Episode 15: The Unfortunate Likelihood of Suspension or Expulsion

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Welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim Fields, former corporate manager turned educational researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as experiencing the micro discriminations that I faced while raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. If you're looking to find out more about the current topics in education that could affect you and your children, then you're in the right place. In today's episode, I will be discussing the background policies and potential interventions related to the disproportionality of school suspensions for African American children. A well warranted fear of many African American parents who have boys in the K12 public education system is that their child may experience suspension or expulsion from school. The implicit and explicit biases that children of color experience in the school environment on a daily basis is a reality. This is not just for someone else's child, but for every child of color, including yours. Let's dive into a little bit of what the research and background on this topic is in 2015 and 2016, students lost 11 million days of instruction from suspensions and Black students lost nearly five times the number of days as White students, according to the ED Week 2021 August 19 issue. Some studies suggest that there are similar disparities for Latinx students in various locations and schooling levels. Researcher Richard Welch, who wrote this Education Week article, and other researchers conducted a systematic review of literature and found studies that largely dispelled the notion that racial differences in exclusionary discipline were due to either higher rates, involvement in misbehavior, or more severe misbehavior among Black students, Students socioeconomic status does not solely explain the differences and who receives exclusionary discipline. At all socioeconomic levels, Black students are more likely to be suspended than White students. Discipline disparities seem to be better explained by the behavior of adults, the teachers, assistant principals, and principals in the schools rather than by student misbehavior or poverty. Less severe infractions make up the majority of disciplinary referrals to the principal's office, but teachers refer Black and White students differently for the same kind of misbehavior. White students are referred more than Black students for objective behaviors such as smoking, vandalism, leaving without permission, and obscene language, whereas Black students are referred more than White students for subjective behaviors, things like defiance of authority, disrespect, excessive noise, threat, and loitering. The bigger question is why do these racial differences in disciplinary referrals and suspensions even exist? Recent evidence suggests that classroom and school level factors play a role. For example, Black students who have Black teacher have lower rates of suspension than expulsions, and although the K12 student population is becoming more diverse, the teaching workforce remains largely white. Teacher responses to misbehavior may be mostly attributable to the teacher's racial perceptions and bias. Teachers as a group tend to deem students behavior harmful or indicative of a harmful pattern. When the students are black, misconduct from Black students is punished more harshly than the same misconduct from White students. Principals differ in their approach to discipline and these variations influence suspension rates. Russell Skiba et al. In 2014 who is a member of the Discipline Disparities Research to Practice Collaborative, a group that involves 26 nationally known researchers, educators, advocates, and policy analysts that work together to address the problem of disciplinary disparities. Russell Skiba is one of the more notable researchers in this space. A recent study reported that the odds of Black students being suspended from school was 1.78 times that of White students. Another study of students in Florida found that 39% of African American students were suspended compared to 22% of white students. African American students were also suspended for longer periods of time than other students at the intersection of gender and race. New research finds that males are more likely to be suspended than females, and Black males are consistently the most at risk for exclusionary discipline and arrest. However, in some schools, African American girls are at high risk of suspension and expulsion, especially in secondary schools. These racial and ethnic differences in the use of suspension and expulsion are not due to poverty or differences in types of behaviors and misbehaviors. Suspension is generally the first step in a chain of events leading to short and long term consequences including academic disengagement, academic failure, dropout, and delinquency. In a groundbreaking study, Breaking School Rules, Fabello and other researchers reported that suspension and expulsion for discretionary school violation nearly tripled a student's likelihood of juvenile justice contact within the subsequent year. A commonly relied upon intervention such as alternative placements have been found to exacerbate negative outcomes, especially for students of color. Additionally, when security measures are implemented in high schools, suspension rates and student misbehavior significantly increased for African American students when compared to low security schools. Researchers Cupcake and Cat Law found that young adults with a history of suspensions in schools were less likely to vote and volunteer in civic activities after high school. According to recent data collected by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, students of color made up 75% of referrals to law enforcement and school 79% of school based arrests. Even though students of color make up only 39% of the nation's public school