Over the past decade, numerous reports have indicated pervasively high rates of early childhood expulsion nationwide. In response, state and federal policymakers have enacted various measures to ban or reduce reliance on such exclusionary discipline. Prior evaluations of the implementation of one such legislative ban on expulsion enacted in…

School districts historically approached conflict-resolution from a zero-sum perspective: suspend students seen as disruptive and potentially harm them, or avoid suspensions and harm their classmates. Restorative practices (RP) -- focused on reparation and shared ownership of disciplinary justice -- are designed to avoid this trade-off by…

Researchers and policymakers have written extensively about the lack of evidence for the use of suspension and expulsion in schools and the disproportionate impact among racial and ethnic minorities and children in special education. As a result, states across the country have passed legislation to reform school discipline practices, with varying…

Racial and ethnic disproportionality in discipline (REDD) represents a longstanding and pervasive issue in the United States educational system. However, researchers and interventionists have not sufficiently provided educators with appropriate frameworks and feasible tools to disrupt REDD and promote equity. The goal of this paper is to present a…

Two years after the State of Illinois enacted an extensive non-exclusionary discipline reform in schools, 322 key discipline gatekeepers were surveyed about the extent and impact of the new state policy. The results showed that several core provisions of the reform had not been fully implemented or addressed through professional development.…

The performance of public schools and the achievement of their students influence many important outcomes beyond the classroom, including one that may seem surprising: health. Studies consistently show a strong correlation between educational level and health over a lifetime, even after controlling for demographic characteristics such as income.…

School-wide positive behavior support (SWPBS) has an established evidence base in general education settings, and emerging evidence suggests that SWPBS may be effective in alternative settings (e.g., alternative, residential, or hospital schools; psychiatric hospitals). Given the intense educational and behavioral needs of students typically…

Purpose: A factor largely overlooked amid the press for greater security in schools is the extent to which law enforcement participates in search and seizure and the implications such actions carry for student civil liberties. As case law suggests, police engaged in school searches may be held to the probable cause standard or the more flexible…

Concludes that the ability of public high school disciplinarians to recognize the elements of fairness in student suspension situations is only minimally acceptable. (FL)

This report is a 1983 update on corporal punishment prepared for the Illinois State Board of Education. It gives a historical perspective and reviews the practices in selected states and metropolitan districts. Corporal punishment is allowed in 46 states; 4 states prohibit it. Among large school districts in metropolitan areas there is a tendency…

This report describes the methodology and initial results of an evaluation of the universal (school-wide) Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support (PBIS) initiative in Illinois, including (1) strategies for establishing research-based practices and data-based evaluation systems in implementation schools; (2) methodology and initial findings of…

Research suggests positive interaction between students and teachers is a hallmark of a safe and effective school. Yet to date there is no literature presenting findings or case examples of what constitutes positive engagement or how to measure its frequency. This paper shares observations of a "model" rural middle school in an attempt…

A social skills training program for improving student behavior in art and music classes and in unstructured situations was developed and implemented during the second quarter of the 1993-1994 school year in two schools in Elgin, Illinois. The targeted classes included grades six through eight at St. Laurence School (part of the Rockford Catholic…