School Discipline, Police Contact, and Grade Point Average: A Mediation Analysis

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 12:40 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Learning Within the School-Prison Nexus (Table 25)

Abstract

Existing scholarship has focused on examining the implications of exclusionary school discipline for two sets of outcomes: academic achievement and future juvenile and criminal legal involvement. In this paper, we bridge these two literatures. Specifically, we formally test the proposition that the association between school suspension in childhood and adolescent academic achievement is mediated by intrusive police contact in early adolescence. Using data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we find support for this hypothesis: Early adolescent police contact explains approximately 30% of the association between school suspension in childhood and adolescent GPA. This implies that exclusionary discipline sets the stage for youth to become involved in the criminal legal system, which, in turn, hinders future success.

Authors

• Aaron Gottlieb, University of Chicago

• Zitsi Mirakhur, University of Kentucky

• Bianca Schindeler, University of Illinois at Chicago