Disproportionately Disciplining Black Females in Pennsylvania Public Schools

• In Event: Poster Session: Women and Politics Research I

Abstract

A great deal of scholarly attention has been dedicated to exploiting the disparities in resources, outcomes, and experiences that characterize the nation’s primary and secondary school system. One lens that has been employed to great effect in this effort is that which focuses on the ways in which disciplinary policies and practices overwhelmingly affect black male students, likening their treatment by institutional school authorities to the broader social plight of black males within the criminal justice system. The wealth of research that exists on this subject has laid the groundwork for critical and worthwhile analyses, illustrating how the end of de jure segregation has led not to a systematic decline in the mistreatment of black youth, but rather to a wholesale re-framing of the manner in which students of color are socially controlled in ways that ostensibly reflect and reinforce culturally normative hierarchies.

What the research has begun but has not yet substantively revealed, however, is the degree to which black females, as a doubly subordinate group of the student population, fall victim to the same institutional prejudices. This begs the following questions: to what extent does the race and gender of students shape the lived public school experiences of young women of color? The precarious narrative of young black males has been thoughtfully and meticulously laid out, but as it pertains to the broader plight of black students in public schools, it nevertheless represents an incomplete rendering of the story.

The extant literature on disproportionate disciplinary measures provides a number of proven frameworks for exploring the problem at hand and reveals three overarching themes regarding disciplinary outcomes and students of color -- the tendency toward aggressive policies, exclusionary punishments, and the prevalence of subjectivity in evaluating student behavior. These critical findings are fascinating in that, when regarded from an intersectional perspective, they raise a rather obvious question: does gender have a moderating effect on race in the context of disciplinary outcomes and black female students? We contend that black females are perceived as a threat to the stability of the educational environment and that their subjection to systemic discipline is at the discretion of teachers exhibiting racial biases. Furthermore, we believe that black female students are more vulnerable to the capricious and severe administration of school discipline when constituting a minority of the student population.

In this paper, we use two methods to examine the frequency and nature of black female students referred for official disciplinary action. First, we conduct a content analysis of the disciplinary infraction records and corresponding demographic profiles of students in urban, suburban, and rural communities within Pennsylvania, which is ideal for this project because it is a state in which 90% of teachers are white and fewer than 25% of students are black. Pennsylvania is particularly well suited to this study because of the population distribution between two large metropolitan areas separated by a vast rural landscape, closely paralleling the composition of the nation at large. Second, we use a survey experiment as a means of contextualizing this data. Much like previous articles on disciplinary infractions, we vary the race and gender of the student offender and ask participants to evaluate the disciplinary transgression of the student and assign a corresponding punishment. The inherent subjectivity of teachers in determining the severity of the infraction is critical to understanding why culturally-loaded factors such as race and gender affect the administration of school discipline. This approach emphasizes the significant role of the teacher in appraising and redressing student behaviors, which may provide insight into the effect of cultural expectations and biases on disciplinary outcomes.

Although this research effort will not eliminate the institutional biases rampant within the American public school system, it is our hope that it will serve to shed light on the lesser known dimensions of a broader social problem. While the obvious instruments of subjugation have long been nullified by law, they have merely been replaced by a far more elaborate and insidious reimagining of systemic social controls. Negative interpersonal exchanges between teachers and black female students reinforce the cultural and systemic inequalities still plaguing the very system that promises to eradicate them.

Authors

• Stephanie Dell'Elmo

• Camille Danielle Burge, Villanova University