School Discipline Policies

Demographic and student discipline data were used to examine the influence of multi-level risk and protective factors on exclusionary school discipline outcomes. Participants included all youth (n=87,997) in grades K to 12 who were enrolled in Denver Public Schools (n=183) in 2011-2012. The dataset included measures of risk and protective factors for exclusionary school discipline outcomes such as race, family poverty, special education status, emotional disability, participation in gifted and talented programs, homelessness, office referral reasons over the course of one school year, participation in in-school suspension, a behavior contract, or restorative approaches, and school composition. Multilevel logistic regression modeling was used to estimate students’ likelihood of receiving one or more office disciplinary referrals, suspensions, expulsions, and/or law enforcement referrals. Findings indicate that student racial background and school racial composition are enduring risks across key decision points of the school discipline process. Conversely, participation in restorative interventions and in-school suspensions protects students from out-of-school suspensions.  This study suggests that ongoing attention to issues of racial inequity in school discipline outcomes is warranted, and that restorative practices have potential as an inclusive strategy to improve school discipline outcomes without excluding students from the classroom.

The current study explores the principle of consistency and its relevance in the discipline cultures of three middle and two high schools in a Midwest US school district. We explore how educators (1) evoke consistency as a necessity for school discipline and (2) attempt to be consistent in practice to develop disciplined students, encourage academic-oriented school cultures, and maintain safe and orderly schools. We found that while consistency is important for collegiality’s sake and provides a cognitive frame for teachers to think about how to improve discipline, it may undermine the decision-making and discipline practices of individual teachers who are more apt to rely on relational rather than behaviourist discipline approaches.

Bullying is part of the reality of teachers and learners all over the world. While other forms of bullying are limited to the time when learners interact face-to-face, cyber- bullying follows learners via their electronic devices wherever they go. Bullying negatively affect victims and amongst others result in anxiety, low self-esteem and poor academic performance. In some instances, victims become suicidal. Prevent- ing and counteracting bullying requires interventions on several level, and one pos- sibility is to take a legal response. In this paper, the South African legal response is considered. There are several legislative and common law remedies available to victims, but these are not without challenges. Explicit reference to bullying is made in only one act, namely the Children’s Act but no definition of bullying or cyberbul- lying is provided. It is clear that while there are sufficient legal remedies available in the South African context, to address bullying and cyberbullying, particularly with the emphasis on Human Rights and the rights of children, the suitability of legal action is questionable.

This work selects a political cite in which the state policy reform occurs to examine reasons and underlying ideologies for some consensus on the debates regarding the need to criminalize or decriminalize truancy. Studying the legislation help to unpack the nature of relationships in social systems, with the purpose of eliminating unbalanced power relations in the politics of school discipline policy reform. Embedding whiteness as a grounded lens, we conducted critical discourse analysis and critical policy analysis to deconstruct one bill to capture major competing political discourses pertinent to school disciplinary policy reform the Texas State Legislature. Although the counter-discourse of the reform shows resistance toward change, findings reflect widespread concerns across broad constituencies about the injustice of school disciplinary policy, the necessity of decriminalizing students, and the ideologies of discipline and control. The rich discourses reveal tensions of opponents' political stances on the issues of school-to-prison pipeline at the macro-level. With an eye toward reframing the academic discourse with respect to school disciplinary issues, we further discuss the language used in describing truancy issues and offer an in-depth understanding of the dominant discourse of discipline policy reform.

Executive Summary of the Fall 2013 Research Report
• While DPS student enrollment has increased over the past four years, the use of out of school suspensions and expulsions has decreased. This trend has benefited students of all backgrounds.
• Despite these reductions, district-wide racial disparities in rates of office disciplinary referrals, suspension and referral to law enforcement persist, and in some cases, have worsened.  After accounting for student characteristics like gender, disability and family income, DPS data show that race still matters in school discipline practices. Black and Latino students in particular are more likely than White or Asian students to be suspended from school and referred to law enforcement for the same behavior.
• The effect of race decreases throughout the discipline process: race has the strongest effect on office disciplinary referrals and has no independent influence on expulsion decisions.
• Over the last four years, high school administrators at the aggregate level have eliminated the influence of race on their decisions to suspend a student once they are referred to the office.  This is a remarkable achievement; however, disproportionalities in suspension will persist until race no longer predicts who is sent to the office.  In contrast, middle schools have seen a decline in the influence of gender and socioeconomic status on administrators’ decisions about discipline resolutions, but racial disparities have worsened over time.  At the elementary level, no clear trends are evident.
• The therapeutic and restorative approaches outlined by JK-R are promising strategies to manage student behavior problems and keep youth in school.  In DPS, students with behavior problems are significantly less likely to experience an out of school suspension if they receive these interventions after being referred to the office.

Implications & Recommendations
1. Prevention efforts in the classroom, not only at the administrative level, will be necessary to eliminate disparities and reduce suspensions.  Teachers need training in culturally responsive, classroom-based behavioral interventions that prevent office referrals for Black, Latino, and male students in particular.
2. Our analyses provide robust evidence that restorative approaches (RA) and in-school suspensions are effective alternatives to out of school suspension. Additional resources, such as RA coordinators and counselors for ISS rooms are needed to implement these interventions widely.

Executive Summary
• While DPS student enrollment has increased over the past five years, the use of out of school suspensions and expulsions has decreased. This trend has benefited students of all backgrounds.
• Disparities for African-American students, as compared to all other student ethnicities, remain the district’s most significant challenge.  However, we saw meaningful improvements in 2012-2013 school year, relative to White students.  In contrast, disparities for low-income students worsened.
• Despite these reductions, district-wide racial disparities in rates of office disciplinary referrals, suspension and referral to law enforcement persist.  After accounting for student characteristics like gender, disability and family income, DPS data show that race still impacts school discipline practices. Black and Latino students in particular are more likely than White or Asian students to be suspended from school and referred to law enforcement for the same behavior.
• The effect of race decreases throughout the discipline process: race has the strongest effect on office disciplinary referrals and has no independent influence on expulsion decisions.
• Over the last four years, high school administrators at the aggregate level have eliminated the influence of race on their decisions to suspend a student once they are referred to the office.  This is a remarkable achievement; however, disproportionalities in suspension will persist until race no longer predicts who is sent to the office. 
• In contrast, middle schools have seen a decline in the influence of gender and socioeconomic status on administrators’ decisions about discipline resolutions, but racial disparities have worsened over time.  At the elementary level, no clear trends are evident.
• The restorative approaches outlined by JK-R are promising strategies to address student behavior and keep students in school.  In DPS, students with behavior problems are significantly less likely to experience a subsequent office referral or out of school suspension if they receive restorative interventions after their initial referral to the office.

Implications & Recommendations
1. Prevention efforts in the classroom, not only at the administrative level, will be necessary to eliminate disparities and reduce suspensions.  Teachers would benefit from training in culturally responsive, classroom-based behavioral interventions that prevent office referrals for Black, Latino, and low-income students in particular.
2. Our analyses provide robust evidence that restorative approaches (RA) are effective alternatives to out of school suspension in addressing student behavior. Additional fiscal resources are needed to implement these interventions widely.