California Educational Research Association. Banning Math Progress: The Academic Impact of California's Suspension Bans

• In Event: The Consortium of State and Regional Educational Research Associations Distinguished Paper Session 2

Abstract

Several states and school districts have banned suspensions – at least in some grades – for all but the most serious offenses. While the literature generally expects bans to improve academic performance, this paper complements new studies that find unintended negative consequences of discipline reform. We exploit the exogenous introduction of bans to the California policy landscape to compare growth before (2007-2013) and after (2016-2018) Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, and Pasadena adopted bans. We find a significant negative impact on math growth (-0.09 SD) in grades four through seven in each of the three years after districts adopted bans. Cumulatively, the impact was equivalent to a decline from 50th percentile before a ban to the 39th percentile three years later.

Author

• Dominic Zarecki, Fortune School of Education