Tampa Trib Article and Poll About Time out rooms

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Should Schools Use Time-Out Rooms?

November 20,2008

DES MOINES, Iowa

http://www2.tbo.com/poll/2008/oct/17/35/should-schools-use-time-out-rooms/#poll_35

(Click on the link and cast your vote)

After failing to finish a reading assignment, 8-year-old Isabel

Loeffler was sent to the school's time-out room - a converted storage area

under a staircase - where she was left alone for three hours. The autistic Iowa girl wet herself

before she was finally allowed to leave. Appalled, her parents removed her from

the school district and filed a lawsuit.

Some educators say time-out rooms are being used with increased

frequency to discipline children with behavioral disorders. And the time outs

are probably doing more harm than good, they add. "It really is a form of

abuse," said Ken Merrell, head of the Department for Special Education and

Clinical Sciences at the University

of Oregon. "It's

going to do nothing to change the behavior. You're using it as an isolation

booth." Segregating children removes them from the positive aspect of the

classroom and highlights that they're different from other children, said

Camarata, director of the Kennedy

Center for Behavioral Research at Vanderbilt University. And isolating an autistic

child might be particularly counterproductive. "They don't like being

around other people so they might increase their negative behavior because they

view it a reward," he said. Though there is no data on the use of time-out

rooms, Camarata speculates that they've become widespread as schools confronted

a growing enrollment of children with behavior disorders. "I believe it's

because classrooms are much less flexible with more focus on compliance,"

he said.

The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund in Berkeley, Calif.,

receives calls from parents across the country who complain about time-out

rooms, said Cheryl Theis, an education advocate for the organization.

"Parents call and say their child's disability has been exacerbated by

this and are traumatized by this," she said. Merrell said he's encountered

time-out rooms he felt were unsafe. "I once consulted with a school in

another state and had a weekly appointment with a child to do some counseling

and when I got there they told me he was in a time-out room," he said.

"He was in a janitor's closet with no windows, no ventilation, open cans

of paint, a mop bucket with disinfectant and he had been in there for over an

hour." Merrell, who has published nearly 100 studies and 10 books

on teaching social and emotional skills, said time-out rooms can be used

effectively but seldom are. The key, he said, is to combine the time outs with

social skills training. Patti Ralabate, a special education analyst with the

National Education Association, said time-out rooms are common but should be

used sparingly. "And when they are used, all of the educators involved

need to have appropriate professional development to see how this is used and

how to use them appropriately," she said. Ralabate said a time-out room

can be effective if it is intended to provide a space for a child to calm down

and reflect on their behavior. "If it is used to isolate the child, punish

the child for a behavior, then we would view it as not productive and not

positive," she said.

In Iowa, Doug and

Eva Loeffler started to notice changes in their daughter in December 2004, soon

after she began school in the Des

Moines suburb of Waukee. It prompted them to take

Isabel to University Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City for evaluations. "We laid

awake at nights thinking we'd have to institutionalize her," Doug Loeffler

said. "We went to three evaluations at the hospital and all of a sudden we

find out she's being mistreated." Loeffler said they weren't told in

school evaluation reports that their daughter had been restrained and placed in

a time-out room. During one incident in December 2005, Isabel wet herself because

she was locked in the room for three hours and not allowed to use a restroom,

he said. Loeffler said the time-out room rules required that before she could

be released, she must sit on the floor with her legs crossed without moving a

muscle for at least five minutes. "If she said something, grimaced at

them, they would restart the clock and she was not capable of doing that,"

Loeffler said. "That's why it was three hours." Loeffler said

the couple homeschooled Isabel until he took a new job and the family moved

last year to California.

Isabel has shown signs of progress and is back in public school, he said.

Wilkerson, superintendent of the Waukee school district, declined to speak

about the accusations because of the pending lawsuit. But he said time-out

rooms are a "pretty common practice" and that the district complies

with the state's guidelines for such rooms. Loeffler

said he is pressing ahead with the lawsuit and hopes to draw attention to the

need for nationwide standards for time-out rooms.

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