How Safe Is the Schoolhouse? An Analysis of State Seclusion and Restraint Laws and Policies – This report was revised in 2019 to discuss new state restraint and seclusion statutes, regulations, rules, and policies. It includes all laws in effect as of July 1, 2019. This updates earlier versions of the report. The first […]

50-State Comparison: State Policies on School Discipline – This resource provides much-needed context for these conversations on school discipline by outlining current state statute in an easily accessible format. Education Commission of the States researched school discipline statutes in all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, and synthesized its findings according to several […]

The Quiet Rooms – For this investigation, ProPublica Illinois and the Tribune obtained and analyzed thousands of detailed records that state law requires schools to create whenever they use seclusion. The resulting database documents more than 20,000 incidents from the 2017-18 school year and through early December 2018.

Children should be protected from unreasonable restraints, seclusion and searches, ABA House says – Resolution 103 urges governmental bodies to adopt and enforce legislation and educational policies that prohibit school personnel from using seclusion and mechanical or chemical restraints on students in preschool through 12th grade. The resolution, sponsored by the Commission on Disability […]

Dangerous Use of Seclusion and Restraints in Schools Remains Widespread and Difficult to Remedy: A Review of Ten Cases – There is no evidence that physically restraining or putting children in unsupervised seclusion in the K-12 school system provides any educational or therapeutic benefit to a child. In fact, use of either seclusion or […]

Applying International Human Rights Standards to the Restraint and Seclusion of Students with Disabilities – No federal law in the United States prohibits school administrators from physically restraining or secluding students. State laws diverge widely. Unlike in medical, psychiatric, and law enforcement settings, where strict national standards govern the use of physical restraint and […]

Restraint and Seclusion of Students with Disabilities – According to the CRDC, during the 2013-14 school year, students with disabilities were subjected to mechanical and physical restraint and seclusion at rates that far exceeded those of other students. Specifically, students with disabilities served by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) represented 12% of […]

Guiding Principles: A Resource Guide for Improving School Climate and Discipline – No student or adult should feel unsafe or unable to focus in school, yet this is too often a reality. Simply relying on suspensions and expulsions, however, is not the answer to creating a safe and productive school environment. Unfortunately, a significant […]

Unsafe in the Schoolhouse: Abuse of Children with Disabilities – Throughout America, schoolchildren with disabilities are placed in restraints, confined in locked seclusion rooms, and subject to painful aversive interventions. COPAA, along with other organizations that make up the Alliance to Prevent Restraint, Aversive Interventions and Seclusion (APRAIS), has been working to combat these […]