School Discipline and Inequalities In Arkansas Dr. Gary Ritter Kaitlin Anderson Office for Education Policy University of Arkansas Presentation for the Arkansas State Board of Education February 11, 2016

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Agenda Introduction and Motivation Five Questions and Results Conclusion and Next Steps

Introduction and Motivation

Introduction to Arkansas Act 1329 OEP presented on this topic in July, 2014 and August, 2015 in response to Act 1329: An Act to Evaluate the Impact of School Discipline on Student Achievement; And For Other Purposes In addition to annual reporting on rates, we have been able to report on some critical questions related to student discipline in AR

Questions and Results

Questions to Answer Today What are the disciplinary rates (incidences per 100 students) overall and for various subgroups of students? Are there any important trends over time? Do certain students just attend “high-discipline” schools? What are the school-level disciplinary rates for the “average” student in different subgroups? Are certain types of infractions (subjective v. objective) more subject to subgroup disparities? What can we learn about the population of students that are expelled? How does exclusionary discipline relate to student academic performance?

Q1: What are the IN SCHOOL SUSPENSION rates for various subgroups of students? Total Infractions over the past three years was 30.9 (2012-13); 42.4 (2014-15); 53.6 (2014-15) Other Non Specified Consequences have also increased over time: 4.6, 13.3, 19.5 Key Takeaways: African-American students are disproportionately represented in ISS rates Rates have increased over the past few years – however this is not due to shifting away from Out-of-School Suspension or Other/Non- Specified Infractions In fact, infractions overall have increased

Q1: What are the OUT OF SCHOOL SUSPENSION rates for various subgroups of students? Key Takeaways: African-American students are disproportionately represented in OSS rates Rates have increased over the past few years

Q1: What are the EXPULSION rates for various subgroups of students? Key Takeaways: African-American students are disproportionately represented in Expulsion rates Yet these rates overall are quite low

Q1: What are the CORPORAL PUNISHMENT rates for various subgroups of students? Key Takeaways: African-American students are disproportionately represented in Corporal Punishment Rates Overall rates relatively stable over past few years

Q1: What are the OTHER/NON-SPECIFIED CONSEQUENCE rates for various subgroups of students? Emphasize that overall, use of this other category has increased from about 5 incidences per 100 students to about 20 incidences per 100 students, and we don’t even know what it is or how it differs from district to district or school to school. *School or district level reporting that has been rolled up to the state level but doesn’t fit in one of the six main buckets. *Use of this category has expanded greatly, so more work must be done to understand what it is and improve detail of reporting

Q2: Do certain students just attend “high-discipline” schools? To motivate this question, we compare 2014-15 discipline rates in schools with high and low minority populations Focus on three most common consequences (ISS, Other Action, and OSS), representing 91% of all consequences Number of Schools in Each Quintile: 200 197 193 195 199 The first two quintiles (with the largest proportion of minority students) clearly have much higher rates of ISS, Other Action, and OSS. Therefore, we might want to ask (on next slide), what are the rates of these types of consequences in the schools that a “typical” white student attends versus the school that a “typical” African American student attends?

Another way to view this: Disciplinary rates for the schools the “average” student attends. The ISS rate at the school the “average” black student attends is almost double the same rate at the school the “average” white student attends The difference in OSS rates is 3 times as big Almost double 3x as high The “average” Hispanic student attends schools with higher disciplinary rates than the “average” white student

Q3: Are certain types of infractions (subjective v Q3: Are certain types of infractions (subjective v. objective) more subject to subgroup disparities? Most frequent infraction types are relatively subjective: “Other” Disorderly Conduct Insubordination Other infraction types are, perhaps, less subjective (i.e. we can “see” them): Truancy Tobacco Knives

Disorderly Conduct (Subjective) 62% of D.C. cases for Hispanics result in “Other” Consequences; 3% Corporal Punishment The size of the bubble represents the frequency (incidences per 100 students) for each of these subgroups. The dark grey bubble is for all students. Therefore, if you compare the size of the peach bubble (Black students), we can see that Black students are disproportionately cited for disorderly conduct, because their bubble is bigger. Then the xy axes show us the resulting consequences. If you draw a line from the middle of a dot down to the x axis, you see the % of these cases that resulted in exclusionary discipline (OSS, Expulsion, or ALE). Comparing how far right or left, therefore, indicates the degree to which one group is more likely to receive exclusionary discipline. In this case we can see that Black students are more likely to receive exclusionary discipline than the general population. Then we can look at where these bubbles hit on the y-axis, which represents the share of time that discipline results in ISS. As you can see, black students are about as likely as the general population to receive ISS. Keep in mind that ISS, OSS, Expulsion, or ALE are not the only options. Students can also receive CP, no action, or some “other/non-specified action” So what are other students getting? In 62% of DC cases for Hispanics Therefore, it is unclear how to interpret whether Hispanic students tend to receive a more harsh or less harsh punishment, without understanding what “other” actually is in different schools

