What are the Sources of School Discipline Disparities by Student Race and Family Income?

In the Unit­ed States, low-income stu­dents and stu­dents of col­or are sus­pend­ed and expelled from school at much high­er rates than their peers. These dis­par­i­ties are con­cern­ing both because of what caus­es the dis­par­i­ties (e.g., var­i­ous types of dis­crim­i­na­tion) and because exclu­sion­ary dis­ci­pline prac­tices are at least cor­re­lat­ed with numer­ous neg­a­tive out­comes for stu­dents. In this study, we exam­ine dif­fer­ences in sus­pen­sion rates and dura­tions by race and fam­i­ly income in the state of Louisiana. Our key find­ings are: Black stu­dents are about twice as like­ly as white stu­dents to be sus­pend­ed, and low-income stu­dents are about 1.75 times as like­ly as non-low-income stu­dents to be sus­pend­ed. Dis­ci­pline dis­par­i­ties are large for both vio­lent and non­vi­o­lent infrac­tions. Dis­par­i­ties in sus­pen­sion rates are evi­dent with­in schools (black and low-income stu­dents are sus­pend­ed at high­er rates than their same-school peers) and across schools (black and low-income stu­dents dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly attend schools with high sus­pen­sion rates). While across-dis­trict dif­fer­ences account for a small por­tion of the dis­par­i­ties, with­in-school and across-school dif­fer­ences each account for a siz­able share of the dis­par­i­ties. Black and low-income stu­dents receive longer sus­pen­sions than their peers for the same types of infrac­tions. For fights involv­ing one white stu­dent and one black stu­dent, black stu­dents receive slight­ly longer sus­pen­sions than white stu­dents. The dif­fer­ence is about one addi­tion­al sus­pen­sion day for every 20 fights. This dis­par­i­ty is evi­dent even after account­ing for stu­dents’ pri­or dis­ci­pline records, back­ground char­ac­ter­is­tics, and school attend­ed. Assess­ing the pres­ence of direct dis­crim­i­na­tion by schools, which occurs when schools pun­ish stu­dents of dif­fer­ent back­grounds dif­fer­ent­ly for the same behav­ior, is a fun­da­men­tal chal­lenge for research on stu­dent dis­ci­pline and requires many assump­tions. Researchers typ­i­cal­ly can­not observe stu­dents’ true behav­iors — only the records that result when schools write up stu­dents for an infrac­tion. We exam­ine the pun­ish­ments that occur after inter­ra­cial fights, which we believe pro­vides a cred­i­ble check for the exis­tence of direct dis­crim­i­na­tion in cas­es where stu­dents behave sim­i­lar­ly. Giv­en that we find that direct dis­crim­i­na­tion occurs in this con­text, with a black and white stu­dent receiv­ing dif­fer­ent pun­ish­ments for the same exact inci­dent, it seems like­ly that direct dis­crim­i­na­tion would occur where dis­ci­pline dis­par­i­ties are less vis­i­ble. More broad­ly, this study helps bet­ter explain the sources of dis­ci­pline dis­par­i­ties and there­fore pro­vides a use­ful basis for iden­ti­fy­ing solutions.

Related Publications

The Effects of the Louisiana Scholarship Program on Student Achievement after Three Years

Jun 26, 2017 | by Jonathan N. Mills, Patrick J. Wolf

Did the New Orleans School Reforms Increase Segregation?

Apr 4, 2017 | by Lindsay Bell Weixler, Nathan Barrett, Douglas N. Harris, Jennifer Jennings

Extreme Measures: When and How School Closures and Charter Takeovers Benefit Students

Oct 17, 2016 | by Whitney Bross, Douglas N. Harris, Lihan Liu