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How Educators Can Eradicate Disparities in School Discipline
Abstract
Gregory, Bell, and Pollock offer principles and practices to help schools move beyond punitive discipline and toward conflict prevention and intervention. They argue that eradication of disproportionate punitive disciplinary sanctions begins by engaging and motivating students before the conflict occurs. Their chapter details four guiding prevention principles and practices: culturally relevant and responsive teaching, supportive relationships, academic rigor, and respectful school environments with bias-free classrooms. Additionally, Gregory et al. suggest four equity-oriented principles and practices for conflict intervention: problem-solving approaches to discipline, inquiry into the causes of conflicts, inclusion of the student and family on causes of and solutions to conflicts, and reintegration of students post-conflict.
... disruption, disobedience, insubordination) as opposed to more objectively defined behaviors (i.e. fighting, drugs, alcohol, weapons) (Gregory, Bell & Pollock, 2014;Skiba, Michael, Nardo & Peterson, 2002). ...
... Recall that racial/ethnic disparities in school discipline tend to be larger in subjective offense categories as opposed to more objectively defined behaviors (Gregory, Bell & Pollock, 2014;Skiba, Michael, Nardo & Peterson, 2002 ...
... Department of Education, 2016), particularly around discipline infractions that are subject to interpretation. School-based practitioners disproportionately accuse students of Color, often boys, of disobedience, defiance, disorderly conduct, and threats (Blake, Butler, Lewis, & Darensbourg, 2011;Gregory, Bell, & Pollock, 2014;Gregory & Weinstein, 2008;Public Counsel, 2015;Skiba, Michael, Nardo, & Peterson, 2002;Wentzel, 2002), and assign these same students to exclusionary consequences at much higher rates than their White peers (Balingit, 2018;U.S. Department of Education, 2016). ...
... ). 'Objective' disciplinary infractions include possession of weapons or drugs, whereas 'subjective' offenses include infractions for which there are no concrete evidence, such as 'disruption,' 'defiance,' 'disobedience,' and 'insubordination.' It has been widely reported that subjective infractions are disproportionately assigned to African American and Latina/o students 11 (e.g.,Blake, Butler, Lewis, & Darensbourg, 2011;Gregory, Bell, & Pollock, 2014;Gregory & Weinstein, 2008; Public Counsel, 2015;Skiba, Michael, Nardo, & Peterson, 2002;Wentzel, 2002). Students of Color are also likely to receive harsher punishments for less serious infractions than their White peers despite the fact that students exhibit similar ...
... Because of well-documented discipline disparities, policymakers and researchers have called for the use of supportive strategies that address disciplinary issues and keep students in school (Gregory, Bell, & Pollock, 2014;US Department of Education, 2014). Some of the supportive strategies that schools utilize include structured programs such as positive behavioral intervention supports (PBIS) and restorative justice (RJ). ...
... Beyond discipline disparities, we find that more supportive strategies are associated with lower odds of suspension and more punitive practices are associated with higher odds of suspension, a finding that also aligns with past research (Day et al., 2016;Gregory et al., 2014). This finding applies to the full sample as well as for LGBT youth. ...
Recently, schools have focused on supportive (e.g., behavioral supports) rather than punitive (e.g., suspension) strategies to reduce school pushout among marginalized youth. We examined the association between suspension and discipline practices for students with intersecting identities (e.g., LGBT youth of color). We used teacher and student data from 1,091 schools that participated in the California School Climate and California Healthy Kids Surveys. Relative to White LGBT youth, LGBT youth of color were at higher risk of being suspended, and youth were differentially affected by punitive policies depending on their race, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity. While supportive strategies were associated with lower risk of suspension, punitive practices were associated with higher risk of suspension, especially for LGBT youth of color.
... Racially disparate disciplinary practices plague the U.S. education system, as Black youth are more likely than their White peers to be suspended for discretionary, minor, and non-violent infractions (hereafter referred to as a suspension for minor infraction). This longstanding discipline gap has been linked to educators' implicit biases and lowquality student-teacher relationships (Gregory, Bell, & Pollock, 2016;Skiba, Arredondo, & Williams, 2014) that result in Black students' less favorable school experiences than their White peers (Wang & Degol, 2016). Indeed, Black students' sense of school belonging, relationships with school adults, and perceptions of the fairness of school rules decline substantially after receiving a suspension for minor infraction (Huang & Cornell, 2018). ...
