In recent decades, K-12 school discipline policies and practices have garnered increasing attention among researchers, policymakers, and educators. Disproportionalities in school discipline raise serious questions about educational equity. This study provides a comprehensive review of the extant literature on the contributors to racial, gender, and income disparities in disciplinary outcomes, and the effectiveness of emerging alternatives to exclusionary disciplinary approaches. Our findings indicate that the causes of the disparities are numerous and multifaceted. Although low-income and minority students experience suspensions and expulsions at higher rates than their peers, these differences cannot be solely attributed to socioeconomic status or increased misbehavior. Instead, school and classroom occurrences that result from the policies, practices, and perspectives of teachers and principals appear to play an important role in explaining the disparities. There are conceptual and open empirical questions on whether and how some of the various alternatives are working to counter the discipline disparities.
This article provides an integrative review of the extant literature on K-12 student mobility in the United States. Student mobility is a widespread phenomenon with significant policy implications. Changing schools is most prevalent among minority and low-income students in urban school districts. There is an ongoing debate about whether student mobility is helpful or harmful. Earlier research compared movers with nonmovers using crosssectional data and did not always include controls for the students' prior achievement and demographic characteristics. Studies in the past decade compared movers with themselves over time using longitudinal data and provided more convincing estimates. Overall, switching schools is associated with a negative impact on students' educational outcomes; however, transferring to higher quality schools may offset and outweigh the transition costs of moving. Strong causal claims are elusive due to considerable data and methodological challenges and the inability to account for the motivating reasons for changing schools.
Generally, educational studies do not problematize the definition of urban education or examine the positionality of sites along a spectrum of urban districts and schools. This study addresses the definitional gap by (a) examining the conceptualization of urban education through an integrative review of prior definitional research and (b) exploring how an urban district may be defined in empirical terms. Our findings indicate six categories are typically used to define urban education: (a) population/location/geography, (b) enrollment, (c) demographic composition of students, (d) resources in schools, (e) disparities and educational inequality, and (f) social and economic context. The results indicate that deficit-oriented language permeates prevailing definitions of urban education and that large-city-centered conceptualizations of urban education may overlook a substantial number of smaller districts with similar levels of educational inequality and diversity.
A growing number of states are using state-run school districts to take over and improve persistently underperforming schools. This article uses Georgia to examine the politics of state takeover. We analyze the supporting and opposing coalitions as well as the alignment between state takeover and charter schools in the campaign for the constitutional amendment to create a statewide turnaround district. Our findings show that corporate interests, the governor, and nonprofit organizations supported state takeover, whereas educators, parents, and community organizations opposed state takeover. There was bipartisan support across coalitions and a crisscrossing of interests regarding local control and the path to school improvement. There are divergent views on charter schools, with supporters of state takeover favoring charter schools.
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