Concern about harsh and inequitable discipline over the past two decades has galvanized a host of discipline reforms. These reforms have gained renewed attention in recent months as both the COVID-19 pandemic and mass uprisings against anti-Black violence have both bolstered calls to reimagine schools as caring spaces. This moment raises urgent…

This guide is designed for use by school, district, and state education agency staff to improve the effectiveness of efforts to collect and use discipline data, including reporting accurate and timely data to the federal government. It explains the importance of collecting discipline data, identifies key considerations for agencies implementing…

This study presents findings from an ethnographic content analysis of 15 chronological district-wide annual codes of student conduct from a large urban US school district. I frame policy creation and modification processes as reflections of societal shifts in perceptions of student behaviors. I looked to the policy documents to explore the…

Well over three million children, K-12, are estimated to have lost instructional "seat time" in 2009-2010 because they were suspended from school, often with no guarantee of adult supervision outside the school. That's about the number of children it would take to fill every seat in every major league baseball park and every NFL stadium…

A preliminary review of early responses to a questionnaire sent to secondary school principals across the United States revealed that most administrators felt more rigorous due process procedures should be followed in discipline cases than those required by federal regulations and school policies. The principals also tended to believe that…

Student behavior problems have been a focus of social concern since the mid-1960s. Although there have been few studies on the long-term effects of interventions on student behaviors, the specialization of classroom management and school discipline has grown. Changes and unresolved issues in student behavior problems are discussed. (DF)

This guide to student disciplinary hearings provides an understanding of procedures and options during the student suspension or expulsion process through the perspectives of the different participants. Section 1, "Why Hearings?" discusses due process and the three categories of student disciplinary hearings: pre-suspension, suspension, and…

The major early influences and actual training methods by which classroom management routines and behavioral control strategies are established in the first grade of Japanese elementary schools are examined in the first of three sections of this study. Drawing on relevant literature and preliminary results of an 18-month ethnographic study of…

A questionnaire survey of 52 secondary schools in the three school systems (public, private, and Catholic) of Australia's state of Victoria provided information supporting the theories that behavioral values are transmitted through a school's disciplinary system and that the application of disciplinary policy has a significant effect on school…

Principals, teachers, and counselors in 15 Indiana high schools were interviewed to determine what procedures they believed were required in various disciplinary actions, and what authority they believed had sanctioned these procedures. The interviewees came from small, medium, and large schools in rural and urban settings. Nearly 71 percent of…

This study compares student populations between two high schools in an urban school district in Indiana and populations within the schools to determine the effects of a punitive attendance policy and the attendance patterns of various groups. The schools were differentiated by the factor of one school enforcing an attendance policy. Random samples…

Comparative data from three middle schools, all in one large urban school district in the Pacific Northwest, are used to identify criteria for evaluating student discipline policies and to generate theoretical statements of how school administration affects student behavior. An introduction summarizes the study's goals and assumptions and…

This study examines discipline policy reform resulting from pressure that arose from a class-action suit, "Mark Stevenson v. Jefferson County Public Schools," alleging racially discriminatory discipline policies and procedures. The suit forced the school system and community in Louisville (Kentucky) to negotiate substantially revised…

The theory, research, and prescription done during the 1970's in the areas of classroom management and school discipline are reviewed in this analysis, and the effects of this work on student behavior problems is assessed. An analysis of the sociopolitical context in which scholarly models, research paradigms, and systems for running schools were…

Reports on a study about the general rule structures in 24 British primary schools and the systems of sanctions and rewards used to maintain them. Finds that all primary school teachers were considered responsible for rules being kept and that primary schools use fewer sanctions when rules are broken. (CFR)