Why has suspension become a commonly used form of punishment?
This is a central question I answer in my new book. What I found is that suspension first became common as a way of removing unwanted Black students from formerly all-white schools in the years after schools desegregated. Schools resisted desegregation efforts, and rather than accepting Black students with open arms they saw them as problems to be managed, often by suspending them from school.
What are some of the risks students face when they get suspended?
Suspending children out of school can offer a short reprieve for teachers, but in the end it only makes problems worse. Students who get suspended misbehave more when they return. They are also at risk of being retained a grade and failing to graduate, as well as arrest and even incarceration in the future. It鈥檚 important to note that it isn鈥檛 just the students who get suspended, though 鈥� studies show that students in high suspension rate schools score worse on standardized tests than in other schools, even when the schools and students are similar in other ways.
Why are Black students disproportionately suspended for the same misbehaviors as their white peers?
There are a variety of reasons. One is implicit racial bias, where often well-intended educators are a little bit quicker to see Black students as threatening or disruptive, even when they act the same as white students. Another is that the schools Black students attend are more punitive overall, in that they are more likely to rely more on suspension and less on other, more inclusive, responses to misbehavior. Importantly, though, studies find that this difference in punishment for Black and white students is clear even after taking student behavior into account, meaning that it is not explained by Black students misbehaving more.
What role does structural racism and racial bias play in the punitive practice of suspension?
Except in rare cases, suspending children out of schools does not support learning or school safety, so it really doesn鈥檛 make sense as a pedagogical or behavior management practice. It only makes sense once we realize its roots in structural racism, that it spread as a form of resistance to racial desegregation. So that is baked into its history, its roots.
Is the use of student suspension effective for behavior management or helpful towards increasing academic performance or making schools safer?
No. It鈥檚 that simple. Some believe that it is never helpful. Personally, I think it can make sense to suspend a student who is being violent, if it鈥檚 necessary in order to maintain safety and allow time to sort things out. But this is a small percentage of the suspensions we see. The rest only make student behavior worse and make schools more difficult places to learn in 鈥� both for the students who get suspended and their peers.
How is the legacy of racism and segregation driving harsher and more frequent punishments for Black students in America鈥檚 public schools?
The resistance to desegregation that led schools to first start relying on school suspension created a pattern that we still see today. In fact, after analyzing national-level data, I found that schools in districts that were more resistant to desegregation as far back as 1952 suspend more students, and particularly more Black students, today. In other words, our history of segregation still reverberates strongly today.
Why have we allowed this harmful practice to impact the lives of our nation鈥檚 children?
We started using suspensions as a way to preserve opportunities for white children, or resist efforts to provide equal opportunity for Black children. While hopefully that is not the intent of educators today, suspending kids out of school might appear at first glance to be a reasonable response. This helps explain why we continue the practice, but this perception that it鈥檚 reasonable is based on misunderstandings of why students misbehave and what kind of response is most helpful to everyone involved.
Why does suspension persist and why is it accepted as normal by Black administrators as well as actively anti-racist white teachers?
School suspension became common by the 1970s. Over time, it became taken for granted, or a routine response to student misbehavior, and the other responses that schools used to have in their arsenal went away. In other words, it became normal. Now, in many schools. educators have little choice but to suspend students because they don鈥檛 have many other options available to them.
Why are Black male students more prone to school punishment for forms of disorderly behavior that put no one in danger than for serious offenses like violence, theft, or drugs and alcohol?
What we tend to see, nationally, is that racial disparities in school punishment are largest for the most subjectively-defined misbehaviors. Offenses like disruption or insubordination, for example, allow for so much more room for an educator to interpret a students鈥� behaviors and intentions, and too often explicit or implicit racial bias results in more negative perceptions of youth of color. It also helps that actual violence in schools is rare, since the national school crime rate today is a fraction of what it was a generation ago.
What are some practical alternatives to kicking 鈥渢roublemakers鈥� out of school?
There are a variety of strategies that can be effective if done well, such as restorative practices or Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. These strategies all share some elements 鈥� they see students as children to be supported, not problems to be managed, and they address the causes of student misbehavior rather than just kicking them out of school and ignoring those causes. They all provide accountability and structure, since it is important that students who misbehave are held accountable, but they do so in ways that help students learn and grow while strengthening the entire school community.
How does the stationing of police officers in schools unfairly punish Black students in lower-income school districts?
Research on whether police officers in schools (often called School Resource Officers) actually reduces rates of student crime is mixed at best. But what we do know, from consistent evidence, is that placing police in schools results in higher rates of school discipline and arrest, particularly for Black youth. So their presence means even higher rates of school suspension and school-based arrest for Black youth than we would otherwise see.
What type of training could teachers receive in order to to avoid exclusionary punishment for minority students?
First, I want to be clear that I am not trying to blame teachers. They receive too much criticism as it is and not enough support. That said, it would be helpful if behavior management were taught more regularly in teacher training programs. Another helpful strategy for existing teachers is empathy training, so that they better understand their students and appropriate responses to students鈥� behaviors. But what I think is even more important is school, district and state-level policy changes. We need to create and really lean into better responses to student misbehavior, and change expectations so that these are our go to responses rather than school suspension.
What can students or parents do to fight back against an unfair school suspension?
Parent involvement can go a long way. Sometimes it can help in an individual situation, if a school sees that parents are very involved in their child鈥檚 education and will make a little noise to advocate for their child. What I think is even more promising, however, is collective action to change school policy and practice so that we can avoid unfair punishments in the first place. There are several recent success stories of students and parents coming together to help share their perspectives and advocate for school discipline reform.
Aaron Kupchik is Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. He is the author of many books including Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear and The Real School Safety Problem: The Long-Term Consequences of Harsh School Punishment. His book Judging Juveniles: Prosecuting Adolescents in Adult and Juvenile Courts won the 2007 American Society of Criminology Michael J. Hindelang Award for the Most Outstanding Contribution to Research in Criminology.
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