Article
Understanding a Vicious Cycle: Do Out-of-School Suspensions Impact Student Test Scores?
Educational Researcher
(2019)
Abstract
While numerous studies have demonstrated a correlation between exclusionary discipline and negative student outcomes, this relationship is likely confounded by other factors related to the underlying misbehavior or risk of disciplinary referral. Using 10 years of student-level demographic, achievement, and disciplinary data from all K–12 public schools in Arkansas, we find that exclusionary consequences are related to worse academic outcomes (e.g., test scores and grade retention) than less exclusionary consequences, controlling for type of behavioral infraction. However, despite controlling for a robust set of covariates, sensitivity checks demonstrate that the estimated relationships between consequences and academic outcomes may still be driven by selection bias into consequence type. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.
Keywords
- school discipline,
- exclusionary discipline,
- academic impacts,
- causal inference
Disciplines
Publication Date
2019
Citation Information
Kaitlin Anderson, Gary W Ritter and Gema Zamarro. "Understanding a Vicious Cycle: Do Out-of-School Suspensions Impact Student Test Scores?" Educational Researcher Vol. 48 Iss. 5 (2019) p. 251 - 262 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/gema_zamarro/29/