Reviewing the Progress of School Discipline Reform

ABSTRACT

In the 1990s and early 2000s, schools across the United States employed exclusionary discipline at increasing rates as a response to student infractions. Researchers studying school discipline reported on these increases and highlighted the fact that exclusionary discipline for students was associated with myriad other negative outcomes, including lower academic achievement, grade retention and drop-out, and even involvement with the juvenile justice system. Moreover, a related strand of research emerged, providing evidence that these consequences were not being levied evenly to different types of students. That is, marginalized students were far more likely to be faced with disciplinary consequences at school. For these and other reasons, policymakers and school leaders implemented some high-profile reforms to discipline policies in school districts across the country in an attempt to limit the use of exclusionary discipline. In this article, I introduce several of these reforms and briefly describe the early impacts of these changes to school discipline policy in locations such as Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and the state of Arkansas. I conclude by summarizing what lessons we can derive from these studies and describe the implications for future work in this area.