Let Teachers Teach AND Give Students A Way Back

By: Shelneka A. Marsalone August 7, 2026

“Let teachers teach.”

It is a compelling message. Teachers deserve classrooms where they can teach. Students deserve classrooms where they can learn. And educators should not be expected to tolerate violence, persistent disruption, or behavior that makes meaningful instruction impossible.

But I become concerned when “let teachers teach” begins to sound like shorthand for something else:

Put the bad student out so everybody else can learn.

Teaching has never been limited to delivering content to children who arrive ready, regulated, compliant, and easy to teach.

Relationships are part of teaching. Understanding behavior is part of teaching. Recognizing when a student’s actions may be communicating an unmet need is part of teaching. Holding students accountable is part of teaching. And when removal becomes necessary, helping that student successfully return must become part of the school’s responsibility.

I am not arguing that students should never be removed from classrooms. There are circumstances when removal is necessary to protect instruction, safety, and the rights of other students. Teachers need administrative support when behavior reaches that threshold.

But removal is an intervention in a moment. It cannot become the intervention plan. That distinction matters.

When we send a student to in-school suspension, home for a “cool off day,” or place them in an alternative setting without a meaningful academic and relational re-entry plan, we may solve the immediate classroom problem while creating a much larger educational one.

The student misses instruction. The academic gap grows. The teacher-student relationship that contributed to, or was damaged by, the incident remains fractured. The student returns to the same classroom, with the same triggers, the same unmet needs, and often the same damaged relationship. Then we act surprised when the behavior happens again. That is not a re-entry plan.

That is a revolving door.

Research gives us reason to take that revolving door seriously. In a study of 16,849 middle and high school students, exclusionary school discipline was associated with significantly lower grade-point averages, even after researchers accounted for multiple student characteristics (Cribb Fabersunne et al., 2023). A meta-analysis synthesizing 274 effect sizes from 40 studies found exclusionary school discipline to be a meaningful predictor of increased delinquency and concluded that exclusion may exacerbate, rather than reduce, delinquent behavior (Gerlinger et al., 2021).

So this conversation cannot end with whether teachers have the authority to remove students. The more important leadership question is:

What happens on the day the student comes back?

Re-Entry Is a Leadership Responsibility

Imagine if every school leader who strengthened a teacher’s ability to remove a disruptive student invested just as deliberately in the student’s pathway back. What if removal automatically triggered a re-entry process?

Not simply:

Your suspension is over. Go to class.

A real process. What happened? What need was underneath the behavior? What accountability is required? What academic instruction was missed? What does the student need to repair? What does the teacher need to feel supported? What does the family understand about what occurred? What conditions need to change so tomorrow does not become a repeat of yesterday? Most importantly:

How do we repair the relationship before placing the student back into the classroom?

Restoration does not mean the absence of consequences. Accountability and restoration can coexist. A student can be required to acknowledge harm, repair what can be repaired, meet behavioral expectations, and accept consequences while still being treated as a young person worthy of education and belonging.

Likewise, supporting re-entry does not mean asking teachers to become therapists, social workers, or behavior specialists. That is precisely why this is a leadership issue. If leaders empower teachers to remove students, leaders must build the infrastructure necessary to return them.

That may mean behavioral specialists, counselors, social workers, restorative conferences, family engagement, academic recovery plans, check-in/check-out systems, mentoring, functional behavior supports, and partnerships with community organizations. Teachers should not have to carry all of that alone.

*Personal Sidebar: I am often cautious of mandates, policies, and guidance that aren't accompanied by resources and/or funding. Social workers, family liaisons, and interventionists can't be on the chopping block when support is needed outside of teacher capacity.

Exclusion Has a Price

There is another consequence we rarely discuss openly enough. Families have choices.

When a family repeatedly experiences calls to pick up their child, suspensions, removals, and messages suggesting that their child is the problem, eventually some families leave. They seek a charter school, private option, virtual program, homeschool arrangement, or another district.

And when students leave traditional public schools, resources leave with them. So, a system built around “put the disruptive students out so the others can learn” can ultimately weaken the very public schools we claim we are trying to protect. We cannot advocate for the survival of public education while simultaneously creating systems that make some families believe public education no longer wants their children.

