Every year, Texas sends more than 100,000 trainees to its system of disciplinary schools, called disciplinary alternative education programs. When the state legislature developed DAEPs in 1995, throughout increasing national issue about school violence, they were designed as an action up from a suspension for students who had actually devoted severe offenses.
But ever since, the state legislature has slowly broadened the reasons a student can– or should– be sent out to a DAEP, according to a Hechinger Report examination. Today, students are sent to the schools, for weeks or in many cases months at a time, for offenses including vaping, making threats, bringing a weapon to campus or getting in trouble with police off campus.
Educators say alternative schools are an important tool for managing serious trainee misdeed and keeping teachers and other trainees safe. But critics say there’s too little oversight of how the schools work and why students wind up in them. They likewise question the quality of education trainees get while in DAEPs.
Our examination into these schools exposed:
Students can be sent out to DAEPs for minor habits. An evaluation of records from lots of school districts showed that trainees have actually been sent out to DAEPs for infractions like insubordination, attendance concerns, gown code violations and obscenity.
Those wrongdoings are not explicitly listed in state law as factors to send out a student to alternative programs. But districts can use their discretion for any behavior that breaches their regional standard procedure. In the 2024-25 academic year, for instance, nearly 36,000 DAEP placements were made since of standard procedure infractions, compared to under 12,000 for assault.
Critics state the legislature took an action toward codifying this approach into law in 2015 when it passed a bill explicitly enabling districts to send kids to DAEPs for interruptions.
Households are hardly ever effective in reversing DAEP positionings. State law needs that before a student is sent out to a DAEP, a hearing must be held to weigh the proof and mitigating factors. The hearing is dealt with by the school district, though, rather than a neutral celebration, and a district employee makes the last determination.
Families do not constantly have a right to attract district leaders or the school board. The law also does not offer a course to elevate a complaint to the Texas Education Agency; courts, on the other hand, have actually historically ruled they do not have jurisdiction in this location.
DAEPs tend to be extremely rigorous environments, and many trainees battle in them. Trainees in these programs are often forbidden from speaking in class unless given approval, according to our analysis of handbooks from 75 districts. When moving from class to class, they are typically required to stroll in a single-file line– often even with their hands behind their back. Stringent dress codes prohibit facial hair, fashion jewelry and shoes. Extra days can be contributed to a positioning if a trainee breaks any rules.
Since students in different courses and grades cycle in and out of DAEPs throughout the year, most of schoolwork is done separately, often on computers. For trainees with long placements, this can mean going months without live guideline. Research suggests that students appointed to DAEPs are less likely to graduate from high school on time; just 44 percent of ninth graders positioned in a DAEP finished 4 years later, compared to 84 percent of trainees who got no discipline and 70 percent who had been designated one in-school suspension.
Some student groups are overrepresented in DAEPs. In the 2024-25 academic year, Black trainees comprised about 13 percent of the overall trainee body in Texas, however represented 22 percent of all students put in DAEPs. Males also are appointed this punishment at a higher rate than women, accounting for about two-thirds of all placements.
State law needs educators to take into account a trainee’s special needs status before sending a trainee to an alternative school. Even so, trainees in unique education comprised nearly a quarter of such placements, in spite of just representing 17 percent of the total trainee population. Once in a DAEP, trainees can get days added to their placement if they don’t follow all the school rules. Professionals say that students with specials needs frequently have a hard time with the stiff structure and wind up staying longer.
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Contact examinations editor Sarah Butrymowicz at [email protected] or on Signal: @sbutry.04.
This story about DAEP schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent wire service concentrated on inequality and development in education. Register for the Hechinger newsletter.
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