population. Research also shows that highly punitive discipline is often not as necessary as some might think. For example, the most common reasons for suspension in law enforcement referrals are infractions seemingly unrelated to school safety issues. Although the absolute rates of suspension and expulsion are higher at the secondary school level for both Black and white males, the discrepancy between Black and white rates of suspension is greater at the elementary school level. Being Black seems to be the most significant predictor of serious disciplinary action. Black students were significant, significantly more likely to be referred to the office even when controlling for teacher ratings of externalizing or disruptive behavior. Some groups and researchers have come up with some potential interventions. Programs such as Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports and Restorative Practices attempt to improve school culture as a whole and provide school personnel with skills and behavior management and student discipline programs such as these appear to decrease suspension rates. However, racial disparities persist. Additionally, these program based interventions do not appear to have greater benefit for Black students. Based on the studies published within the last five years, most interventions have given insufficient attention to the issues of radical race and culture and have focused predominantly on student misbehavior. Other programs such as Greet, Stop Prompt, and My Teaching Partner focus on improving classroom climate and teacher support for students, and these appear to narrow the racial gap in discipline. Many programs that have been effective center their efforts on teaching, coaching, and staff professional development. Research has implicated school perspectives and practices are among the most powerful predictors of suspension and disproportionality in suspension. Strong student teacher and parent teacher relationships are related to decreased suspension rates and an increased sense of safety, so the picture is not all bleak. There are alternative discipline systems that can reduce reliance on exclusionary and punitive approaches to discipline. These approaches have demonstrated the capability to reduce suspensions and expulsions as well as improve school safety and academic outcomes. Although there is little research on the effectiveness of intervention efforts to reduce racial ethnic disparities in discipline, the strategies involve three important components of school climate and school discipline that may lead to disparity reduction 1 relationship building between students and the teachers 2 structural interventions like changing disciplinary codes of conduct in the school and three emotional literacy, getting back to the social emotional learning. Other interventions include restorative justice which aims to restore relationships and repair the harm caused by misbehavior, and school wide positive behavior supports which provide a decision making framework that guides a comprehensive and proactive proactive approach to school discipline. Representation of all stakeholders and their perspectives need to be represented as well as a provision for culturally responsive interventions. Systematic protocols used in schools that respond to students threats of violence without resorting to zero tolerance suspensions have shown to effectively reduce suspensions and racial disparities between black and white males while investing in social and emotional learning support teams and planning centers that focus on learner centered approaches can reduce misbehavior and decrease out of school suspensions. More explicit attention still needs to be paid to race, culture and differences in order to reduce racial disparities. An interesting research report came to my attention by Amy Sifford in 2014 in which she reported that the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights published data in 2014 that for the first time tracked preschool suspensions and expulsion rates. This is startling. Again, it tracked preschool suspensions and expulsions. Preschoolers were being suspended and expelled in racially disproportionate numbers with African American boys bearing the brunt of the discipline. According to the data from that 2014 study, the school to prison pipeline doesn't start in third grade. It actually starts in in preschool. Unconscious bias on the part of teachers and administrators as well as zero tolerance policies were some of the policies and practices that led to preschool expulsions. So if we move from preschool into the K12 education system, the discipline gap and the achievement gap may be two sides of the same coin. According to researchers Gregory Skiba and Nogueira in 2010, the relationship between student externalizing behavior and academic achievement gap has been well documented. In fact, students experiencing academic skill deficits are more likely to engage in disruptive classroom behavior. Low income status, low achievement, and low rates of misconduct contribute to why Black Latinx and American Indian students are overly selected and over sanctioned in the discipline system. In light of all this, race still remains a predictor of suspension even after accounting for student grade point average. Schools tend to rely heavily but on exclusion from the classroom as a primary discipline strategy, and this practice very often has a disproportionate impact on Black Latinx and American Indian students. This directly affects the achievement gap that has been well documented in the research. For children of color, school suspensions account for approximately 20% of the black White differences in performance. This severely hinders academic growth and contributes to racial disparities in achievement. Some researchers have attributed racial inequalities in adulthood in areas such as employment, incarceration, and health that can be traced to unequal academic outcomes in childhood and adolescence.

