisions that a school makes about their child. I only mention this pushback to demonstrate that there are many disincentives to doing the right thing. It’s easier in the moment for administrators to give a student a stern talking to and move on with their day—no risk for contentious parent meetings required.
With that in mind, board policy can require that principals or deans assign a consequence for referrals or before returning a student back to class. They needn’t be harsh, but administrators cannot then send a student back to class with only a bag of chips and an encouraging pep-talk.
Keep restorative justice and PBIS supplemental
The majority of the work to maintain safe and orderly schools happens through clearly defined, taught, and enforced routines and procedures—from how to enter the school building to expectations during class discussions. It’s fine—advisable even—to include follow-up conversations after a consequence and incentive systems to reward good behavior akin to restorative justice or positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS), but only so long as they remain supplemental—that is, something like a restorative conversation happens in tandem with a consequence, not as a replacement for it.
Any competent administrator or teacher will talk with students after a behavior incident: What happened, why did it happen, what can you do instead next time, and what can you do to make it right? And many also leverage incentive systems in their own classes. These are necessary and good additions to any strong discipline policy.
The problem arises when PBIS or restorative justice come to replace any code of conduct. If an administer must try a behavior plan full of various rewards and incentives before they can administer a suspension or if a restorative conversation replaces a consequence, the discipline policy becomes too weak to maintain order. The proactive behavioral structures and enforcement are the metaphorical walls and roof of the school building. If you try to keep out the weather with only gutters, you’re destined to failure. Ensure that no board policy places such restraints on an administer.
Tour schools
The reality is that most states and schools have decent discipline codes. They’re neither overly lenient nor exceedingly punitive. They offer appropriate latitude to administrators to pull either the lenient or strict lever as fits the situation. Faults in the system often come at the point of implementation, not policy. There’s no better way to determine the implementation of behavior policies—or any policy for that matter—than for board members to visit schools.
Discipline reports and data can be fudged, but the day-to-day culture of a school cannot. What’s the feeling in a hallway? How noisy are classrooms? Is that noise productive chatter or chaos? Do you hear teachers screaming? Are students poised and respectful as you walk by? What’s the status of bulletin boards and walls? Are they maintained or falling apart and covered in graffiti? These questions are far more difficult to fake or (literally) paper over.
Routine walkthroughs are obviously easier in smaller districts. But even in larger districts, board members can make it a routine exercise to spend, say, a day a month visiting a handful of schools. Divide and conquer among a 9-person board, and you can maintain a sense of how the district as a whole and individual schools are succeeding or failing.
Perform behavioral audits
For this last recommendation, I owe credit to Max Eden, who suggested that boards perform regular behavioral audits consisting of a survey of teachers that includes a free response section. He argues that, “One could Google for hours in vain trying to find a teacher who went on record about discipline and safety problems, but when teachers have the opportunity to speak anonymously, they have horror stories to tell.”
Any attempt to bring order to schools will likely trigger negative press. You can practically plug and play the headline: “District X implements policy that experts say could do terrible Y harm to student group Z.” Behavioral audits will provide fodder for effective counter messaging and a much-needed look into the chaotic reality of classrooms. Eden provides a few examples from districts that have used behavioral audits:
- “We were told that referrals would not require suspension ‘unless there was blood.’”
- “I have never seen anything like it. The behavior is unreal. The students know they can get away with anything because there are no real consequences.”
- “Students are throwing rocks at teachers. When they are sent down to the office, they returned moments later.”
- “My life and the lives of my students were threatened this year, and the child was in school the very next day.”
A transparency measure such as this won’t improve behavior itself but it will make the problem clear so that the above policies have justification and community support.
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None of these policies alone (or even together) will usher in a utopian era of school orderliness and decorum. A healthy garden is the manifestation of numerous actions: well-timed planting, sufficient watering, soil health, pH levels, weeding, a balance of sun and shade, and much else. So, too, an orderly school relies on effective teacher training, engaging instruction, high-quality curricula, thoughtful routines, school culture, and plenty else. But everything else rests on the precondition that schools are safe and orderly, educators can teach without chaos, and students can learn in environments where they can actually focus on their studies. While administrators and teachers must carry out the day-to-day functions of a school, it’s incumbent on school boards to set the policies that allow them to do so successfully.