Racially disparate school disciplinary practices create inequitable circumstances for minority and immigrant youth around the world. In the U.S., Black youth are more likely than their White peers to be suspended for minor, non-violent infractions. This study explores (a) whether school cultural socialization practices reported by Black students (N = 544; Mage (SD) = 12.45 (1.57); 49% boys) and teachers (N = 38; 84% female) were linked to a reduced likelihood of receiving suspensions for minor infractions and (b) the extent to which Black students' perceptions of school climate mediated this relation. Results indicated that school cultural socialization was linked to a decreased likelihood of being suspended for a minor infraction and improved school climate perceptions for Black students. Black students’ perception of school climate mediated the link between school cultural socialization and suspensions for minor infractions. These results highlight school cultural socialization as a promising approach for increasing cultural responsivity and equity within schools, reducing racial bias, and expunging unjust disciplinary responses.
... When amending policies, schools can collaborate with parents and community members, specifically those underrepresented (Anderson, 2020;Banks & Obiakor, 2015). The collaborative process will enhance positive relations and provide perspectives that may alleviate or prevent future conflicts (Anyon et al., 2016;Gregory, Bell, & Pollock, 2016). If policies are not already established, schools should develop a sex trafficking response plan to be able to clearly identify, assess, and report sex-trafficked youth. ...
Human trafficking is widely regarded by experts today as “modern slavery.” Research
consistently reveals that survivors of the sex trade are disproportionately women of color in the United States. Such racial disparities are explained by a long history of structural racism and inequality resultant of colonialism. Colonial knowledge production systems are responsible for producing and maintaining anti-black sexual archetypes premised on the pornographic objectification of Black women’s bodies. The hypersexual scripting and adultification of the Black body help to explain why sex trafficking impacts Black girls at higher rates compared to other groups. This also explains why Black youth are less likely to be perceived as victims. In this chapter, we connect the disproportionate impact of sex trafficking to reporting barriers and the often harsher, exclusionary discipline and punitive treatment of Black female youth experienced in the K-12 setting. Although sex trafficking awareness among educators is improving in the U.S., we call attention to the pivotal role that educational leaders can play in the prevention of sex trafficking by working in collaboration with the community and local stakeholders to create a shift in culture, response and policy.
This chapter is focused on how to avoid delinquency, detention, and incarceration for young people by using early prevention and effective programs to help divert from the juvenile courts and build individual and family strengths and resiliency. First reviewed are the risk and protective factors that impact delinquency and incarceration pathways, it is often a combination of events over time that lead to youthful offending and delinquency. A developmental framework approach helps to understand that adolescents are uniquely different from young adults and how this makes rehabilitation and resiliency building much more possible. Looking at what works, specific assessments of how traumatic events and mental health problems increase the risk for offending behaviors and delinquency are reviewed along with ways to intervene and build resiliency through effective prevention and programming efforts. In addition, the impact and efforts schools can take in helping young people have positive academic outcomes is examined because school approaches can have a uniquely protective impact on vulnerable students. There are also ways that police, the juvenile courts, and incarceration facilities can use rehabilitative alternatives, as opposed to control and punishment, to divert young people from the system and provide a second chance for youthful offenders to minimize recidivism.
Storytelling is an effective technique for resolving disputes and conflict while preserving relationships, self-image, and cultural standards. With increased access to the internet and social media, digital storytelling has become instrumental in spurring awareness and change in areas of social injustice and inequality. This chapter briefly examines the science and culture of storytelling and explores the use of digital storytelling in multiple contexts. The author establishes evidence-based support for the use of storytelling and/or digital storytelling 1) to mitigate educator bias in school discipline policy and practices; 2) to counteract and/or reduce negative psychological, emotional, and cultural impacts of excessive or disparate disciplinary practices; 3) to increase cross-sector awareness, advocacy, and engagement on exclusionary discipline issues. The author also proposes a counter-storytelling method for enhanced qualitative and quantitative data-gathering in school discipline cases.
