Juvenile Justice Resources
Breaking Schools’ Rules: A Statewide Study on How School Discipline Relates to Students’ Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement
Overview
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The CSG Justice Center, in partnership with the Public Policy Research Institute at Texas A&M University, has released an unprecedented statewide study of nearly 1 million Texas public secondary school students, followed for at least six years. Among its startling findings are that the majority of students were suspended or expelled between seventh to twelfth grade.
Funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies and the Open Society Foundations, this study also found that when students are suspended or expelled, the likelihood that they will repeat a grade, not graduate, and/or become involved in the juvenile justice system increases significantly. African-American students and children with particular educational disabilities who qualify for special education were suspended and expelled at especially high rates.
Download the Press Release: New Report on How School Discipline Relates to Academic and Juvenile Justice Outcomes (.pdf)
Report
To browse an online version of the report, click on the cover below and scroll through the pages using the arrow buttons on the sides. A link to download the pdf is included below the online version of the report.
Download the Report: Breaking Schools’ Rules: A Statewide Study on How School Discipline Relates to Students’ Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement (.pdf)
Frequently Asked Questions
Download: Breaking Schools’ Rules FAQ (.pdf)
1. What is new or different about this research study?
The researchers did not rely on a sample of students, but instead examined individual school records and school campus data for all seventh-grade public school students in Texas for three graduating classes (nearly 1 million students). With a six-year analysis period, this is a statewide longitudinal study. The study group size and datasets (merging education and juvenile justice data) supported multivariate analyses—making it possible to isolate the impact of particular variables on the likelihood of students being suspended and expelled. It is unusual for a statewide study to be able to draw on individual student records and match them to individual-level juvenile justice records. The analysis also yielded new information about the wide variation in disciplinary rates among schools with comparable student populations and campus characteristics. By controlling for more than 80 independent factors, researchers could examine the relationship between disciplinary actions and specific academic performance or juvenile justice involvement.
2. What is meant by “school disciplinary action” in the study?
This study focused on actions that resulted in students being removed from their classrooms: in-school suspensions (ranging from one class period to several consecutive days, with no cap on days per year); out-of-school suspensions (up to 3 days and no cap per year); and placement in Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs (DAEP average placement for students studied was 27 days) or Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Programs (JJAEP average placement was 73 days). Actions could be “mandatory” (required by state law) or “discretionary” (school officials have discretion in determining when and how students are disciplined). Approximately 97 percent of all disciplinary actions reported in the study were discretionary. Informal disciplinary actions (such as sending a student to the principal’s office or after-school detention) were not included in the study. Class C misdemeanor “tickets” issued by law enforcement to students for some violations were also excluded because these events were not captured in the state’s databases used for this study.
3. Why was Texas selected for the study, and are the findings a reflection of the state’s tough-on-crime reputation?
Texas maintains state-of-the-art information systems that could support the kinds of analyses needed for the study. The Texas Education Agency has comprehensive individual student records, which follow pupils when they switch public schools within the state, and rich data on individual school campuses. The Texas Juvenile Probation Commission also has individual electronic records for youth in contact with the juvenile justice system. Both agencies have demonstrated a willingness to support analysis of these large, complicated datasets to evaluate important policy questions. Texas also has the second largest U.S. public school system and a student diversity that gives the findings national significance. It has a bipartisan group of leaders willing to open state information systems and policies to scrutiny, to develop strategies for improving outcomes for all students.
What data are readily accessible from other states about suspension and expulsion demonstrate that Texas is hardly unusual in suspending and expelling large numbers of students. Yet considerable evidence exists that improving school discipline is a priority for state leaders in Texas. By making this study possible, policymakers demonstrated their continued reliance on data-driven approaches, to examine who is suspended and expelled and why. Policies already in place in Texas reflect policymakers’ commitment to ensuring that students removed from the classroom for disciplinary reasons stay in school. Only about half of the states have an alternative education system for lengthy suspensions and expulsions, like the one Texas has.
