Do Black students misbehave more? Investigating the differential involvement hypothesis and out-of-school suspensions

ABSTRACT

Black students are much more likely to be disciplined using out-of-school suspensions (OSS) compared with White students. One often-cited hypothesis, though relatively untested, is the role of misconduct and students attitudes that support deviant behavior. The differential involvement hypothesis suggests that disproportionate sanctioning may result if one group of students is engaged in greater levels of misbehavior compared with the other group. Using a national high school dataset, the author used various student-reported measures of misconduct (e.g., fighting) and 18 attitudes supporting deviant behavior (e.g., it is okay to disobey school rules) to investigate their association with receiving an OSS. Findings showed that misconduct and deviant attitudes were important factors in predicting the receipt of OSS though results indicated that Black students did not generally misbehave or endorse deviant attitudes more than White students did.

KEYWORDS:

• Behavior
• deviant attitudes
• disproportionalities
• misconduct
• out-of-school suspensions

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges Anne Gregory for her review of an earlier version of this manuscript and Casey Gibbons for her research support.

Additional information

Funding

The study was supported by the University of Missouri Alumni Association through the Dr. Richard Wallace Faculty Incentive Grant.