Co-Principal Investigator: Anderson, Eric

Partnership Institutions: The University of Washington; Seattle Public Schools

Purpose: The Minority Engagement and Discipline Reduction (MENDR) research partnership between the University of Washington (UW) and Seattle Public Schools (SPS) completed its two major goals:

• to develop an authentic research-practice partnership between SPS and the University of Washington School Mental Health Research, Assessment, and Training (UW SMART) Center.
• to improve SPS's capacity to use research to identify schools with disproportionality in discipline (DD) and causes of DD, and engage in a joint effort to develop, implement, and test an approach for DD prevention and reduction.

Project Activities: The research team built the partnership through the formation of collaborative structures (e.g., an advisory committee, a data team) to determine the extent of the problem in SPS and identify schools with the highest rates of disproportionality and greatest readiness to remediate. The partners merged district data with surveys of school staff from a stratified sample of middle and high schools to identify schools with disproportionate discipline practices that were ready for intervention. Researchers tracked the success of the partnership project through meeting attendance and completion of formal partnership protocols (e.g., for decision-making, governance, research use).

Key Outcomes:

• Pullmann et al. (2022) indicated that participants using the Disproportionality in Discipline Assessment (DDAS) for Schools tool believed it was a useful, feasible, appropriate, and valid tool to address racial and ethnic disproportionality in discipline (REDD). The researchers also noted that integration of the DDAS into a broader trauma-responsive school model, rather than approaching REDD in isolation from other school goals and priorities, would be a promising approach.

Structured Abstract

Setting: This project took place in Seattle Public Schools, the largest school system in Washington State with over 90 schools.

Sample: The sample in this partnership project includes SPS schools with students in grades 6 to 12 (about 25,000 students and 1,500 teachers and staff across 12 high schools, 10 K–8th grade schools, 9 middle schools, and 5 service schools).

Education Issue: Racial and ethnic disproportionality in school discipline (REDD) is a critically important issue with negative repercussions on school functioning and outcomes. African American, Hispanic, and American Indian students, students in poverty, and those enrolled in special education experience disproportionately high suspensions, expulsions, arrests, and referrals to law enforcement. Punitive disciplinary practices promote negative education outcomes, including disengagement, lower academic achievement, truancy, and dropout.

Research Design and Methods: This study used quantitative statistical models that included multilevel longitudinal analysis and time series.

Key Measures: Key measures included race/ethnicity, suspensions, and expulsions.

Data Analytic Strategy: The team analyzed three years of administrative data. They built Multilevel Hurdle Models to test whether race/ethnicity was predictive of the number of individual student suspensions and expulsions after controlling for school-level factors. They used the same modeling strategy to determine if programs and services in SPS are related to changed trajectories in the probability of disciplinary actions. Researchers used multilevel longitudinal modeling and time series analyses to examine the impact of the collaborative intervention approach on teacher discipline practices and rates of disproportionality.

Products and Publications

ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.

Select Publications:

Journal Article

Pullmann, M. D., Gaias, L. M., Duong, M. T., Gill, T., Curry, C., Cicchetti, C., ... & Cook, C. R. (2022). Reducing racial and ethnic disproportionality in school discipline through an assessment-to-intervention process: A framework and process. Psychology in the Schools, 59(12), 2486–2505.