Structural Racism and School Discipline: Replicating the Racialized Hierarchy Through Coercion and Control

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

• Description of the proposed session
The murder of George Floyd, and the national discourse in its wake, significantly increased awareness in both the popular press and academic venues, of the contribution of structural/systemic racism in maintaining a racialized hierarchy based on skin color. In this session, we will explore how various elements of a coercion- and control-based model of school discipline are integral in the reproduction of the cycle of discrimination and disadvantage that continues to replicate our nation’s racialized caste system.
• Broad, interrelated research and/or conceptual questions that will be addressed across the session papers
Each paper in this session will examine one facet of the coercive model of school discipline (e.g., policing, corporal punishment, exclusionary discipline, threat assessment, school security measures), demonstrating how it a) interacts with other systems through b) both institutional policy and individual behavior in order to c) replicate and extend historical patterns of discrimination and oppression. Understanding that the concept of race developed concurrently with, and is no way separate from, the practice of racism, the research presented in this session is part of a paradigmatic shift in understanding the formation of a racialized hierarchy. That is, rather than exploring and measuring how the “races” differ in socially valued characteristics, the emerging paradigm of research represented by these presentations asks: a) how were racialized categories constructed and who benefitted/benefits from their construction?; b) how do institutional policies grounded in historical stereotypes and practices adapt to current conditions to replicate a racialized caste system, thereby replicating negative outcomes for disadvantaged groups?; and c) how can increased knowledge of the deep history and current applications of structural racism assist in understanding how such structures might be dismantled and educational policies and practices reimagined?
• Research base reflected in (including to be advanced by) this session; in other words, what conversation are you joining, advancing, disrupting, and/or pushing?
There are separate research bases for each of the discipline practices represented in the symposium that the presenters will draw from in their presentations. Yet there is also a strong commonality in that each of these disciplinary practices has a history and an orientation based on the notion of shaping student behavior primarily through coercion or control. Historically, all of these practices have been used differentially with Black and Brown students, and continue to be disproportionate in both treatment and student outcomes today. These components of “traditional” discipline are often viewed as separate elements, even when examined in the context of their contribution to the school-to-prison pipeline. This session will advance and disrupt current understandings by examining the structural roots and reproductive elements of these elements concurrently, in order to clarify the beliefs, processes and policies that create and maintain a racialized hierarchy.
• Explicit relevance to the theme of “Interrogating Consequential Education Research in
Pursuit of Truth” https://www.aera.net/Events-Meetings/Annual-Meeting/2023-Annual-Meeting-Presidential-Program-Theme
Although some have begun to question the extent to which the “school-to-prison-pipeline” conceptualization adequately captures the nested inter-relationship of educational and carceral elements of coercive discipline, the STPP model has shaped a focus on the deeply consequential nature of the short- and long-term outcomes of exclusion and control in school settings. Every day, the life arcs of Black and Brown children and youth are irrevocably deflected away from success and towards academic failure, school exclusion, and arrest and incarceration. The Black-White discipline gap has been shown to account for 20% of the achievement gap (Morris & Perry, 2016 ). A single out-of-school suspension has been shown to significantly increase the probability of contact with the juvenile justice system. Corporal punishment has been shown to have physical, psychological, emotional, and even neurological effects that may continue well into adulthood (Rajalakshmi, 2018). The disproportionate usage of all of these practices with Black and Brown students produces not only a differential impact on individual lives, but a severe and discrepant impact on those communities whose children are more likely to be subjected to such strategies. A deep understanding of the processes through which a hierarchy of human worth based solely on skin color is both embedded in and replicated through coercive school discipline is essential in the effort to dismantle inequity and reimagine educational institutions.
• Significance of this session as a Presidential Session and its contribution to the overall theme

At its heart, this session is grounded in a deep understanding of how a range of coercive methods of school discipline have “implications and outcomes for marginalized communities” that are deeply harmful in the long term. As a research community, we often frame those harms in statistical terms, numbers that enable us to estimate the extent of the problem. Yet each one of those numerical estimates represents children whose lives have been damaged through the applications of policy that are embedded within centuries-old stereotype and misinformation, and which in turn maintain disadvantage and inequity. The purpose of these qualitative and quantitative presentations, and of their synthesis in this session, is to “name injustice” and, through a participatory discussion framework, to point the way towards co-constructing “opportunities for just educational processes and systems.”

Sub Unit

• AERA Presidential Session

Chair

• Russell J. Skiba, Indiana University

Papers

• Ever Since Little Rock: The History of Disproportionate Discipline in American Education - Russell J. Skiba, Indiana University; Ashley L. White, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Historic Racial Oppression and Corporal Punishment in Mississippi Schools - Aaron Kupchik, University of Delaware; Cresean Hughes, University of Delaware; James Bernard Pratt, Fisk University; Geoff Ward, Washington University in St. Louis

• A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Assaults on Children by Police in School Settings - Tyler Whittenberg, Advancement Project; Angela Groves, Advancement Project; Britany Beauchesne, Indiana University; Russell J. Skiba, Indiana University

• The Risks of Threat Assessment to Students Are Dire - Harold Jordan, American Civil Liberties Union

• School Security and Achievement: Racial and Ethnic Pathways - Thomas Mowen, Bowling Green State University; Benjamin W. Fisher, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Samantha Viano, George Mason University; Aishia Brown, University of Louisville; Alex Widdowson, University of Louisville; John H Boman, Bowling Green State University

Discussant

• Ellen Reddy, Nollie Jenkins Family Center, Inc.