And we should be particularly cautious about defining children themselves as “bad.” Behavior can be dangerous. Behavior can be disruptive. Behavior can be unacceptable. Children...are not disposable.

The Lead Paint of the School-to-Prison Pipeline

We often talk about the school-to-prison pipeline as though one giant pipe suddenly appears between a schoolhouse and a jail. It does not.

Pipelines are built.

They are built through accumulated decisions about who belongs, who gets another chance, whose behavior deserves investigation, whose behavior deserves punishment, who receives intervention, and who simply gets removed.

Research provides sobering evidence of the potential long-term consequences. Bacher-Hicks et al. (2024) found that students assigned to schools with higher suspension rates were significantly more likely to be arrested and incarcerated as adults. The researchers estimated that attending a school with a suspension rate one standard deviation higher increased the likelihood of later arrest and incarceration by approximately 15% to 20%. That does not mean every suspension sends a child to prison. It means we should stop pretending exclusion is educationally neutral. I think of exclusion without restoration as the lead paint lining of the school-to-prison pipeline:

One coat may not look catastrophic.

Another removal.

Another suspension.

Another missed assignment.

Another broken relationship.

Another message that says, "You are the problem here."

Layer after layer. Eventually, we have created an environment toxic enough to push a young person farther away from the institution that was supposed to educate them. Then we point to the child’s disengagement as proof that removal was justified all along.

Let Teachers Teach. Let Students Return Ready to Learn.

This should not become another debate where we force ourselves to choose between teachers and students.

I reject that choice.

Teachers deserve classrooms where they can teach. Students deserve classrooms where they can learn. And students who make mistakes deserve structured opportunities to repair, recover, and return. Those principles can exist together.

So, yes: let teachers teach.

Give educators clear behavioral expectations. Back them when serious behavior disrupts learning. Protect classroom environments. Hold students accountable.

But leadership cannot stop at the classroom door after a child has been escorted through it.

For every removal policy, create a re-entry policy. For every consequence, identify the intervention. For every missed day, create a plan for academic recovery. For every fractured relationship, provide an opportunity for repair. For every student sent out, somebody should be responsible for answering the question:

What are we doing to help this student successfully come back?

Because the measure of a strong school system is not simply how effectively it can remove its most challenging students. It is whether that system has developed the capacity to teach them, hold them accountable, restore relationships, and bring them back into the learning community. Sometimes that return may not be their traditional community school...and that's ok too.

If our only strategy for difficult students is to put them out, eventually we should not be surprised when they stop trying to come back.

And by then, we will have lost much more than a student from a classroom.

What does re-entry look like in your school/district? How do your alternative schools/sites provide support and rigor to ensure re-entry doesn't turn into re-offense? What do you want to see from leadership regarding discipline, teacher support, and student success after removal?

Bacher-Hicks, A., Billings, S. B., & Deming, D. J. (2024). The school-to-prison pipeline: Long-run impacts of school suspensions on adult crime. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 16(4), 165–193. https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20230052

Cribb Fabersunne, C., Lee, S. Y., McBride, D., Zahir, A., Gallegos-Castillo, A., LeWinn, K. Z., & Morris, M. D. (2023). Exclusionary school discipline and school achievement for middle and high school students, by race and ethnicity. JAMA Network Open, 6(10), e2338989. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.38989

Gerlinger, J., Viano, S., Gardella, J. H., Fisher, B. W., Curran, F. C., & Higgins, E. M. (2021). Exclusionary school discipline and delinquent outcomes: A meta-analysis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 50(8), 1493–1509. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-021-01459-3

Louisiana Department of Education. (n.d.). Let Teachers Teach. https://doe.louisiana.gov/educators/let-teachers-teach

At We Got Goals, LLC, we believe attendance is not simply about getting students into classrooms, it is about creating the conditions that allow every student to thrive. Through consulting, professional learning, and technical assistance, we help schools and organizations move beyond compliance and toward relationship-centered, evidence-informed practices that strengthen educational participation.