Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Despite interest in the contributions of school discipline to the creation of racial inequality, previous research has been unable to identify how students who receive suspensions in school differ from unsuspended classmates on key young adult outcomes. We utilize novel data to document the links between high school discipline and important young adult outcomes related to criminal justice contact, social safety net program participation, postsecondary education, and the labor market. We show that the link between school discipline and young adult outcomes tends to be stronger for Black students than for White students, and that approximately 30% of the Black–White disparities in young adult criminal justice outcomes, SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) receipt, and college completion can be traced back to inequalities in exposure to school discipline.

Keywords

disparities race social stratification

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bacher-Hicks

Billings

Deming

(2019). The school to prison pipeline: Long-run impacts of school suspensions on adult crime (NBER Working Paper No. 26257). https://doi.org/10.3386/w26257

Becker

Carr

B. L.

Knapp

G. R.

Giraldo

L. G.

(2017). At the nexus of education and incarceration: Four voices from the field. Harvard Educational Review, 87(2), 260–277. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-87.2.260

Kupchik

Ward

(2014). Race, poverty, and exclusionary school security: An empirical analysis of U.S. elementary, middle, and high schools. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 12(4), 332–354. https://doi.org/10.1177/1541204013503890

Rios

(2011). Punished: Policing the lives of Black and Latino boys. New York University Press.

Ritter

Anderson

K. P.

(2018). Examining disparities in student discipline: Mapping inequities from infractions to consequences. Peabody Journal of Education, 93(2), 161–173. https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2018.1435038

Rose

Schellenberg

Shem-Tov

(2019). The effects of teacher quality on criminal behavior (Working paper). https://sites.google.com/view/jonathanschellenberg/research

Rosenbaum

(2020). Educational and criminal justice outcomes 12 years after school suspension. Youth & Society, 52(4), 515–547. https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118X17752208

Sojoyner

D. M.

(2013). Black radicals make for bad citizens: Undoing the myth of the school to prison pipeline. Berkeley Review of Education, 4(2), 241–263. https://doi.org/10.5070/B84110021

Sorensen

L. C.

Bushway

S. D.

Gifford

E. J.

(2020). Getting tough? The effects of discretionary principal discipline on student outcomes (EdWorkingPaper: 20-216). https://doi.org/10.26300/vz9t-hd28

10.

Sorensen

L. C.

Shen

Bushway

S. D.

(2021). Making schools safer and/or escalating disciplinary response: A study of police officers in North Carolina schools. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 43(3), 495–519. https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737211006409

11.

U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. (2016). 2013-14 Civil rights data collection: A first look. https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/CRDC2013-14-first-look.pdf

12.

Wald

J. M.

Losen

D. J.

(2003). Deconstructing the school-to-prison pipeline. New Directions for Youth Development, 2003(99), 9–15. https://doi.org/10.1002/yd.51

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.16 MB