2026 Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award

• In Event: 2026 AERA Awards Ceremony and Luncheon

Abstract

The recipients of the 2026 Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award are Sean Darling-Hammond and Eric Ho for their article, “No Matter How You Slice It, Black Students are Punished More: The Persistence And Pervasiveness of Discipline Disparities,” published in AERA Open. This article summarizes a series of complex analyses of national data on exclusionary discipline. The authors leverage new methods of measuring discipline disparities. Their findings provide compelling evidence that, no matter how the data are examined, Black students continue to be overrepresented among those punished, despite multiple federal initiatives intended to address this issue. The article concludes with important policy and practice recommendations to reduce the widespread and enduring racial disparities in discipline.

Authors

• Sean Darling-Hammond, University of California - Berkeley

• Eric Ho, McGraw-Hill

• Catherine P. Bradshaw, University of Virginia