4. What does this study say about “zero tolerance” policies and how they work?
Although the study demonstrates that suspension, and to a lesser degree, expulsion, are relatively common practices in Texas middle and high schools, this report does not provide an evaluation of “zero tolerance” policies. None of the Texas study findings or conclusions make any statements about zero tolerance because policymakers and practitioners in the state do not uniformly and consistently use that term in reference to a particular set of policies, the vast majority of removals from school for disciplinary reasons were the result of discretionary decisions, and the use of this discretion varied significantly from one school to the next.
5. Are you saying that schools discipline too much and this causes juvenile justice involvement and bad academic outcomes?
The research does not set a threshold at which disciplinary actions are considered “too high.” There are certainly valid and appropriate reasons for removing students from classrooms for disciplinary reasons, especially when their behavior jeopardizes the safety of other students or school employees. The Texas analysis revealed that, of the students studied, nearly 60 percent were removed from their classes, and 15 percent had 11 or more suspensions or expulsions between seventh and twelfth grade. What is clear from this study’s focus-group participants and other practitioners consulted is that there should be better outcomes from disciplinary actions—fewer secondary students cycling through the disciplinary system and repeating grades, and more of them staying in school and out of the juvenile justice system.
The relationship between student misbehavior and the school response is complex. No study can account for every conceivable contributing factor that can affect students’ academic failures and delinquency. The report does not say there is a direct causal relationship between school officials’ suspending and expelling children and those children then repeating a grade, dropping out, or even getting involved in the criminal justice system. But because the multivariate analysis controlled for more than 80 variables to isolate the predictive effect of school disciplinary actions, it is fair to say that school discipline is highly related to these outcomes and strongly predicts these results.
6. Does this study support the concept that there is a “pipeline” from schools to the state’s juvenile justice system?
Of the nearly 1 million children studied, more than 15 percent had contact with the juvenile justice system in their middle and high school years. Yet relatively few of these contacts corresponded to misconduct at school. Texas Juvenile Probation Commission data from 2009-2010 show that, of the 85,548 formal referrals to juvenile probation in Texas, only about 6 percent came directly from schools.
Even if schools were not directly referring children to the juvenile system, the researchers used a multivariate analysis to determine whether school disciplinary actions could predict the likelihood of subsequent juvenile justice involvement. A student’s discretionary suspension or expulsion nearly tripled (2.85 times) the likelihood of his or her juvenile justice contact within the subsequent academic year. The multivariate model controlling for all campus and student variables except disciplinary history demonstrated that a student with no prior school discipline involvement had a 5.5 percent chance of ultimately coming into contact with the juvenile justice system, while a student disciplined 11 or more times had a 17.3 percent chance.
While school officials do not fill a “pipeline” directly to the juvenile justice system, they are positioned to intervene at the school disciplinary stage with children at risk of juvenile justice involvement.1
7. Because the study shows that African-American children and students with specific educational disabilities were especially likely to be removed from their classrooms for violations in which school officials can take discretionary action, does this mean that they are more likely to misbehave?
The study demonstrates that African-American students were more likely than Hispanic or white students to be suspended or expelled for violating school rules when school officials had discretion as to how to respond. In contrast, white and Hispanic students were more likely to be suspended or expelled than African-American students for offenses in which state law mandated that school officials remove students from the classroom, such as bringing a firearm to campus or selling illegal drugs. The study also found that students with particular educational disabilities were disciplined at disproportionately high rates—especially those students coded as “emotionally disturbed.”
It is important to remember that formal disciplinary actions within the discretion of school officials are not an accurate measure of misbehavior. Some behaviors may be tolerated more than others, some administrators or teachers more accepting of disorder, and some school codes of conduct stricter than others. Just because some children are disciplined more than others does not mean they misbehave more.
8. So does the study suggest that teachers or other school officials have too much discretion when responding to students’ misbehavior?
It would be inaccurate to conclude from the study that teachers have too much discretion or use it improperly. Teachers face enormous challenges in the classroom. There was general agreement among experts, researchers, and practitioners consulted for this study that teachers and school officials must have the flexibility to respond to the distinct needs of students and to create a classroom environment conducive to learning. Consensus was also found around educators needing more tools and supports for responding to misbehavior and to the needs of students, which, left unaddressed, put them at risk for disciplinary action.
9. Are expulsions or suspensions being made to raise school test scores and help meet “No Child Left Behind” expectations?
