Isolation and restraint of students is abuse

Listening to legislative testimony about a 7-year-old boy in crisis who was restrained face down on a school floor tests the heart. Watching a grown man choke up at his memory of being dragged through a hallway and locked in a barren isolation room would lead any feeling person to wonder why Washington state continues these practices.

Our youth prisons outlawed solitary confinement in 2020. Yet at least 3,800 children — most of them younger than 12 — were isolated or restrained 24,873 times during the 2019-20 school year, according to a report from Disability Rights Washington.

The vast majority of these kids were special education students, and a wildly out-of-proportion number were Black. The high number of incidents makes the case plainly: Isolation and restraint do not correct behavior. To the contrary, with an average of six incidents per student, there is abundant evidence that these approaches only exacerbate the problem.

What they do most effectively is teach children to hate school.

Sadly, a bill that would have prohibited these practices, House Bill 1479, died in the Senate this week. Though it proposed a gradual implementation and funded training on de-escalation techniques, the powerful teachers union was not supportive. A Washington Education Association representative complained that union members had not been part of the state work group that provided a foundation for the proposed law.

The House saw the injustice of these practices, passing this bill with a robust majority, 63-31. Yet it stalled in the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Lisa Wellman, D-Mercer Island. She did not even bring it up for a vote.

Make no mistake, the Senate’s failure is an adult decision to ensure more children will suffer under these abusive practices. Unconscionable.

Aside from the righteous moral and educational rationales for abolishing them, Washington leaves itself open to significant litigation when educators misuse restraint and isolation.

Which they do. Last year the state education department received at least 66 legal complaints about various districts’ use of isolation and restraint. State law says these controversial tools may be deployed only in cases of “imminent likelihood of serious harm,” not for discipline. But a school administrator restrained and isolated a student who was ripping paper off a bulletin board, according to the Disability Rights report. Another restrained a student for spitting.

Supporters of the bill are not wasting time bemoaning its failure. They have already pivoted toward pushing for a budget proviso that would create a demonstration site showing how no-restraint, no-isolation policies can look in practice. That way, they’ll have more data to present next year, when they vow to try again.

It’s better than nothing. But we already have plenty of examples to consult. Seattle and Spokane, the state’s largest districts, have both abolished isolation. As have Georgia, Hawaii and Maryland. Another three states — Nevada, Texas and Pennsylvania — prohibit its use on students with disabilities.

Clearly, there are educators across the country who have figured out better ways, something more effective than pushing a child’s face into the floor.