The majority of pupils would rather avoid trouble. Not every one of them does.
According to state discipline data, more Texas children have been pulled out of their classrooms and placed in district-run disciplinary programs in recent years. There, they may remain for weeks or months.
Following the enactment of a new state law intended to discourage vaping and an increase in behavioral concerns among students following the pandemic, there has been a rapid spike in the number of children assigned to a Disciplinary Alternative Education Program, or DAEP. Although the majority of districts experienced a rise, the trend is not being felt evenly by all of them.
School districts in Texas are only allowed to suspend children who misbehave for a maximum of three days in a row. A student may be sent to a DAEP to finish their education if they persist in disturbing class or creating a harmful environment for other students.
In those situations, students usually spend weeks or even months away from their home campuses and are not permitted to return unless the district permits it. There is disagreement among educators over the efficacy of these programs; some contend that they impede pupils’ long-term development.
A statewide look
Before declining during the pandemic and then increasing over the last two years, the number of Texas students assigned to DAEPs was largely stable in the late 2010s. Texas sent 121,245 pupils to a DAEP last school year, up from 103,655 the previous year.
The increase might be a result of a nationwide increase in behavioral issues among students following COVID-19. A2022 survey by the National Center for Education Statisticsfound slightly more than 50 percent of U.S. public schools reported higher instances of student misconduct compared to 2019, while roughly 30 percent said misconduct was roughly the same and 5 percent said it was worse pre-COVID. (A tiny percentage of school administrators stated they were unaware of the question or chose not to answer it.)
Some of that increase, however, also can be attributed to a state law that went into effect September 2023 requiring that students automatically be sent to a DAEP if they re caught using e-cigarettes on campus or at a school-related activity. In the past, school districts had the authority to punish kids for vaping as they saw fit.
The purpose of the law is to discourage students from using nicotine-containing products that are addictive. Over 10% of high school students in Texas reported using e-cigarettes during the previous 30 days, according to a 2021 study conducted by the Texas Department of Health and Human Services.
Data by district
Since the law’s implementation, school districts have used a variety of disciplinary measures. Since the 2022–2023 school year, the number of children referred to DAEPs has more than doubled in several districts, such as Pasadena and Spring ISDs. However, the proportion of children referred to DAEPs declined little in Alief and Aldine ISDs.
However, change doesn’t provide a complete picture. Although Spring saw the biggest year-over-year increase in DAEP removals last year among the largest Houston-area districts, Spring previously had the lowest rate of DAEP removals in the region at just 1 per 100 students. Inversely, Aldine and Alief had two of the highest rates of DAEP removals in 2022, but now sit closer to the regional average.
Of the sampled Houston-area districts, Klein had the highest rate of DAEP removals, with 1,600 out of roughly 57,000 students sent to an alternative education program last year.
Find your district
To get a better sense of how school districts disciplinary practices have changed since the 2023 state law, check out our searchable database of DAEP removal rates by Texas school district. The statewide average is 2.5 DAEP removals per 100 students.
A small percentage of districts are not following the law after making it part of their District of Innovation plan, which allows districts to exempt themselves from parts of Texas education law.
Why it matters
Even though the state and local school boards must monitor the programs to ensure students receive a comparable education to their home school, the interruptions may hurt students academic performance down the line.
A 2021 University of Texas at Austin studyfound that students sent to a DAEP once in ninth grade had a graduation rate of 44 percent, compared to 84 percent of students who were never disciplined. For students sent to a DAEP multiple times, just one in four graduated within four years. (The study did not evaluate to what extent a DAEP placement caused a change in likelihood of graduation.)
Texas DHHS has not yet released data on whether e-cigarette use among teens has gone down after the state law went into effect. In 2024,the CDC reportedthat roughly 6 percent of middle and high school students nationwide reported using e-cigarettes, down from10 percent in 2023.
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