When students are removed from their schools and placed in Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs or Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Programs, the schools from which they came are required to include the scores that these students receive on statewide standardized test reports to the Texas Education Agency for federal reporting purposes. This requirement ensures that local schools cannot raise test scores by reassigning a student to an alternative educational program.
10. Can the results be generalized or the study replicated in other states?
It is hoped that the results of this study, and the types of analyses used, will inspire other states to examine school discipline policies and practices in their jurisdictions. This study can help leaders in other jurisdictions think through an analysis of suspension and expulsion rates in their own schools. Because school discipline systems vary significantly from one state (and school district) to another, readers should not extrapolate from this report and assume these statistics can be applied to their own jurisdictions. To replicate the study, states may need to make considerable investments in their education and juvenile justice information systems and garner the type of bipartisan support found in Texas, for examining these issues closely.
11. Which schools studied have particularly high rates of school discipline and are they safer?
Although this study reviewed discipline rates at individual schools, it masked the identity of each school to preserve anonymity. The report does not highlight the names of schools with suspension and expulsion rates that were unusually high or low because extensive visits would have been needed to explain the factors underlying these differences. Such visits were beyond the scope of this project.
Rates of suspension and/or expulsion at a particular school are not a particularly useful measure of safety. The vast majority of disciplinary removals from the classroom are for discretionary violations of local school codes of conduct, which are primarily lower-level violations. Further, in reviewing school discipline data at the state level, researchers could not rule out the possibility that fewer recorded disciplinary actions at a particular campus meant that educators there were either more tolerant of misbehavior or better able to mitigate misbehavior, by engaging students more effectively, for example.
12. What role does law enforcement assigned to schools have in school discipline rates and referrals to the juvenile justice system?
As is the case with many public schools elsewhere, some form of local law enforcement frequently has a presence in Texas middle or high schools. Law enforcement officials assigned to a Texas campus who observe a student violating school rules (or who learn of such behavior) may send the student to the designated administrator. Alternatively, officials may pursue a criminal justice response by issuing tickets to students for behavior that can be punished as a Class C misdemeanor violation. The number of Class C misdemeanor tickets issued annually, and the extent to which students are disciplined pursuant to a school’s code of conduct, were not readily available because information about the tickets is not captured in a student’s record within the education database used for this study. This report does not include any findings regarding the relationship between local law enforcement in schools and the school discipline system, because few reliable statewide data are available regarding tickets issued in schools. In addition, campus-level data used for this study did not include information about what, if any, law enforcement presence existed at a school.2
13. Why doesn’t the study have specific recommendations?
The focus of the Texas study was to merge datasets from multiple systems to provide insight into the effects of current school disciplinary practices. Extensive discussions with practitioners from education, health, juvenile justice, and other agencies must take place to interpret many of the findings and determine next steps. The Council of State Governments Justice Center will work with its partners in Texas and nationally to bring together researchers; practitioners; advocates for parents, teachers and students; and other stakeholders to develop consensus-based recommendations that are practical and build on the work of experts in the field.
1 It is important to note, however, that school police officers may make direct referrals to the juvenile justice system.
2 The study also did not examine arrests that local law enforcement made on school campuses for Class A or B misdemeanors or felony offenses that were not reported to the Texas Education Agency.
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| Watch the Briefing |
Media Coverage
A briefing to present the findings of the Texas study, conducted by the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center in partnership with the Public Policy Research Institute at Texas A&M University, was held on Tuesday, July 19, 2011. The event also featured a discussion by Texas stakeholders about strategies to keep schools safe and reduce high rates of suspension and expulsion.
Download the Press Release: New Report on How School Discipline Relates to Academic and Juvenile Justice Outcomes (.pdf)
Articles
11/30/2011 – NPR.org: “In Texas, Keeping Kids In School And Out Of Court“
“The sort of offenses that might land a student in the principal’s office in other states often send kids in Texas to court with misdemeanor charges. Some schools have started rethinking the way they punish students for bad behavior after watching many of them drop out or land in prison because of tough disciplinary policies.”
