To the Editor:

Re “Seeing the Toll, Schools Revise Zero Tolerance” (front page, Dec. 3):

It’s encouraging to see more schools moving away from a culture of punishment and toward positive approaches that keep children in school.

The overuse of harsh discipline has become an important education reform issue in California, where schools issued more than 700,000 suspensions last year. Research has shown that suspending more students doesn’t lead to safer schools or higher test scores.

Instead, it accelerates the path to dropout and a lifetime of serious trouble with the law. Judges, educators and others are now seeing that the school-to-prison pipeline may well begin with that first school suspension.

As a pediatrician and head of California’s largest health foundation, I see misbehavior as a warning sign of something going wrong in the life of a child.