Tackling Racial Disparities in School Discipline

May 22, 2014

Pam Hammen got tired of staring at the data.

The data were telling Hammen, the principal of Verona Area High School in suburban Madison, Wisconsin, that 55% of White students in her school were proficient in reading in tenth grade, as opposed to 13% of Black students. At the same time, students of color were being suspended at much higher rates than their White peers.

“It was obvious that we had an achievement problem, coupled with disproportionality in discipline,” Hammen said. “We were not happy about that, and we set out to change.”

Verona is one of 27 school districts that belong to the Minority Student Achievement Network (MSAN), a WCER project led by executive director Dr. Madeline Hafner.

Through the discovery of best practices and the exchange of knowledge, MSAN seeks to identify and change school policies and structures that contribute to racial achievement gaps in U.S. schools.

MSAN hosted its 2014 Institute on April 14 and 15 in Madison, attracting hundreds of educators from public school districts as far away as Arizona and Massachusetts, and as close as Verona, Madison, and Sun Prairie. Hammen was among them, presenting her school’s twofold effort to reduce racial disparities in student discipline and increase minority representation in advanced placement (AP) classes.

“Verona has gotten a lot of attention for offering a large number of AP courses, however, almost all of the students taking those classes are White,” Hammen said during her presentation. “Alternatively, it was in more subjective categories of discipline—things like disrespect of a teacher, or disregard of rules, noncompliance—where we saw our African American kids having some major disproportionality rates in discipline.”

The issues raised by Hammen resonated with the audience of education administrators, most of whom work in similarly high-achieving schools and districts.

“Of course we see it in our schools,” said Deborah D. Moore, the principal of Monticello Middle School in Ohio’s Cleveland Heights-University Heights School District. “But this is a national issue, and we are all part of the problem. If we’re not ready to have that uncomfortable experience of studying ourselves in the mirror, then we’re not going to [find] solutions.”

Said Angie Crawford, principal at James C. Wright Middle School in the Madison Metropolitan School District, “Our work is to expand the capacity of our staff to understand the problem facing us with disproportionality and give them the means and hope to think they can carry out the difficult work of tackling that problem.”

One of institute’s keynote speakers, Dr. Russ Skiba, director of the Equity Project at Indiana University, a professor in that school’s counseling and educational psychology program, and an expert in disproportionality and school violence, called for conference attendees to engage in self-reflection on their schools’ approach to discipline.

“The data on racial disparities in school discipline are strikingly consistent—almost as consistent as any body of research I’ve ever studied,” Skiba said.

Those data, Skiba said, stretch back to 1975 and show that suspensions can reinforce, rather than deter, objectionable student behavior. Schools that hand out more suspensions and expulsions see lower academic achievement, higher dropout rates, and, on average, their African American students feel more unwelcome in school. And the rate of suspensions correlates more strongly to eroding feelings of safety in a district than local crime or poverty rates.

Disproportionality is not just a matter of poverty levels, Skiba added. While discipline rates do have a relation to students’ level of poverty, “it’s not as strong of a connection as is commonly believed,” Skiba said. Both classroom behavior management and cultural mismatch also appear to play a role in creating disparities in discipline, he said, and school characteristics, such as a principals’ belief about school discipline, play a greater role than poverty in contributing to disproportionality.

“African American and Latino students are more likely to receive harsher punishment for the same [office discipline referral], especially for minor misbehavior. In addition, the behaviors for which Black students tend to be referred to the principal’s office are much more subjective—things like disrespectful behavior, loitering, or making threats,” he said.
Cultural differences between a teacher and his or her students are a leading predictor of disproportional rates of discipline in a classroom, Skiba continued. “We need to transform this into an issue we can talk about it, so that we can then begin to tackle it,” he said.

That is not easy work, said Ouimet Smith, the director of student affairs for Ohio’s Shaker Heights School District.

“Educators often lack the depth and breadth of understanding students different than ourselves. Even as an African American male, for years I contributed to the same problematic practices in my institution, until I was able to rectify that, thanks in part to MSAN,” Smith said. “But breaking down institutional practices that have existed for years and years is very difficult.”

At the Institute, MSAN districts presented their efforts to lessen disproportionality in their schools. The dean of students, the school social worker, and a student from Evanston Township High School in Illinois discussed their adoption of restorative justice practices, which have reduced suspensions by 35%. Administrators from the Columbia, Missouri School District explained how, after 10 years of unsuccessful efforts to reduce disproportionality in their schools, they implemented a Response-to-Intervention framework that aims to move their teachers and administrators into flexible mindsets regarding their use of discipline and the factor of race. And representatives from the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools in North Carolina lauded the results of their use of Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports.

Dr. Aydin Bal, an assistant professor of special education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, gave a keynote lecture on his own solution, called Culturally Responsive Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, which has been implemented in some Wisconsin schools since 2012. The system calls for seeking out and empowering voices, specifically culturally and linguistically diverse families and students that typically aren’t heard in discussions on school climate.

“Disproportionality is an opportunity for us to change schools,” Bal said. “What is needed is the transformation and improvement of educational systems from the ground up in culturally responsive ways. That is done at the local level through a cycle of reflection and action, blurring boundaries between schools and communities.”

In a discussion session with Bal, educators from the Madison Metropolitan School District expressed their support for their district’s newly approved Student Conduct and Discipline Plan. Noting that MSAN’s headquarters lie within the Madison Metropolitan School District’s boundaries. MSAN executive director Madeline Hafner praised the Madison School Board for passing the new plan and its educators for supporting it.

“It’s a really important first step,” Hafner said. “It’s sending a message that the district is serious about moving in the right direction—towards directly confronting the issue of disproportionality rather than ignoring it.”

Hafner said that after 2 days at the Institute, she realized that, even among allies to the cause, discussions on reducing racial disparities in school discipline can be extremely difficult. She called for MSAN districts to lead reform efforts in their individual states.

“It takes courageous districts like the ones in MSAN to tackle this issue, because it’s a deeply-rooted, societal issue that boils down to what’s in the minds and hearts of our teachers,” Hafner said. “Schools in states with MSAN districts are looking at those districts to see what they’re doing. They’re the leaders in this process, and they can help turn the tide on this pervasive wrong.”

For Pam Hammen, the principal from Verona, the 2014 MSAN Institute convinced her that her school had made the right move in confronting disproportionality head on.

“We’ve tried to be very honest, serious, and committed to our work. It’s a work in progress and we’re not sure what the final outcome will be, whether we see results or not. But we think it was worth the risk, because what we were doing wasn’t enough,” Hammen said. “If there was the possibility of improving our school, it was worth trying.”