8/8/2011 – NPR.org: “School Discipline Often Meted Out Unevenly“
Interview with Michael Thompson, Director, CSG Justice Center; Douglas Otto, Superintendent, Plano Independent School District (Texas); and Matt Cregor, Assistant Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
7/30/2011 – The New York Times: “One Way to Guarantee More Trouble,” Editorial
“Schools are right to expel students who pose a threat to others. But suspensions for less serious, nonthreatening behavior have become routine in recent decades, with disastrous consequences.”
7/28/2011 – San Antonio Express-News: “Discipline study a real eye opener,” Editorial
“A new school year begins in a few weeks and parents would be wise to spend a few minutes reading their children’s school district policy handbook.”
7/22/2011 – Dallas Morning News: “Discretion may be the better part of school discipline,” Editorial
“Every school had a handful of serious discipline problems, and when these students exhausted their strikes, they were sent out of the classroom. But they were the exception. Today in Texas, zero tolerance is often the rule.”
7/21/2011 – Austin American-Statesman: “Does school discipline go overboard?,” Editorial
“Austin school district trustee Cheryl Bradley said she was not totally surprised by a study released this week showing that a majority of Texas students was suspended or expelled from public schools and that African American students especially boys were being disciplined more than other students.”
7/19/2011 – The New York Times: “School Discipline Study Raises Fresh Questions“
“Raising new questions about the effectiveness of school discipline, a report scheduled for release on Tuesday found that 31 percent of Texas students were suspended off campus or expelled at least once during their years in middle and high school — at an average of almost four times apiece.”
7/19/2011 – The Washington Post: “Study shows wide varieties in discipline methods among very similar schools“
“Here’s one myth of school debunked: Harsh discipline is not always a reflection of the students in a particular school. It can be driven by those in charge.”
7/19/2011 – NPR.org: “Texas Schools Study: Most Kids Have Been Suspended“
“Researchers in Texas have released the most comprehensive analysis of school suspension and expulsion policies ever conducted. It’s considered groundbreaking because of its scope and detailed examination of disciplinary policies that when misused often put students at greater risk of dropping out or being incarcerated.”
7/19/2011 – Associated Press/Chicago Tribune: “Study finds majority of middle, high school students suspended or expelled at some point“
“Almost 60 percent of Texas public school students received punishments ranging from expulsion to in-school suspensions of a single period at least once between seventh and 12th grades, according to a new study released Tuesday.”
7/18/2011 – Austin American-Statesman: “Shapiro, Whitmire: How do school discipline tactics affect children?,” Opinion
“Keeping Texas’ schools safe and creating positive learning environments for children is a critical concern to both of us.”
Related Press Releases
7/21/2011 – Attorney General Holder, Secretary Duncan Announce Launch of Supportive School Discipline Initiative
7/19/2011 – Statement from Former Chief Judge of the State of New York Judith S. Kaye Regarding School Discipline Report
Related Resources
Strengthening Juvenile Probation: Emerging Challenges and Issues
Dr. Tony Fabelo, Director of Research for the CSG Justice Center, presented “Strengthening Juvenile Probation: Emerging Challenges and Issues” to a January 31, 2008, summit of all Texas juvenile probation chiefs in Austin. Fabelo provided an analysis of emerging trends that will impact juvenile probation and a framework identifying areas to strengthen juvenile probation policies in Texas. The report was prepared at the invitation of and in collaboration with the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission, which sponsored the summit.
Download: Strengthening Juvenile Probation: Emerging Challenges and Issues (.ppt)
The webinar reviewed key concepts of risk assessment and its implementation in juvenile justice agencies. Topics covered included how to select a tool, how risk assessment differs from mental health screening, how the approach should differ depending on the juvenile justice setting, and some key points for effective implementation. The webinar presenter was Dr. Gina M. Vincent, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Co-Director of the National Youth Screening and Assessment Project.
Download: Maximizing the Impact of Juvenile Justice Interventions (.pdf)
National Reentry Resource Center: Topics: Juveniles
The Juveniles topics page on the National Reentry Resource Center’s website includes a list of key resources that juvenile justice experts from around the country identified as the most useful tools and publications for juvenile reentry practitioners. The page also features a list of important juvenile justice-related web resources and media clips.