Rolling Back Zero Tolerance: The Effect of Discipline Policy Reform on Suspension Usage and Student Outcomes

ABSTRACT

Beginning in the early 1990s, states and districts enacted zero-tolerance discipline policies that relied heavily on out-of-school suspensions. Recently, districts nationwide have revised these policies in favor of more tempered disciplinary responses. In 2012–2013, Philadelphia reformed its discipline policy to limit suspensions for nonviolent student misconduct and granted principals greater discretion in responding to more serious occurrences of student misconduct. Employing a difference-in-differences approach, we find that Philadelphia's reform resulted in a modest decline in suspensions for nonviolent infractions in the year of reform; however, total suspensions remained unchanged while serious incidents of student misconduct increased. Further, the truancy rate increased and district math and English language arts achievement declined following the policy reform. These findings should inform policymakers and practitioners on the implications of district-level reforms for suspension usage and the potential consequences for student outcomes.

Acknowledgement

We thank Peter Schochet, John MacDonald, Jonah Deutsch and Matthew Chingos for feedback on earlier versions of the article and conference participants at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) and seminar participants at the University of Arkansas, Department of Education Reform Lecture Series for helpful comments and discussions. We thank Cameron Anglum for excellent research assistance and Jennifer Moore for editorial assistance. We thank the Pennsylvania Department of Education for providing access to achievement and demographic data, and Tonya Wolford and Rachel Holzman from the School District of Philadelphia for helpful discussions. Finally, we thank the Fordham Institute for ongoing support of this project. Authors contributed equally.

Notes

1 Suspension and incident data retrieved from https://www.safeschools.state.pa.us

2 Per capita OSS is calculated by dividing the total number of OSS in district i during school year t by total enrollment (K–12) in district i during school year t.

3 In conversations with Rachel Holzman, Philadelphia's Deputy Chief of Student Rights and Responsibilities (personal communication, 2015, March 23), we learned that few additional resources (such as in-school counselors or support staff) were provided to school principals to support the policy change.

4 Source: Pennsylvania Department of Education, http://www.education.pa.gov/Documents/K-12/Safe%20Schools/School%20Attendance%20Improvement%20Truancy%20Reduction_Rev_February%202015.pdf

5 PSSA data were retrieved from http://www.education.pa.gov/Data-and-Statistics/Pages/default.aspx#.ViVThX6rSUk

6 We did find that a few Pennsylvania school districts changed their code of conduct policy in the postreform period. For example, Pittsburgh Public Schools revised its student code of conduct beginning in the 2014–2015 school year to focus on progressive discipline practices designed to improve student behavior and keep students in school by reducing punishments for low-level offenses that previously received OSS (source: http://csgjusticecenter.org/youth/media-clips/pittsburgh-school-board-approves-revised-code-of-conduct/). Due to large variation in OSS rates during the study period, Pittsburgh is one of the 15 districts removed from the analytical sample. Therefore, policy changes in Pittsburgh do not affect the current estimates. Woodland Hills School District (located near Pittsburgh) revised its student code of conduct in 2015–2016 to reduce zero-tolerance policies that the district viewed as disproportionately affecting minority students (source: http://www.post-gazette.com/news/education/2015/07/31/Woodland-Hills-recognized-for-discipline-policies/stories/201507310136). The 2015–2016 school year falls outside of the post-reform period considered in this paper.

7 Because math and reading achievement are highly correlated (r = .93), we include only math achievement as a predictor.

8 Results based on the synthetic control group approach are available from the authors upon request.

9 We drop districts in Bucks, Delaware, and Montgomery counties, which technically border Philadelphia. Results are available from the authors upon request.

10 We thank the SDP for providing the student-level data to conduct this analysis.

11 A total of 27,903; 23,584; and 26838 suspensions were given to grade 3–12 students in the 2011–2012, 2012–2013, and 2013–2014 school years, respectively.

12 Notably, the use of OSS for failure to follow classroom rules or profane/obscene language or gestures was not eliminated in the postpolicy period. See Steinberg and Lacoe (2017) for a detailed analysis of school-level implementation of the district's policy reform, which finds significant variation in school-level compliance toward eliminating OSS for these conduct infractions in the postpolicy period.