Our Mission

A key goal of any society is to promote positive developmental trajectories for children and their families. One of the ways in which this goal can be achieved is by providing access to public educational programs that help prepare students to  become responsible and productive members of our society. To accomplish this important goal requires that educators manage the behaviors of the students in their care to ensure that the classroom and school environments are safe, secure, and conducive to learning.  

Although there are many facets of classroom and student management, discipline of students'  behavior is one element. Discipline is an adult decision, typically in response to a child’s behavior or perceived behavior, that is intended to change that behavior. Positive forms of discipline promote academic and socio-emotional development and improve emotional and behavioral regulation. Other forms of discipline are harsh, can harm students’ development and catalyze a cascading set of events that negatively impacts a student’s life trajectory. In particular, the use of exclusionary discipline – defined as discipline that removes a student from the educational setting via expulsion or suspension – has been found to undermine students’ health, well-being, and educational achievement, and contributes to the “school to prison pipeline” by initiating a possible transition from the educational to the criminal justice system. Moreover, there are clear disparities in the use of exclusionary discipline in U.S. public schools -- e.g., Black and Native American students are significantly more likely to be suspended or expelled than are their white peers.

The mission of PEDS is to examine the prevalence, disparities, and factors associated with the use of exclusionary discipline in U.S. public schools. We plan to do this by conducting analyses using data from the US Department of Education Civil Right Data Collection (CRDC). Through story maps, research and policy briefs, and peer-reviewed publications, we hope to provide guidance and insight to educators and policymakers who are developing strategies designed to reduce the use of and disparities in exclusionary discipline in U.S. public schools. As such, the impact of this work will provide a basis for new information for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers that can be used to reduce and eliminate the use of exclusionary discipline in public schooling (and beyond).