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Some of the ways that educators can mitigate disparities in discipline involves awareness of the 1. Avoiding unnecessary or unfair discipline as it is often not just school policy, but it's the law too. Discipline issues in schools because both the denial of education opportunities can reflect the need for opportunities to learn. 3. School discipline cannot be viewed in isolation from the rest of the school experience. 4. The need to move beyond punitive discipline to conflict prevention and conflict intervention. Conflict prevention involves fostering supportive relationships with all students, holding high expectations and providing academic rigor and presenting culturally relevant and responsive teaching. Conflict intervention involves inquiry into causes of conflicts, developing problem solving approaches to discipline, as well as reintegration of the student back into the school environment after a conflict. 5. Establishing a bias free classroom as well as respectful school environment. This would mean that educators have to learn about the structural needs, nature, and historical context of racism. Underlying causes of the disparities in disciplinary outcomes are by and large byproducts of larger issues in K12 schooling, such as lack of workforce diversity, a lack of classroom management, and shortfalls in cultural capabilities of teachers. There's no silver bullet to solving the complex issue. One positive way forward is just to have honest conversations about the role of race and culture and education and society. In order to begin solving this conundrum, here are the takeaways from today's episode. The experience of race and ethnicity has differed dramatically over the course of our nation's history depending on one's skin color, and those differential experiences continue today as represented in white privilege and racial microaggressions. The difficulty that educators, especially white educators, have in openly talking about race and racism has been well documented. Yet failure to adequately consider the perspectives of those most affected by racial and ethnic disparities may interfere with any full consideration of race based data and make effective mediation difficult or impossible. There are many questions that remain as far as the proportionality of black students in suspension and expulsion rates. Over the past 30 years, little attention has been paid to the development and implementation of interventions specifically designed to reduce racial disparities in suspension and expulsion. There is insufficient evidence to suggest that the demographic factors such as low income, race, neighborhood characteristics, et cetera can explain away the racial discipline gap. Researchers such as Gregory, Scuba and Medarata in 2017 constructed a framework called the Framework for Increasing Equity in School Discipline and it is a framework in which educators need to explicitly consider issues of culture, race, gender, power and privilege in addressing inequality in schooling. The major sections of of the framework are preventive measures, intervention measures, and a combination of prevention and intervention measures. Under the prevention section, the framework includes supportive relationships, bias aware classrooms and a respectful class and school environment, academic rigor, culturally relevant and responsible responsive teaching and opportunities for learning and correcting behavior in which behaviors approach from a non punitive perspective. Under the intervention section of the framework, the main constructs are data based for equity problem solving, approaches for discipline, uncovering teacher student conflicts and addressing any unidentified needs needs as well as the inclusion of students and family voices in particular conflict and the causes and solutions for the conflict. It also involves reintegration of the student after a conflict or an absence in which the students are supported when re entering the school environment. The last section of the framework, which embodies prevention and intervention constructs, consists of a multi tiered system of supports that examines students differentiated needs. This is an important issue to be aware of as the implications could potentially affect every African American child in the public school system. There are no easy answers. Researchers are still wrestling with the factors associated with with the racial disciplinary gap and its impact on the achievement gap. Having had personal experience with expulsion with one of my own children, I often noted differences in the way that he was treated by school staff and administrators. There just seemed to be a lack of cultural awareness as well as a labeling once he received unsolicited attention from certain educators. I also believe that, and this was confirmed by the research, the zero tolerance policies are not beneficial for children of color. In his case, he was able to still successfully graduate from an alternative high school on time. But it's hard to say what the realities of his public school experience would have been had he not been caught up in the racial disposition disproportionality of school site disciplinary policies. Researchers Carter, Skiba, Pollock et al. In 2014 indicated that reducing unnecessary or unequal discipline requires transforming instruction and school practice in order to promote all students academic, social, emotional, behavioral development. It also requires educators to think differently about how staff members interact with students and how students interact with each other. And finally, it requires that all constituencies, including school staff, students, parents, community based organizations, police, and even juvenile justice system to meaningfully engage in promoting change in racial disproportionality in disciplinary practices, primarily suspensions and expulsions. Achieving racial equity in school discipline requires action. It requires leadership and a commitment to counteract old habits and stereotypes. Roots of racial inequality in our schools and our society extend from centuries ago. Eliminating disciplinary disparities and other inequities in our educational system will require ongoing awareness of how these disparities are produced and a steadfast, intentional commitment to end them. 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