Insubordination (Subjective) African-American students are cited for insubordination more often, and are more likely to receive exclusionary discipline (19% of the time, relative to the average of 15%) Here, clearly, Black students are being written up for insubordination more frequently. The are also a little more likely to receive exclusionary discipline for insubordination (19% of the time) relative to 15% of the time for all students

Tobacco…A Less Subjective Case? African-American students are cited for tobacco less frequently than the average student population, but much more likely to receive exclusionary discipline For an infraction like “tobacco” which should be an objective, visible type of infraction, we see that for some reason Black students are still much more likely to receive exclusionary discipline (58% of the time) relative

Knives…Everyone Excluded In some objective infractions such as knives, we see clumped circles. There is less variation in who is excluded, although “other races” are excluded slightly less often

Truancy…Primarily ISS 56% of Truancy Infractions overall result in ISS but African American students are receiving exclusionary discipline at disproportionate rates African American students receive OSS in 14% of truancy cases (relative to 9% for all students)* Here, we see a case where exclusionary discipline is used relatively rarely, and the circles are relatively clumped together. Most of these truancy infractions result in ISS (56%) overall. *Note: OSS is not a legal remedy for truancy according to Act 1329 of 2013

Q3: Are certain types of infractions (subjective v Q3: Are certain types of infractions (subjective v. objective) more subject to subgroup disparities? In summary, there are disparities for both subjective and objective types of infractions Note: according to our research, most but not all of these disparities are driven by between school differences rather than within school differences Difficulties in fully understanding these disparities due to prevalent use of “Other” consequences Troubling result: Out-of-School suspension is still being used as a consequence for Truancy, despite Act 1329 of 2013 prohibiting its use

Truancy and Out-of-School Suspension Act 1329 specifies a restriction on school district policies: “A school district shall not use out-of-school suspension as a discipline measure for truancy” In 2014-15, this practice is still widely used (9% of total truancy cases and in over 100 districts) Additionally, this consequence is used disproportionately for African-American Students (14% of truancy cases) 29 schools used OSS as a consequence for 100% of their truancy cases in 2014-15, indicating that this is the “go to” punishment for this offense 2014-15 OSS used for truancy in 177 schools

Q4: What can we learn about the population of students that are expelled? Based on three recent years (2012-13 to 2014-15) What are students expelled for? Drugs (21%) Other/Non-Specified (16%) Disorderly Conduct (14%) Insubordination (13%) Fighting (12%) Knives, Guns, Explosives (8%) Staff or Student Assault (6%) Alcohol, Tobacco (3%) Bullying (4%), Truancy (3%) The bulk are non-violent offenses More work needs to go into understanding the “other” bucket

Q4: What can we learn about the population of students that are expelled? Two Major Themes: 1) Expelled students are mobile students: 47-62% of the students expelled during any of the past three years was not visible in the prior year’s enrollment data 2) Expelled students were not necessarily “trouble makers” the previous year: Only 14-20% of the students expelled during any of the past three years had referrals reported in the prior year So if we look at all the students that were expelled in the past three years, we can look back at their prior year’s disciplinary history to see what we can learn about this population of students. Two major themes arise…

Q5: How does exclusionary discipline relate to student academic performance? What to make of this? We just picked math as an example Here we don’t show all types of consequences, just OSS, ISS, and total infractions (including all seven categories) We can clearly see a relationship between proficiency levels and discipline, however it is unclear the direction of causality. Bad behavior lead to bad test scores or vice versa? Also, it’s not necessarily only exclusionary discipline that is part of this loop – there is a clear relationship between ISS and test scores as well. In fact there are many entry points in a causal loop of…(next slide)

Q5: How does exclusionary discipline relate to student academic performance? Low Achievement Disengaged Student Bad Behavior Problem with the issue is: This causal chain could start anywhere A student could become disengaged, act out, and then get poor scores, etc.

Q5: How does exclusionary discipline relate to student academic performance? Future work: Test how exclusionary discipline affects a student’s test score trajectory (“student fixed effects”) Preliminary findings: there is a slight negative dip in scores for a student when they receive exclusionary discipline Therefore, in some other research we are working on, we are attempting to use the most rigorous available analytical methods, called student fixed effects, which essentially just shows how some treatment (receiving exclusionary discipline for example) affects the trajectory of a student’s test score performance. The results are very preliminary, but we do see a slight negative dip in scores of a student in a year that they are exposed to exclusionary discipline, relative to a year in which they are not.

Conclusions and Next Steps There is a clear disparity problem, However, it’s difficult to study this fully due to: Reporting/ transparency problems “Other” infractions (37%) and “Other” consequences (36%) Understanding that there is possible reverse causality Future reporting needs, qualitative work Some easily fixable things: Get rid of Truancy for Out of School Suspension

Questions. garyr@uark. edu kaitlina@uark. edu oep@uark. edu www Questions? garyr@uark.edu kaitlina@uark.edu oep@uark.edu www.officeforeducationpolicy.org