Collateral Consequences of Exclusionary Discipline

• In Event: Empirical Examinations of Punitive Disciplinary Practices and Their Consequences

Abstract

Local and national education leaders have broadly encouraged schools to reduce their use of exclusionary discipline like suspensions (U.S. Department of Education, 2014). While there are clear correlations between suspensions and future outcomes, for both suspended students and for non-suspended students at schools with large numbers of suspensions (e.g. Balfanz, Byrnes & Fox, 2014; Brownstein, 2009), it is difficult to causally distinguish between the impacts of factors which cause misbehavior and the impacts of school use of exclusionary discipline in response to those behaviors. Perry and Morris (2014) find suggestive evidence that extensive use of exclusionary discipline may negatively impact test scores for students who do not misbehave. Between 2008 and 2014 Chicago Public Schools (CPS) adopted policies encouraging reduced use of exclusionary discipline, and schools seem to have responded, often substituting in-school suspensions (Sartain et al., 2015). Using CPS administrative data, we examine how academic performance, attendance, GPA, and student perceptions of school respond to changes in the use of exclusionary discipline practices. We produce plausibly causal estimates by exploiting the within-school variation induced by policy change, estimating school fixed effects models with controls for reported student behavior. We also explore effect heterogeneity by school climate and grade level.

Authors

• Lauren Sartain, Consortium on Chicago School Research

• Rebecca Hinze-Pifer, University of Chicago