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Suspension and its Consequences: Individual and Classroom Effects

Abstract

During the 2011-2012 academic year, approximately 3.5 million students received suspensions across the United States. Scholars and professionals have raised concerns regarding the frequent use of exclusionary discipline. In fact, research shows that receiving suspensions is associated with a wide range of negative youth outcomes. However, because isolating the causal effects of suspension is difficult, to what extent the associations are causal is still an open question. Moreover, little is known about the effects of suspension on the educational achievement of non-suspended students.

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the consequences of suspensions on students and their non-suspended peers by focusing on within-person variations, comparing change in achievement for the same students before and after the time of their suspensions and classmate suspensions. The results of Study 1 show that students from disadvantaged backgrounds have an elevated risk of exposure to an environment with classmates who receive suspensions. In Study 2, the results suggest that receiving multiple out-of-school suspensions can lead to negative educational achievement, whereas receiving one out-of-school suspension or receiving in-school suspension have little effects on the educational achievement of suspended students. Finally, in Study 3, I find that classmate suspensions positively affect the math achievement of non-suspended students.

Taken together, the findings from the three studies provide new empirical evidence about the consequences of using classroom or school removal as a school disciplinary policy. In recent years, many school districts have discouraged suspension practices and have implemented alternative ways to discipline students. As a result, suspension rates plummeted in some school districts. The findings imply that the effort to reduce suspension rates may benefit students at risk of suspension, but may also harm overall learning environments. Such findings have important implications for policies regarding how to best discipline and teach students with behavioral challenges.

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