School Discipline: Amount, Predictors, Effects and Disproportionality

• In Event: Advancing Equitable Access to Supportive School Discipline and Education: Challenging the School to Prison Pipeline

Abstract

This research utilizes a unique dataset containing education and school discipline information for every public school student in the state of Texas matched with juvenile justice data. Using multivariate analyses to control for a variety of factors including SES, academic history and school environment, the work focuses upon several research questions:
1. What is the level of discipline in public schools?-Preliminary evidence indicates 60% of students are disciplined between 7th and 12th grades.
2. What predicts encountering the school discipline system?-Early results show that poor academic performance is associated with discipline encounters as is a faculty that does not look like the student. Minority children are also more likely to be disciplined.
3. What are the effects of involvement in the school discipline system?-Preliminary analyses show that children who are involved with school discipline are more likely to be retained in grade, dropout and/or encounter the juvenile justice system.
4. To what extent is there disproportionality?-Early results show that African-Americans are more likely to be disciplined at school and that while African-Americans were also overrepresented in the juvenile justice system, Hispanic students were seen at even higher rates.

Author

• Miner P. Marchbanks, Texas A&M University