In this analysis, we consider how a potentially important triggering event in the life course—exclusionary school discipline—may affect students’ high school outcomes. We extend the literature to focus on the long-term effects of exclusionary discipline that occurs in the early grades, when students are relatively young and when a significant share of exclusionary discipline first occurs. We further evaluate the potential, long-term effects of exclusionary discipline on different high school outcomes (non-completion, GED certification, high school diploma) in statistical models that account for observed and unobserved heterogeneity. Overall, we find robust and consistent evidence that very young children are not somehow more resilient or more protected from negative, long-term effects of suspension or expulsion in early elementary school. Moreover, previous research might underestimate the effects of (early) exclusionary discipline more generally by ignoring the independent effects on GED certification.
School shooting tragedies and the juvenile justice system’s movement toward a retributive and punitive framework gravely impacted how primary and secondary school students, disproportionately urban districts, used security measures to lock down campuses and build “fortress‐like” schools. This iteration of control on school campuses emerged in tandem with the most recent generation’s zero tolerance approach to student violence and problems; a policy widely regarded as ineffective in urban, suburban, and rural districts. As school shootings continue to impact state legislative action and public reactions to school management, this paper takes a critical approach to school security policies and reviews the evidence on the risk for school violence and how to move away from student control approaches that do not improve school safety. Instead, the incorporation of prosocial education and school engagement efforts finds that school and student safety is improved. These, and related approaches to student body management, decreases campus violence and may also minimize the risk of some school shootings ‐ as rare as these tragic incidents are across the nation’s schools. The interplay of schools, students, and the juvenile and family courts is ongoing. Knowing how school districts can best approach their campus environments, safety, and learning is important for school social workers and court personnel because of how often these systems work, or do not work, together.
An extensive theoretical and qualitative literature stresses the promise of instructional practices and content aligned with minority students’ experiences. Ethnic studies courses provide an example of such “culturally relevant pedagogy” (CRP). Despite theoretical support, quantitative evidence on the effectiveness of these courses is limited. We estimate the causal effects of an ethnic studies curriculum, using a “fuzzy” regression discontinuity design based on the fact that several schools assigned students with eighth-grade GPAs below a threshold to take the course. Assignment to this course increased ninth-grade attendance by 21 percentage points, GPA by 1.4 grade points, and credits earned by 23. These surprisingly large effects suggest that CRP, when implemented in a high-fidelity context, can provide effective support to at-risk students.
This book provides a critical analysis of the origins, nature, development, and transformation of the state and society historically and today, examining the class nature and social basis of politics and the state in different societal settings. The book emphasizes the centrality of class relations in explaining political power and the role of the state in class-divided societies by providing powerful theoretical and empirical analyses of themes in political sociology in an era of globalization. It examines in detail the major political issues and events of our time, and makes them relevant to the study of power and politics today. Students from many ethnic minority backgrounds and low-income families are underrepresented in American colleges and universities. This book describes and assesses educational policies and practices that seek to rectify this important manifestation of structured inequality. Inspired by a commitment to providing a pathway to college and beyond, Mehan and his team document the innovate practices developed and implemented at the nationally recognized schools created by The Center for Research in Educational Equity, Access, and Teaching Excellence (CREATE) at the University of California-San Diego: the Preuss School, a 6-12 charter school on the UCSD campus for underrepresented minority students; and nearby schools located in economically depressed neighborhoods. Based on long-term research, Mehan's book makes important contributions to the literature on educational achievement disparities that exist-and are growing-within the United States. He sheds light on how we can improve public policy for the futures of secondary school students.
We evaluate a tracking program in a large urban district where schools with at least one gifted fourth grader create a separate "gifted/high achiever" classroom. Most seats are filled by non-gifted high achievers, ranked by previous-year test scores. We study the program's effects on the high achievers using (i) a rank-based regression discontinuity design, and (ii) a between-school/cohort analysis. We find significant effects that are concentrated among black and Hispanic participants. Minorities gain 0.5 standard deviation units in fourth-grade reading and math scores, with persistent gains through sixth grade. We find no evidence of negative or positive spillovers on nonparticipants.
Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts. © 2013 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.