Many Black educators in the United States demonstrate a political clarity about white supremacy and the racialized harm it cultivates in and out of schools. We highlight the perspectives of some of these educators and ask, (1) How do they articulate the need to protect Black children? and (2) What mechanisms of protection do they enact in their…

Nationally, educators suspend Black students at greater rates than any other group (U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2016). This disproportionality is fueled by stereotypes casting Black students as "troublemakers" (Okonofua, Walton, & Eberhardt, 2016)--a label the students too often internalize as part of their…

This study examined the factors that determined the science achievement of fourth-grade students on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 in the USA. The data were retrieved from the TIMSS international database and imported to the R program for manipulation. The EdSurvey package was used to conduct multilevel…

This study investigated whether a restorative practice initiative improved school climate. The study presents findings from a cluster randomized, controlled trial conducted with 2,248 students from grades 5 to 12 (38% Black, 32% Hispanic) attending 18 schools in the U.S. Northeast. After 1 year of implementation, the experimental analyses of the…

School disciplinary practices affect student academic and life outcomes. Many schools have recently shifted towards the prevention of behavioral disorders rather than the punishment of such disorders, but disciplinary actions are still disproportionately meted out to Black students. We took advantage of a natural experiment in a large school…

Purpose: This paper investigates the interplay between consequences in restorative practices (RP) and the synergies with responsive classroom, particularly in international schools. Addressing critics who deem RP a "soft option", the study defines "restorative consequences" within the RP framework. It analyses literature and…

The way teachers discipline students in school has wide-ranging effects on students' learning, behavior, and perceptions of themselves. Despite research indicating that punitive discipline negatively affects students, teachers persist in their use of harsh discipline methods. While there is evidence that racial biases may shape teachers'…

There are racial and ethnic disparities in use of out-of-school suspensions within the United States. The present study assessed for the presence of disproportionate suspension by race, special education status, and receipt of free or reduced cost meals using two separate metrics (risk ratios and raw differential representation); evaluated…

Purpose: The overall purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to determine the degree to which economic status was related to the number of days that students were assigned to an exclusionary discipline consequence. In the first study, the effect of economic status (i.e., Not Poor and Poor) on the number of days that Grade 5 and 6 Asian,…

This research uses the implementation of a school suspension ban in Maryland to test whether a top-down state-initiated ban on suspensions in early primary grades can influence school behavior regarding school discipline. Beginning in the fall of 2017, the State of Maryland banned the use of out-of-school suspensions for grades PK-2, unless a…

In elementary schools, boys of color are punished more often and more severely, despite not engaging in infractions any more frequently than their White peers. Previous research has identified these disparities as a form of racial criminalization, and that many boys of color regularly resist this criminalization as a healthy response to…

Aims: Maintaining order is a fundamental task for teachers in the classroom. Historically, some form of punishment has been the common response to undesirable behaviour. However, over the past two and a half decades, a different approach to classroom management, sometimes labelled 'positive discipline', is being increasingly adopted by schools.…

The implementation of zero-tolerance policies in the educational system has laid the foundations for the criminalization of minority youth and the school-to-prison pipeline (Mora & Christianakis, 2013). In 2015, the passage of Every Student Succeeds Act sought to decrease the schools-to-prison pipeline and minimize discipline and achievement…

This study explored how children of lower primary school grades perceive due process in schools' disciplinary procedures. While many studies have explored how adolescents perceive school discipline, only a few studies have examined the perceptions of primary school pupils, and no study has investigated lower primary school grades. The qualitative…

Do school district central offices and school principals have the same level of influence on school decisions? What does the district-principal power relationship look like? These two questions are discussed but are rarely examined in the literature. Based on a nationally representative sample from the 2007-2008 Schools and Staffing Survey data,…