Chapter 8: General Conclusions

Using national samples of U.S. public schools, the longitudinal findings showed that wherever and whenever ExD was used in U.S. public schools, Black and Native American students were disproportionally the targets of ExD. The only time that these disparities were not found was when schools stopped using ExD completely. When schools reinitiated the use of ExD, the disparities returned to about the same levels they did before the school stopped using it. Importantly, we found no evidence that schools that stopped using ExD had more issues with school-related problems such as student chronic absenteeism than those that used ExD. In fact, there was some improvement in student chronic absenteeism for some of the marginalized students (Native American students) when ExD was discontinued.

Although most schools used ExD, there were thousands of schools each year that did not. Thus, many schools were able to find alternative ways to effectively manage classroom behavior that did not exclude students. We suggest that the only way to eliminate disparities in the use of ExD is to eliminate its use, but we recognize that this is not easily done. Our recommendation is for educational decision-makers and leaders to find alternatives to the use of ExD and provide teachers and staff with the training and support they need to effectively implement these alternatives.