Six years old and sent to alternative school: HB 6’s discipline changes take effect.

Six-year-olds are old enough for first grade. Under Texas law, they're also old enough to be sent to a disciplinary alternative education program (DAEP). 

A new Hechinger Report investigation found that Texas schools made nearly 4,000 DAEP placements involving elementary students in 2022-23, the most recent year with available data. Children 5 and younger cannot be sent to DAEPs, but students as young as 6 can, sometimes for conduct far removed from the serious safety threats these programs were created to address. Records reviewed by reporters included elementary students sent to DAEPs for defiance, attendance violations, inappropriate language and other code of conduct violations. 

House Bill 6, the sweeping school discipline law passed by the Legislature in 2025, expanded schools' authority to remove students for disruptive behavior. Among its changes, administrators can place students in DAEPs for certain disruptive activities or disruption of class, while principals can make an emergency DAEP placement after a single incident of sufficiently serious disruptive, unruly, or abusive behavior. 

Texas AFT raised concerns about exactly this problem while lawmakers debated discipline legislation. In a March 2025 Hotline piece, we urged lawmakers to balance educators' need for safe, orderly classrooms with investments in behavioral supports that address why children act out in the first place, specifically warning against returning to a purely punitive approach for children as young as 6. 

Educators need meaningful tools when student behavior prevents them from teaching or other students from learning. But sending a first-grader away for weeks isn't a substitute for adequately staffing schools with counselors, psychologists, behavior specialists and other supports. 

Families facing a DAEP placement also have rights. Texas Appleseed's updated discipline guide explains when placement is mandatory or discretionary, while Disability Rights Texas outlines additional protections for students with disabilities, including continued special education services and required consideration of factors such as intent, disciplinary history, homelessness, and foster care status. 

The Senate Education committee is set to hear testimony on the implementation of HB 6 next week. As lawmakers consider future changes to Texas' discipline laws, those reforms should preserve educators' ability to maintain safe classrooms without treating the youngest children in our schools like hardened offenders.