The federal Office for Civil Rights announced this spring that the number of suspensions and expulsions in the nation’s public schools had dropped 20 percent between 2012 and 2014.
The news was welcomed by those who oppose the frequent use of suspensions and expulsions, known as “exclusionary discipline.” In recent years, many policymakers and educators have called for the adoption of alternative strategies that allow students to stay in school and not miss valuable learning time. Advocates for discipline reform contend that suspensions are meted out in a biased way because minority students receive a disproportionate share of them. Some also assert that reducing suspensions would improve school climate for all students.
In a recent Education Next article, we describe the prevailing critiques of exclusionary discipline, then examine the research base on which policy reform rests. We also describe the alternative approaches that are gaining traction in America’s schools and present the evidence on their efficacy. Throughout, we consider what we know (and don’t yet know) about the effect of reducing suspensions on a variety of important outcomes, such as school safety, climate, and achievement.
In general, we find relatively thin evidence for both critiques of exclusionary discipline and for support of alternative strategies. In part, this is because many reforms have only recently been implemented, so there’s not yet a lot of evidence as to their efficacy and side effects. Disparities in school discipline by race and disability status have been well documented, but evidence is inconclusive as to whether these disparate practices involve bias and discrimination. As for alternative strategies, the evidence is mainly correlational, suggesting that more research is necessary to uncover how those approaches affect school safety and student outcomes.
Addressing such questions is vitally important because a safe school climate is essential for student success, and disorder and violence in classrooms and corridors have adverse effects on all pupils. For example, students who were exposed to Hurricane Katrina evacuees with significant behavior problems experienced short-term increases in school absences and discipline problems themselves. Recent evidence also shows that exposure to disruptive peers during elementary school worsens student achievement and later life outcomes, including high school performance, college enrollment, and earnings. These findings highlight the importance of closely monitoring the effects of discipline reform on all students, not just those being punished.
Critiques of Exclusionary Discipline
Disproportionate suspension rates. There is little doubt that students of color face exclusionary discipline much more often than their peers do. Furthermore, gaps in suspension rates between black students and white students have grown over time, doubling between 1989 and 2010.
What accounts for these disparities? Do they stem from discrimination and racial bias? The possibility of such bias is one justification for the Office of Civil Rights’ involvement in the issue of school discipline. However, it could be that minority students are disciplined more often because they commit more infractions than their peers. If that is so, the greater frequency of violations among minority students could be caused by factors outside of the school’s purview, such as more exposure to poverty, crime, and life trauma resulting from residential and economic inequality.
Some evidence does suggest that racial minorities tend to be punished more severely than their peers for the same offenses. In 2011, Russell Skiba and colleagues analyzed school-level data on disciplinary referrals in 364 schools and found that black and Hispanic students were more likely than white students to receive suspensions or expulsions for “minor misbehavior,” such as inappropriate verbal language, minor physical contact, disruption, and defiance. Unfortunately, the study was unable to control for students’ prior infractions in school, a factor that may influence the severity of the response to a given offense. In a separate study, Skiba and Natasha Williams further revealed that black students in the same schools or districts were not engaged in levels of disruptive behavior that would warrant higher rates of exclusionary discipline than white peers.
Recent evidence from Arkansas confirms that black students attending public schools in the state are punished more harshly than their white peers, but also suggests that most of the difference is attributable to the schools that students attend. Researchers found that, over the course of three school years, black students received, on average, 0.5 more days of punishment (including in-school and out-of-school suspension and expulsion days), even when controlling for special-education status and comparing students at the same grade level. However, they showed that cross-school differences explained most of this aggregate difference; that is, when the researchers looked only at students attending the same school, the racial differences became much more modest, with black students receiving only about 0.07 more days of punishment than whites. Within schools, the authors also found a statistically significant, though modest, difference in the length of punishment for special-education students, approximately 0.10 days more per suspension.
Another recent study using nationally representative longitudinal survey data considered the role of prior problem behavior in disparate suspension rates. When the study authors controlled for whether these students exhibited prior behavioral problems (in kindergarten, first, and third grades), they found that the racial gap in eighth-grade suspension rates disappeared, leading them to conclude that the disproportionate use of suspensions was probably not the result of racial bias. This conclusion is subject to question, however, because the authors compared results from statistical models that relied on different underlying samples, owing to student attrition within the study. Further, the study was unable to address any biases implicit in the measure of prior behavioral problems.
Negative effects on school climate. Advocates of discipline reform contend that exclusionary discipline may have adverse consequences for school climate. While zero-tolerance policies aim to improve school climate and safety by removing disruptive students, research evidence finds that teachers and students in schools with high suspension rates report feeling less safe than their counterparts in schools serving similar students that have lower suspension rates. Schools with higher suspension rates also have greater teacher attrition and turnover. According to the American Psychological Association’s Zero Tolerance Task Force, there is no hard evidence that exclusionary policies reduce school violence.
While the evidence does suggest that school climate is worse when exclusionary discipline practices are more widespread, this evidence is not causal. We don’t know whether the use of exclusionary discipline causes school climates to deteriorate, or if administrators respond to unruly climates by clamping down on school discipline. Therefore, policymakers and practitioners must remain cautious about the potential effects that newly implemented reforms may have on school climate and student safety. And even if schools reduce their use of exclusionary practices, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they will cease to mete out these punishments disproportionately by race.
Negative effects on student outcomes. Critics also contend that exclusionary discipline can trigger a downward spiral in students’ lives inside and outside of school, leading to the so-called school-to-prison pipeline. Unfortunately, research on the causal effect of suspensions on academic achievement and other student outcomes is limited. Students who are removed from school do tend to have lower achievement on standardized exams; are less likely to pass state assessments; and are more likely to repeat a grade, drop out of school, and become involved in the juvenile justice system. A 2014 survey from the American Association of School Administrators found that 92 percent of superintendents believe that out-of-school suspensions are associated with negative student outcomes, including lost instructional time and increased disengagement, absenteeism, truancy, and dropout rates. These correlations, however, do not tell us whether suspended students would have experienced these adverse outcomes even if they hadn’t received suspensions.
Looking Ahead
Across the country, disciplinary programs and policies are trending away from exclusionary practices and toward a variety of alternatives, with the endorsement of federal and state governments. Yet with such thin evidence today regarding both the harm caused by suspensions and the potential benefits of other approaches, there’s a clear need for rigorous evaluation research, which should focus on the impact of school discipline reforms and their potential unintended consequences.
Children need a safe, secure learning environment if they are to thrive in school. Until we fully understand the benefits and costs of the various approaches to discipline, both exclusionary and alternative, we will fall short of providing that supportive climate.
Matthew P. Steinberg is assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Johanna Lacoe is a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research.
This is an excerpt of a much longer article published by Education Next, which also explores the major critiques of exclusionary discipline and the thin evidence on their alternatives, such as restorative justice.