In a new study, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis use nine years of student-level data from public high schools in St. Louis and the surrounding suburbs to estimate the effects of in-school suspension (ISS) and out-of-school suspension (OSS) on a student’s probability of transferring to another school.
To assess this relationship, the researchers used public school data from the 2010-11 through 2018-19 school years from public schools within five counties that encompass the city of St. Louis and several surrounding suburbs. By combining student punishment data with transfer rates, the researchers built a regression formula to predict whether a high school student who was punished in one school year was likely to transfer to another school in the following year.
Overall, they find that suspensions increase the likelihood of a transfer: An in-school suspension increases a student’s probability of transferring by 64 percent, while an out-of-school suspension increases it by 77 percent. They also find disparities by race, class, ability status, and geography. Specifically, Black students, students who qualify for free lunch, and students with IEPs are more likely than their counterparts to transfer after being suspended—even after controlling for other characteristics such as gender, eighth-grade math and English proficiency levels, and English language learner status.
To the researchers, this is evidence of “pushout.” Yet, as they acknowledge, some unobserved factors may be at work. For example, the study doesn’t control for residential mobility, a circumstance that undoubtedly shapes school transfers and almost certainly correlates with student behavior. Moreover, even if the researchers could control for changes in residence, without the ability to compare similarly behaved students—that is, students who exhibit similar behavior but receive different consequences—they might overestimate the effects of suspension. After all, students may act out because they’re unhappy within the school’s environment and therefore might be more likely to change schools, all else equal. Without the ability to compare residentially mobile students who exhibit similar misbehaviors, we simply can’t draw any conclusions about “pushout.”
Disciplinary lines are blurry, and the data don’t differentiate between minor and major infractions—like a dress code violation versus a fight. Without knowing the nature of the misbehavior, it’s impossible to gauge whether a suspension was warranted or whether it crossed into overreach. Is an in-school suspension a fair response to chronic disruption? Is it better than sending a student home? Possibly. After all, in-school suspensions keep kids in a safe, supervised environment. But if the goal is to maintain order without losing kids in the process, then we need to be clearer about what we’re punishing—and why. The more you interrogate these practices, the more you’re left asking: Where, exactly, is the line between maintaining high standards for student behavior and pushing students out?
Pushout undoubtedly occurs in American high schools. Yet the question remains, how much of it is really caused by exclusionary discipline? Until we disentangle discipline from displacement, and pushout from choice or relocation, we risk misidentifying both the problem and its solutions—and losing students in the process.
SOURCE: Wallace, Margaret K., Jason Jabbari, Yung Chun, Takeshi Terada, and Somalis Chy. “Are School Discipline Practices Pushing Students Out…to Another School? A Longitudinal Analysis of School Transfers in Five Midwest Counties.” Annenberg Institute at Brown University (March 2025).
