Episodic Exclusionary Discipline in K-12 & Its Impact on Criminal Legal Contact in Young Adulthood

• In Event: Sociology of Education Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 2. Surveillance and Resistance in Schools

Abstract

This paper contributes to the extant work at the education-criminal legal system nexus by utilizing the latest wave of the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing (FFCWS) data to calculate the various patterns of out-of-school suspensions (OSS) and in-school suspensions (ISS) over the course of a K-12 education career. Drawing on poverty spell theory from social mobility literature, I offer the sociology of education field a novel approach to considering a student's history of ISS and OSS as disciplinary spells, or episodic trajectories of exclusionary discipline throughout elementary, middle, and high school. Using latent profile and sequence analyses, this paper offers a new lens for researchers and policymakers to better understand the transition to adulthood by highlighting the cumulative and heterogenous experiences of suspensions over an educational career. Additionally, this paper works to further understand these disciplinary spells through logistic regression analyses that identify the social, structural, and individual forces that relate to these pathways, and show how these spells are associated with the experience of police contact, arrest, or detainment in early adulthood.

Author

• Lili Dodderidge, Cornell University