Parental Involvement and the Black–White Discipline Gap: The Role of Parental Social and Cultural Capital in American Schools

Abstract

Discipline disproportionality is the overuse of exclusionary discipline, such as suspension and expulsion, on Black students in American schools. This study adds to the literature by examining how parental involvement affects racial disparities in disciplinary outcomes in in-school suspension and by theoretically analyzing how parents’ social and cultural capital affect student disciplinary outcomes. The study uses Hayes’s dimensions of parental involvement as potential moderators between race and exclusionary discipline: achievement values, home-based involvement, and school-based involvement. Using base year data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (n = 15,362), a logistic regression model examines the three parental involvement dimensions as moderators of race and suspension. Two of the three dimensions significantly moderate the relationship between race and suspension. Both moderators are associated with a higher rate of discipline disproportionality. The analysis suggests that even while Black parents act as “adept managers” of capital, schools are still marginalizing the nondominant forms of capital that Black parents have.