Disparate use of exclusionary discipline: Evidence on inequities in school discipline from a U.S. state

Abstract

Abstract:There is much discussion in the United States about exclusionary discipline (suspensions and expulsions) in schools. According to a 2014 report from the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, Black students represent 15% of students, but 44% of students suspended more than once and 36% of expelled students. This analysis uses seven years of individual infraction-level data from public schools in Arkansas. We find that marginalized students are more likely to receive exclusionary discipline, even after controlling for the nature and number of disciplinary referrals, but that most of the differences occur across rather than within schools. Across the state, black students are about 2.4 times as likely to receive exclusionary discipline (conditional on reported infractions and other student characteristics) whereas within school, this same conditional disparity is not statistically significant. Within schools, the disproportionalities in exclusionary discipline are driven primarily by non-race factors such as free-and reduced-price lunch (FRL) eligibility and special education status. We find, not surprisingly, that schools with larger proportions of non-White students tend to give out longer punishments, regardless of school income levels, measured by FRL rates. Combined, these results appear to indicate multiple tiers of disadvantage: race drives most of the disparities across schools, whereas within schools, FRL or special education status may matter more. Keywords: discipline policy; school discipline; exclusionary discipline; race; disproportionalities Uso desigual del castigo de exclusión: Evidencias sobre las desigualdades en castigo escolar de un estado de los EE.UU. Resumen: Hay mucha discusión en los Estados Unidos sobre el castigo de exclusión (suspensiones y expulsiones) en las escuelas. De acuerdo con un informe de 2014 de la Oficina de Derechos Civiles del Departamento de Educación de los Estados Unidos, los estudiantes negros representan el 15% de los alumnos, pero el 44% de los estudiantes suspendidos más de una vez y el 36% de los estudiantes expulsados. Este análisis utiliza siete años de datos individuales de nivel de infracción de escuelas públicas en Arkansas. Hemos comprobado que los estudiantes marginados tienen más probabilidades de recibir un castigo de exclusión, incluso después de controlar la forma de ser y el número de referencias disciplinarias, pero que la mayoría de las diferencias se producen a través de las escuelas. En todo el estado, los alumnos negros tienen cerca de 2,4 veces más posibilidades de ser propensos a recibir castigo de exclusión (condicional en infracciones relatadas y otras características del alumno), mientras que dentro de la escuela, esta misma disparidad condicional no es significativamente significativa . En las escuelas, las desproporcionalidades en el castigo de exclusión son impulsadas principalmente por factores no raciales, tales como elegibilidad para almuerzo gratis y precio reducido (FRL) y status de educación especial. Hemos ...

Disparities and Discrimination in Student Discipline by Race and Family Income

“…Second, within-school differences account for a large portion of the overall black/white and poor/non-poor gaps, especially in middle and high school and for outcomes showing whether students were suspended -different from patterns observed in other studies (e.g., Anderson & Ritter, 2017;Kinsler, 2011). 17 For both the black/white and poor/non-poor comparisons, within-school differences account for at least 50 percent of the gap in kindergarten and grades 5 through 12.…”

“…Students in Louisiana are not randomly assigned to schools, and prior research suggests that a large share of the variation in discipline gaps is explained across, rather than within, schools (Anderson & Ritter, 2017;Kinsler, 2011;. We include models with grade and year fixed effects and others with SGY fixed effects to look for overall gaps and within school-grade-year gaps, respectively.…”

“…8 Other studies have used student-level administrative data to examine whether black and white students are disciplined differently. Anderson and Ritter (2017) used Arkansas data to estimate models with infraction fixed effects, finding that black students received longer punishments than white students. They attributed these gaps primarily to differences in the types of schools attended by black and white students.…”

Políticas de convivencia escolar en América Latina: Cuatro perspectivas de comprensión y acción

“…A pesar de las críticas a estas prácticas, ya sea porque no han sido efectivas (Anderson & Ritter, 2017;Costenbader & Markson, 1998;Raffaele-Mendez, 2003;Tobin, Sugai, & Colvin, 1996) o porque la evidencia da cuenta de su impactos negativo como uno de los predictores más importantes de la deserción escolar (American Psychological Association, 2008;Peguero & Bracy, 2014), estas siguen siendo formas comunes con que las escuelas responden a los comportamientos de sus estudiantes. Aun existiendo evidencia de que contribuyen a que los alumnos pierdan tiempo de instrucción, formen percepciones negativas del clima escolar, y se desconecten y abandonen la escuela (Brown & Rodríguez, 2009;Gregory, Skiba & Noguera, 2010).…”

Influence over school discipline policy: Variation across levels of governance, school contexts, and time

“…With regard to disparities in discipline, prior work has documented that exclusionary or zero tolerance policies are more likely to be used in schools serving larger proportions of minority students while restorative practices are less likely to be used in these environments (Curran, 2017;. Coupled with other work that shows that much of the Black-White discipline gap is due to variation across schools rather than within schools (Anderson & Ritter, 2016), the role of the principal in setting such school-wide disciplinary policies and administering discipline becomes a highly relevant driver of both rates of discipline and racial disparities in discipline.…”