Discipline to Punish: Examining the Consequences of Disproportionate Suspensions and Their Impact on Loss of Instructional Time

• In Event: Intersections of Race and Ability: Examining the Education of Students of Color With Dis/abilities in Charter Schools

Abstract

Objective
As research is needed that empirically examines potential factors that contribute to discipline-to-achievement disparities among vulnerable students in charter schools, Presentation #3 examines one factor, risk, in charter schools in CA, FL, TN, and TX.

Theoretical Framework
Scholarship has tried to determine whether and to what extent vulnerable students are over- or underrepresented in exclusionary discipline, placing significantly less emphasis on similar disparities in placements within increasingly restrictive educational settings. Theoretically, these phenomena occur when projections of difference by ability and culture collide in a single body that becomes doubly marked as “matter out of place” by its distance from the cultures and abilities typically privileged in education (Adams & Erevelles, 2016). This demarcation of intersecting differences advances exclusion and, in this case, a crisis of missed instruction that can dramatically impact achievement.

Methods & Data sources
This presentation is a secondary analysis of publicly available data from CRDC, ED Facts, and Common Core of Data public files, measuring for disproportionality using a risk difference equation for calculating risk. Risk difference (RD) and its 95% confidence interval are calculated according to Newcombe & Altman (2000) as follows: RD = (a/a+b) – (c/c+d). Our analysis excludes non-traditional charter schools and charter schools that had significant errors.

Findings
Students of color are disproportionately suspended across social, economic, and ability categories, with Black students with disabilities most likely to be suspended and loose valuable school time, followed by Latinx students. Black students and students with disabilities are also three times more likely to be suspended than White students, and Black students with disabilities are most likely to be pushed out (see Figures 4 & 5). The impact of exclusion skews at the intersection of race and ability, generating a considerable loss of instructional time that Black students with disabilities disproportionately experience (see Figure 6). After controlling for other contributing factors, suspension also predicted a lower graduation rate of between 6 and 14 points.

Scholarly Significance
Days of lost instruction resonates with educators working in the classroom, an area in which schools can take meaningful action because whether suspensions are used frequently or sparingly (as well as the length of suspensions) is determined by school policies, practices, and leadership.

Author

• Daniel Losen, University of California - Los Angeles