REL Southwest Ask A REL Response
Discipline and School Climate:
Role of Exclusionary Discipline Policies and Practices on Student Achievement
March 2021
Question:
What does the research say about the role of exclusionary discipline policies/practices on student achievement?
Response:
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Thank you for the question you submitted to our REL Reference Desk. We have prepared the following memo with research references to help answer your question. For each reference, we provide an abstract, excerpt, or summary written by the study’s author or publisher. Following an established Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southwest research protocol, we conducted a search for research reports as well as descriptive study articles on the role of exclusionary discipline policies/practices on student achievement.
We have not evaluated the quality of references and the resources provided in this response. We offer them only for your reference. Also, we searched the references in the response from the most commonly used resources of research, but they are not comprehensive, and other relevant references and resources may exist. References provided are listed in alphabetical order, not necessarily in order of relevance. We do not include sources that are not freely available to the requestor.
Research References
Anderson, K. P., Ritter, G. W., & Zamarro, G. (2019). Understanding a vicious cycle: The relationship between student discipline and student academic outcomes. Educational Researcher, 48(5), 251–262. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1220624. Retrieved from http://baku8km.khazar.org/bitstream/20.500.12323/4408/1/understanding%20a%20vecious%20cycle.pdf
Arcia, E. (2006). Achievement and enrollment status of suspended students: Outcomes in a large, multicultural school district. Education and Urban Society, 38(3), 359–369. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ734969. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249682240
Balfanz, R., Byrnes, V., & Fox, J. (2014). Sent home and put off-track: The antecedents, disproportionalities, and consequences of being suspended in the ninth grade. Journal of Applied Research on Children, 5(2), Article 13, 1–19. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1188519
Hwang, N. (2018). Suspensions and achievement: Varying links by type, frequency, and subgroup. Educational Researcher, 47(6), 363–374. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1189786. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325437248
Lacoe, J., & Steinberg, M. P. (2019). Do suspensions affect student outcomes? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 41(1), 34–62. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1204837
Noltemeyer, A. L., Ward, R. M., & Mcloughlin, C. (2015). Relationship between school suspension and student outcomes: A meta-analysis. School Psychology Review, 44(2), 224–240. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1141532. Retrieved from https://edsource.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Noltemeyer_Ward_2015_Meta-Analysis.pdf
Additional Organizations to Consult
National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments–https://safesupportivelearning.ed.gov/
University of Nebraska–Lincoln Student Engagement Project–https://k12engagement.unl.edu/
Methods
Keywords and Search Strings
The following keywords and search strings were used to search the reference databases and other sources:
- exclusionary discipline (student achievement)
- suspension (student achievement)
- in-school suspension (student achievement)
- out-of-school suspension (student achievement)
- zero-tolerance policy (student achievement)
Databases and Resources
We searched ERIC for relevant, peer-reviewed research references. ERIC is a free online library of more than 1.7 million citations of education research sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Additionally, we searched the What Works Clearinghouse.
Reference Search and Selection Criteria
When we were searching and reviewing resources, we considered the following criteria:
- Date of the publication: References and resources published from 2005 to present, were include in the search and review.
- Search priorities of reference sources: Search priority is given to study reports, briefs, and other documents that are published and/or reviewed by IES and other federal or federally funded organizations, academic databases, including ERIC, EBSCO databases, JSTOR database, PsychInfo, PsychArticle, and Google Scholar.
- Methodology: The following methodological priorities/considerations were given in the review and selection of the references: (a) study types—randomized control trials, quasi-experiments, surveys, descriptive data analyses, literature reviews, policy briefs, and so forth, generally in this order; (b) target population, samples (representativeness of the target population, sample size, volunteered or randomly selected, and so forth), study duration, and so forth; and (c) limitations, generalizability of the findings and conclusions, and so forth.