Group led by IU professor finds that suspension is ineffective

Of Chicago schools’ disabled, black middle school boys, about 75 percent have received an out-of-school suspension.

These suspensions increase the risk of dropping out, and thus the risk of juvenile delinquency.

These figures were gathered by a group of 23 experts, led by IU professor Russell Skiba, who teaches in the IU School of Education’s School Psychology program.

“We are never going to close the achievement gap until we close this discipline gap,” Daniel Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA, said in an IU press release Thursday.

The Discipline Disparities Research-to-Practice Collaborative began work in 2011 under Skiba’s direction to gather and analyze large amounts of research challenging the use of disciplinary policies that involve suspension, or any form of removing the student from the classroom.

With funding from the Atlantic Philanthropies and Open Society Foundations, the program was orchestrated through the Equity Project, described on its website as “a consortium of projects dedicated to providing high-quality data to educational decision makers in order to better understand and address issues regarding educational equity and bridge the gap between research and practice.”

The research found clear evidence that black students and students with disabilities are suspended at rates much higher than average. LGBT students are often suspended as well.

Skiba said academic disengagement leads to juvenile delinquency, and thus
suspension actually does nothing to improve student safety.

The group found no evidence that removing the “good” children from the presence of the “bad” children, as suspension tries to do, is at all effective.

Schools with lower rates of suspension have overall higher test scores.

Members of the collaborative said they hoped the research they conducted would help to convince policymakers that discipline policies similar to suspension are ineffective.

Anna Hyzy