Why behavior charts don't work?

If you have ever walked into an elementary school classroom, you have most likely seen some behavior chart on the wall with a list of all of the students' names on one column and some sticker or mark next to each name. Or maybe even a clip chart. Not only are these degrading to students, but they can also cause more harm and target those specific students with behaviors to act out even more.

The theory behind the behavior chart was put together with good faith; however, they only target a specific population of kids. They focus on the kids who always follow the rules and do the right thing while shaming students who struggle to fit that social norm. Many teachers use behavior charts as a reward/punishment system. You do something well; you get rewarded; if you don’t, you get punished. All of this is displayed for the entire class and parents to see. Can you imagine the child who is always on red or always asked to clip down? Every day they come to class to get punished publicly by their teacher and shamed in front of their classmates. Imagine if there was a clip chart at your job and every mistake you made as an employee was put on display for others to see. Imagine that kind of learning environment as an adult, let alone a child who might already come from an unstable, unsupportive home. It does not allow a safe learning environment.

Many teachers that use behavior charts don’t allow students the opportunity to earn back rewards. So if they clip down or go to red, they have no way to climb back up the rest of the day. So if you have a student who struggles with behavior and has clipped down by 9:00 AM, and they have no opportunity for success the rest of the day, you better believe that their behavior will spike because they have nothing left to lose rest of the day.

Behavior charts can be used positively; however, they need to be used on an individual basis for those specific students who struggle with following the rules or acting out. They need to emphasize that student’s specific target behavior that you're trying to change, and it needs to focus on the positives that they created rather than the negative. For students to change their behavior, they need to see that they can have success. When we work with students individually, this allows us to teach them the appropriate behaviors we want them to have while allowing them to be part of the process, rather than shaming them in front of their classmates by asking them to clip down or putting them on red. We need to focus on teaching them what we want rather than just punishing them.