Eliminating Excessive and Disparate School Discipline: A Review of Research and Policy Reform

Corporal Punishment in U.S. Public Schools: Prevalence, Disparities in Use, and Status in State and Federal Policy

“…A report from the Council of State Governments Justice Center pointed to the need for better monitoring of discipline across race, gender, and disability status subgroups (Morgan, Salomon, Plotkin, & Cohen, 2014). The Discipline Disparities Research-to-Practice Collaborative issued two briefs calling for policy and practice initiatives to reduce disparities in school discipline (Gregory, Bell, & Pollock, 2014; Losen, Hewitt, & Toldson, 2014). All of these recent reports were focused on disparities in suspensions, expulsions, and physical restraints; not one mentioned disparities in corporal punishment.…”

Contextual factors associated with the use of corporal punishment in U.S. public schools

“…In past years, SCP received little attention from researchers or government agencies, particularly in comparison to other forms of school discipline such as suspensions and expulsions (Losen, Hewitt, & Toldson, 2014; Smith & Harper, 2015; U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education, 2014; U.S.…”

Bullied and Punished: Exploring the Links between Bullying and Discipline for Sexual and Gender Minority Youth

“…While these responses may have represented a positive approach to addressing a student's mental health, they also located the solution to the student's issues within the student, served to exclude SGM students from their educational experience, and, ultimately, failed to address the hostile school climates that contributed to the mental health issues in the first instance. While it is critical that we continue to investigate formal disciplinary actions that lead to educational disparities for marginalized groups (Losen & Haynes, 2016), similar to Gregory et al (2016), this study suggests that researchers and practitioners must also expand our understanding of "punishments" to include informal actions that serve to disrupt a student's educational journey and exclude them from the school community. Educators, practitioners, and policymakers should consider transforming school discipline systems that are focused on discrete rule violations and punitive discipline to systems that focus on the totality of the harms to youth that result from victimization and consistently address those harms using more supportive forms of discipline such as restorative and developmental approaches (Day, et al, 2016;Gregory, et al, 2016;Watson, 2008).…”

“…Documented school discipline disparities also exist for adolescents of color (Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera, 2010) and adolescents with disabilities (Skiba et al, 2006), and evidence is emerging that race and ability status lead to more severe disparities for SGMY of color or SGMY with disabilities (Chmielewski et al, 2016;Skiba, 2016). This research provides evidence that disparities in school discipline result when school administrators impose different consequences for the same or similar punishable behaviors, not because particular students engage more often in these behaviors (Losen & Haynes, 2016;Poteat et al, 2016a), suggesting that issues related to bias and discrimination may contribute to discipline disparities in the United States (Snapp, Hoenig, Fields, & Russell, 2015;Mediratta & Rausch, 2016;Skiba, 2016).…”

“…These policies often include zero-tolerance approaches to addressing school bullying, which have increased punitive discipline practices (American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force 2008) despite research demonstrating that such practices are largely ineffective in creating safer schools for adolescents. In fact, they have increased discipline disparities within schools for marginalized youth (Advancement Project, Alliance for Educational Justice, Gay-Straight Alliance Network 2012; American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force 2008; Day et al, 2016;Losen & Haynes, 2016;Mediratta & Rausch, 2016;Skiba, 2016). Examples of punitive discipline are exclusionary discipline, such as removals from class, out-of-school suspensions and expulsions, and expiatory punishment (DeVries & Zan, 1994), which is intended to create discomfort or impose a cost to the student or which is disproportionately greater than the transgression.…”