School Punishment and Education: Racial/Ethnic Disparities With Grade Retention and the Role of Urbanicity

Abstract

There are racial/ethnic disparities associated with school punishment practices and academic progress. In addition, research suggests that urban schools have stricter school punishment practices and higher grade retention rates. What remains unknown, however, is the relationship between race/ethnicity, school punishment practices, and retention rates across urban, rural, and suburban schools. Thus, this study draws from the Texas Education Agency’s Public Education Information Management System and Critical Race Theory to investigate if there is link between school punishment practices and academic progress, as well as establishing if there are racial/ethnic disparities in urban, rural, and suburban contexts.

The Collateral Damage of In-School Suspensions: A Counterfactual Analysis of High-Suspension Schools, Math Achievement and College Attendance

“…Previous research has demonstrated that suspensions are inequitably distributed according to social and demographic characteristics, such as race and ethnicity, and that these inequitable distributions—often referred to as “punishment gaps”—can eventually lead to “achievement gaps” (Morris & Perry, 2016). While schools are often segregated along these social and demographic lines, only recently has research begun to explore the impacts of this inequitable distribution of suspensions at the school-level (see Peguero et al, 2018).…”

“…At the same time, many schools have adopted an authoritarian approach to discipline, relying heavily on exclusionary practices, such as suspensions. These approaches may be especially prevalent in urban communities, which “have often been characterized by social isolation, heightened police surveillance, perceived family dysfunction, high rates of unemployment and poverty, high rates of violent crime, and overcrowded and underfunded schools” (Peguero et al, 2018, p. 7). As a result of these exclusionary practices, many students have been pushed closer toward the criminal justice system.…”

“…In addition, while high rates of suspensions are often framed as an urban problem (see Losen & Skiba, 2010), recent research has demonstrated that the high-suspension schools—and the negative effects associated with them—extend to suburban and rural areas as well (Peguero et al, 2018). Therefore, while we conceptualize urban education as occurring in both major (urban intensive) and large cities (urban emergent), we recognize that the hyper-disciplining of vulnerable student populations is an urban characteristic that can apply to a variety of geographic contexts (see Milner, 2012).…”

Disparate Impacts: Balancing the Need for Safe Schools With Racial Equity in Discipline

“…Similarly, schools that are urban (Shedd, 2015), Southern (Smith & Harper, 2015), charter (Losen, Keith, Hodson, & Martinez, 2016), “no-excuse” (Golann, 2015), large (Stewart, 2003), low achieving (Skiba et al, 2014), and have fewer teachers of color (Lindsay & Hart, 2017) tend to rely more heavily on punitive discipline. As most of these dimensions characterize the schools that Black and Latinx students attend, and do not fully account for racial disparities once they are considered (Peguero, Varela, Marchbanks, Blake, & Eason, 2018; Skiba et al, 2014), one could conclude that they merely proxy the pervasiveness of racial disparity in discipline. In sum, between-school variation in racial segregation leads to pronounced racial disparities in discipline, and the pervasiveness of segregation makes it difficult for parents to access less segregated schools where hyper-discipline could be less common.…”

The Culture of Control in Schools: How Punitive and Disadvantaged Spaces Impact Race-Specific Suspension Rates

“…Just as increased social control in the criminal justice system is likely to affect defendants of color, increased surveillance, control, and punishment are likely to impact students of color disproportionately. Furthermore, the far-reaching consequences of severe school punishment—for instance, academic failure, arrest, gang involvement, and other negative life outcomes—underscore the need for continued investigations around what factors are associated with the continued creep of the culture of control into American schools (Peguero et al, 2021; Pesta, 2018; Widdowson et al, 2021).…”