An Educational Advantage? The Collateral Consequences of School Suspension among African American and Afro-Caribbean Adolescents

• In Event: Sociology of Education Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 20. School Dynamics: Behavior, Achievement, and Discipline

Abstract

Racial disparities in exclusionary school discipline between Black and White students reveal the persistence of racial inequality in US public schools. Education scholars contend that exclusionary discipline poses collateral consequences for affected students, including Black adolescents. Yet, little scholarship examines the relationship between school suspension and educational indicators among Black adolescents of diverse ethnicities. Race and immigration scholars find that, regardless of their ethnicity, African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans are vulnerable to severe discipline and racial discrimination in school. Another line of research reveals an immigration advantage in education among Afro-Caribbean students, whereby Afro-Caribbeans achieve higher academic performance than their African American counterparts. Still, scholars have yet to examine how exclusionary punishment might affect the educational advantage of Afro-Caribbean students. Thus, drawing on three theoretical perspectives: the collateral consequences perspective, racialization theory, and the immigrant advantage perspective in education, I examine the influence of school suspension on academic achievement and homework time among African American and Afro-Caribbean adolescents. I also investigate whether ethnicity moderates the relationship between school suspension and each academic outcome. To examine these relationships, I use data from the adolescent supplement of the National Survey of American Life (2001-2003). Findings indicate that suspension is linked with lower grades among African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans. Moderation analyses from multinomial models reveal that suspension has a more detrimental impact on the average grades of African Americans compared to their Afro-Caribbean peers with similar achievement. Relative to high-performing African Americans, school suspension is more damaging to the high achievement of Afro-Caribbeans, suggesting that it may be one path through which the Afro-Caribbean educational advantage declines. Findings also reveal that suspension is related to reduced homework time in the combined sample of Black adolescents, and this relationship does not vary by ethnicity.

Author

• Monisola Vaughan Smith, Washington University-St Louis