The Racialized Political Economy of School Discipline: A Persistent Challenge to Reform

• In Event: Racial Capitalism Perspectives on Educational Inequality

Abstract

Objectives
Calls for radical departures from zero-tolerance school punishment, like restorative justice, have grown in prominence over the past several years. Yet, inequalities along lines of race and disability often persist amidst discipline reform, alongside an orientation toward social control (Lustick, 2017; Welsh & Little, 2018). Drawing on a comparative case study design, this paper shows how, from the federal to the school level, teachers have not been provided the resources necessary to radically depart from traditional punitive discipline.

Theoretical Frameworks
This paper brings together literature on racial capitalism (Robinson, 2000) and educational infrastructure (Spillane et al., 2017). Racial capitalism describes how interlocking systems of racism and capitalism have always been interdependent systems of maintaining hierarchy. Educational infrastructure names the structures and resources that support educators’ instructional practice (e.g., pedagogical resources). Together, these theories allow for an analysis of the resources available to school-based educators with implications for more or less just teacher practice.

Methods and Data
I trace federal and state support for discipline reform using document analysis, with a focus on the funding mechanisms and messages sent through policies and initiatives with implications for discipline reform (e.g., ESSA, Response to Intervention). Additionally, I draw on 25 months (2020-2022) of ethnographic data collected in one Wisconsin suburb, Shady Glen. Data include: field notes of district meetings, school staff meetings, and school and classroom observation (308 observation hours) across three schools; 65 semi-structured interviews with teachers and other school staff (e.g., principal); focus groups with students in five focal teachers’ classrooms (21 students); and district documents (e.g., news coverage).

Findings
As schools in Shady Glen sought to shift away from a reliance on exclusionary discipline and police, educators were faced with some state and district mandates, like the district requirement to participate in Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and to implement Second Step social-emotional learning (SEL) curriculum. These mandates conformed with funding structures established by federal legislation (ESSA, IDEA) and state guidance (e.g., SEL competencies), and generally signaled a continuation of the same logics of behaviorism and exclusion that characterized zero tolerance. Furthermore, all Shady Glen schools were held to a punitive district code of conduct. Nevertheless, the schools had some discretion over how they responded to student behavior. With limited support from the federal and state government and from the discipline reform industry (Koon, 2020), there was some “bottom-up” support for restorative justice from school-based educators. Though restorative justice made its way into all three schools in some form, its capacity to meet the abolitionist and justice-oriented aims called for by activists was limited due to the simultaneous implementation of behaviorist practices and a district code of conduct that required exclusionary discipline in some cases.

Significance
This study extends scholarship using a racial capitalism lens to examine school discipline reform (Koon, 2024), demonstrating that the political economy of school discipline reform strongly shaped the types of resources available to educators and is one key element holding racialized and ableist school discipline in place.

Author

• Abigail J. Beneke, University of Wisconsin - Madison