Predictors and academic outcomes associated with in-school suspension.

Abstract

The negative consequences associated with out-of-school suspension (OSS) are widely recognized, yet its commonly utilized counterpart, in-school suspension (ISS), has received little attention. This study examined school and student characteristics that predicted ISS and its links to academic outcomes, using the nationally representative High School Longitudinal Study of 2009. The sample included 11,860 public high school students, equating to a nationally representative sample of 2,993,918 students upon the application of primary sampling weights for each student and balanced repeated replicate weights to account for students nested in schools. Students who were Black, male, of lower socioeconomic status (SES), or placed in special education were significantly more likely to receive ISS. Further, ISS was associated with lower grade point averages and increased likelihood of high school dropout. These findings raise caution about the use of ISS, particularly as schools consider using ISS as an alternative to OSS. (PsycINFO Database Record

Parental Involvement and the Black–White Discipline Gap: The Role of Parental Social and Cultural Capital in American Schools

“…Close to half of the students attend school in a suburban setting, whereas a third attend school in an urban setting. Almost 12% of students have received ISS at least once in the first semester of the school year, which is consistent with rates in other nationally representative samples (Cholewa et al, 2018). Over 40% have reported that they have misbehaved in some way in that same time frame.…”

“…ISS is often seen as a less punitive type of exclusionary discipline; however, it is still associated with severe outcomes as well, including lower grade point average and higher risk of dropout (Cholewa, Hull, Babcock, & Smith, 2018). In the 2011 to 2012 school year, 3.5 million American students were given ISS, often under the complete discretion of an administrator, compared with 3.45 million students receiving out-of-school suspension (U.S.…”

“…Department of Education, 2017). Cholewa and colleagues (2018), using data from the 2009 High School Longitudinal Study (National Center for Educational Statistics & US Department of Education, 2009), reported that roughly 338,000 of the 2.9 million students in that study had received ISS in the 6 months prior to the survey. This means that roughly 11% of all American students have recently experienced ISS.…”

A Luta Continua1: Next Steps for Racism Research Among Black American Youth

“…Searching the Internet for racial slurs and other derogatory terms may be a proxy for racism at the macro level and linked with health outcomes and other indicators at the micro level (Chae et al, 2015, 2018). Internet‐based measures could also be used to determine racial disparities given that Black American children and adolescents are disciplined, suspended, and expelled at higher rates than their same‐gender counterparts of other ethnic‐racial groups in school settings (Cholewa, Hull, Babcock, & Smith, 2018). Among the questions that need to be addressed: Are Google searches of the n‐word linked to school districts that exhibit racial disparities in discipline, suspension, and expulsion of Black American youth?…”

Suspensions and Achievement: Varying Links by Type, Frequency, and Subgroup

“…In-school suspensions have been introduced in response to criticisms of out-of-school suspensions (Chobot & Garibaldi, 1982; Zimmerman & Archbold, 1979). However, in-school suspensions have hardly shown themselves to be a panacea: Like out-of-school suspensions, in-school suspensions are also associated with negative educational outcomes, including lower educational achievement (Noltemeyer, Ward, & Mcloughlin, 2015), lower grades, and higher dropout rates (Cholewa, Hull, Babcock, & Smith, 2017). In addition, given that interventions that allow at-risk youth to spend more time with other at-risk youth can exacerbate problematic behavior (Dodge, Dishion, & Lansford, 2006; McCord, 2003), in-school suspensions likely result in undesirable student development, especially when teachers view in-school suspensions as a “dumping ground” for students with uncontrollable behavior (Diem, 1988).…”