Rethinking Universal Suspension for Severe Student Behavior

Datos Bibliográficos

ID11259345
AutoresRebecca Hinze-Pifer (0000-0002-0944-4009, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, autor de correspondencia), Lauren Sartain (0000-0001-5068-2300, University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, Chicago, IL)
Año2018
Volumen93
Número2
Páginas228-243
Fecha de publicación2018-03-15
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPeabody Journal of Education (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0161-956X • E-ISSN: 1532-7930
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0161956x.2018.1435051
OpenAlexW2789262749
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas14
Referencias citadas15

Driven by a combination of concern for historically high suspension rates and substantial disproportionalities in suspension use, a recent wave of education reforms encourages schools to reduce their use of suspensions for student behavior management. Both academic and political discourse has focused on the extensive use of suspension for relatively minor behavioral infractions, with an implicit assumption or explicit articulation that suspension could still be used for severe infractions. This article tests that assumption, providing evidence that reductions in suspensions for severe infractions may produce positive impacts without harming school safety.Using data from high schools in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), 2007–2014, we examine how declines in school reliance on suspensions for severe infractions are associated with changes in academic performance, attendance, and student reports of school climate for all students in the school. Recognizing the substantial methodological difficulty in obtaining impact estimates, we exploit a series of official and unofficial policy-induced changes to suspension practice, using school and student fixed effects models with extensive controls to reduce potential sources of bias in the estimates.We find the reduction in out-of-school suspension for severe infractions was associated with small but statistically significant increases in student test scores, consequential attendance improvements (beyond the impact of fewer days suspended), and heterogeneity in changes to students' perceptions of school safety. Test score impacts are concentrated in racially diverse schools and those with low baseline suspension use. Attendance impacts are driven by schools predominantly serving African American students (which also had the highest baseline suspension rates); these schools also had large, significant improvements in perceptions of school climate

Attendance · Mathematics education · Perception · Political science · Suspension (topology · Test (biology · Behavioral and Psychological Studies · Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression · Education Discipline and Inequality · Law · Mathematics · Psychology · Social Psychology