Richard A. Fabes, Evandra Catherine, Ashley McDonald, and Holly O'Rourke

Arizona State University

Each year, more than 2 million students are expelled or suspended from U.S. public schools. These students are likely to hold negative attitudes about school, dropout, enter the juvenile justice system, and/or be unemployed later in life. Thus, the use of exclusionary discipline (ExD) puts at risk students' life-long learning. These statistics, however, obscure disparities in ExD use. For example, Black and Native American students are disproportionally the targets of ExD. The present research was designed to provide evidence that supports changes in policies that address disparities in ExD use for Black and Native American students.

Using national longitudinal data on public school’s use of ExD from 2013-2014 to 2017-2018, there was drop in use of ExD over this time. Despite this decline, disparities for Black and AIAN student remained discouragingly high. Disparities were found in all 50 U.S. states and DC. In fact, there were almost no US states where Black or Native American students did not have the highest ExD rates. These patterns were found at all school levels (elementary, middle, and high school).

Our 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 ExD. Importantly, we found no evidence that schools that stopped using ExD had more classroom management or student problems than those that used ExD. 

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 rely on removing students from school. We suggest that given the present social environment in which U.S. public schools operate, the only way to eliminate disparities in the use of ExD is to discontinue its use. Our recommendation is for educational decision makers to find alternatives to the use of ExD and provide teachers with the training and support they need to effectively implement these alternatives.