The quality of leadership is paramount in every learning community. The character of school leaders and their unique styles of leadership sets the tone in their respective educational environment. Teachers and support staff possess professional skills of their own. However, leadership is necessary because they establish a standard by setting…

The School-to-Prison Pipeline is the concept that exclusionary discipline increases the likelihood of students' incarceration (Kim et al., 2010). Harsh discipline is still widely used today despite resulting in lower academic performance and higher incarceration rates (Musu-Gillette et al., 2018). The factors influencing the School-to-Prison…

Racial disproportionality in disciplinary practices has persisted in United States schools for decades. Students of color are consistently overrepresented in school discipline referrals, suspensions, and expulsions. These exclusionary discipline practices alienate students and set them on the pathway to disengagement and potential dropout from…

The U.S. Department of Education released a data set in 2011-2012 regarding discipline in schools in the U.S. The data revealed Black girls were the fastest growing population of students experiencing suspension and expulsion. Compared to their White peers, Black girls were suspended at a rate of six times more. The theoretical framework for this…

Since the early 1990s, American schools adopted exclusionary sanctions such as zero-tolerance policies (ZTP) to reduce student misbehavior as well as to sustain school safety. Due to the punitive nature of ZTP, some schools have sought alternative discipline models, like the restorative practices, to manage student infraction. This mixed methods…

One of the persistent challenges in United States elementary schools is the ongoing use of exclusionary discipline practices. In Oregon, despite the application of a number of legal and policy shifts intended to reduce the use of suspension and expulsion in K-5 and K-8 schools, particularly for students of color, there continues to be an increase…

Punitive disciplinary approaches have been used for decades in primary grades with little improvement in behavior and negative impacts on classroom climate. This qualitative case study explored the perspectives of administrators and educators implementing restorative practice (RP) with fidelity in the primary grades of urban public elementary…

Teachers at St. Scholastica School, a pseudonym, an all-girls Catholic high school, varied in approaches to discipline creating an unequal distribution of student citations and negatively impacting student experience. An Improvement Science approach identified two potential drivers of change: inconsistency in disciplinary policy and variation in…

As school leaders continue to look for solutions to ongoing negative student behaviors, many schools have implemented the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports framework. The Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports framework supports educators and students using positive strategies for behavior, academic, social, emotional, and…

The problem investigated is that high discipline referrals in schools serving at-risk high school students often lead to student attrition and lack of academic success. A qualitative methodology with a narrative research design was employed/utilized to investigate the impact of high discipline referring in schools in Alabama, including the…

Zero tolerance policies were designed to create safety by implementing automatic exclusion (e.g., suspensions, expulsions) for misbehavior in response to rising school violence in the United States. However, evidence over the past four decades shows that these policies fail to increase objective and subjective safety, and instead foster poor…

Restorative practices (RP) have been shown to decrease the number of suspensions and expulsions being used in schools and increase positive school climate and culture, thus reducing the negative effects on students' personal and academic achievement (Losen, 2015; Skiba et al., 2000, 2015). RP is still relatively new in the K-12 setting, however,…

This quantitative correlational study explored the unknown relationship between staff interactions, the feedback environment, staff development, and overall school climate, impacting instructional delivery and learning every day within one school in the eastern United States. The pervasive nature of school climate and its effect on student…

The enactment of Senate Bill 100/Public Act 099-0456 (SB100) in 2016 compelled school districts throughout Illinois to evaluate student discipline policies. This dissertation examines the impact SB100 had on middle and high schools throughout the state and within a large suburban K-12 school district. This dissertation is organized into three…

Providing students with equitable and safe learning experiences is a fundamental right; however school districts grapple with balancing student learning and student safety. In the Brown vs the Board of Education (1954) decision, the court identified education as a basic public responsibility and a principal instrument to facilitate understanding…