Impacts of Suspension and Expulsion on Later School Sanction Risk: Student Race and School Racial Composition

• In Event: Critical Studies in Race and Ethnicity: Exploring Racial/Ethnic Dynamics of Group Identity, Experience, and Behavior

Abstract

The present study investigates the relationship between early childhood suspension or expulsion and students’ odds of experiencing exclusionary discipline in adolescence. In particular, the study examines whether the relationship between early suspensions and later risk differs by the combination of student race and school racial composition. While labeling theory, and in particular the status characteristics hypothesis, can speak to the role of individual student race in the labeling process, labeling theory is limited in that it says little about the role of social context in making a sanction more or less stigmatizing. I examine the impact of one aspect of school context, school racial composition, on the suspension-suspension relationship, drawing on insights from racial threat theory. The study uses data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a prospective longitudinal study of youth born in large US cities between 1998 and 2000. Main findings include a positive relationship between early childhood and adolescent experiences of exclusionary discipline, an independent effect of student race on year 15 suspension risk, and heightened risk for Black, previously-suspended youth in majority-minority school settings. Implications for labeling theory in context and surveillance of youth are discussed.

Author

• Abbey Potter, University of Maryland, College Park