1.4.3: Severity of School Discipline

Discipline practices in schools affect the quality of the educational environment, and the ability of children to achieve academic and social success. A recent study documented patterns of discipline referrals in 364 elementary and middle schools during the 2005–2006 academic year (Skiba et al. 2011). Data for this study were reported by school personnel by uploading office discipline referrals to a database. An analysis of the data using statistical methods was used to show that students from African American families are roughly two to three times more likely to be referred to the office for problem behavior as their white peers. Additionally, students from African American and Latino families are more likely than their white peers to receive expulsion or out-of-school suspension as consequences for the same or similar problem behavior.

This type of study provides a school system with hard evidence of a systemic problem. It is certainly true that individual students or parents may feel that individual cases of discipline may have been motived by either an explicit or implicit bias. But individual cases are difficult to interpret because of the presence of complicated mitigating factors that may be involved with individual discipline decisions. An analysis based on the careful use of statistical methodology can remove the effect of these factors by providing a fair comparison between discipline rates. This yields strong conclusions about the presence of bias in school discipline that goes beyond what may be an individual bias. The research shows that there is a systemic problem throughout the entire school system. Such a study can also provide useful insights into potential solutions for the problems.