Schools in New Zealand (NZ) have a range of disciplinary options when dealing with challenging behaviours, one of which is excluding students by way of stand-downs, suspensions, exclusions or expulsions. Following marginal downward trend from 2006 to 2015, the numbers of stand-downs and suspensions have been on the rise again since 2016 despite…

Keeping students in the classroom so that they are engaged with their teachers is a struggle. Students have many distractions in their lives other than school. When students are disruptive in the classroom the code of conduct or student handbook dictates the student's punishment. These are the zero-tolerance policies established in 1994 (Evans…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore African American students and school administrators' experiences with out-of-school suspension (OSS) and their perceptions of strategies to reduce suspensions. Researchers have identified research-based strategies to reduce OSS, including restorative practices and Positive Behavior…

The use of exclusionary discipline practices in schools has continued to increase since the advent of Zero Tolerance discipline policies in the 1990s. Research indicates that these practices are largely ineffective in addressing behavior, and result in detrimental outcomes for students and communities. This study focused on the use of Disciplinary…

This qualitative study aimed to examine African American students' perceptions regarding their school's disciplinary policies and procedures. This study was an attempt to answer the following central questions: What are the perceptions of African American students regarding their high school's disciplinary policies and procedures? What is the…

This quantitative correlational-predictive study addressed the predictive relationships of County Political Leaning (Republican vs. Democratic/reference) and Poverty of Student Population (operationalized as percentage of students enrolled in Free and Reduced Price Lunch programs) with Out-of-school Suspension in public high schools in California.…

Male students of color often receive harsher disciplinary consequences than their same age White peers. Disproportionate discipline practices have existed within the education system for years, primarily due to a historical systemic issue of implicit bias due to race. One intervention used to quell some of these disparities is Restorative…

This research study examined the impact of negative behavioral consequences on the academic achievement of 9th-grade students from three rural high schools in South Carolina before and after COVID-19 and by gender. The researcher used a comparative research design to examine achieved data of different genders, incidents at school, actions taken by…

Background: Public schools are among the first civic institution with which many individuals have prolonged, meaningful social interaction. Lessons about the authority, power, and fairness of civic institutions, conveyed through disciplinary and social control practices, may be part of the "hidden curriculum," that teaches students about…

School discipline is a significant problem of practice and policy. The differences in disciplinary patterns across schooling levels have received relatively little attention. This study examines the differences in disciplinary infractions and consequences across elementary, middle, and high schools. The results illustrate there are important…

Beginning in the early 1990s, many school districts began to implement zero-tolerance discipline policies that relied heavily on the use of suspensions. As a result, the number of students removed from the classroom and the school environment has dramatically increased over the past 30 years. To increase school safety and combat the rise of school…

To evaluate the net effects of classroom disciplinary practices, policy makers and educators must understand not only their effects on disciplined students but also their effects on non-disciplined peers. In this study, we estimate the link between peer suspensions and non-suspended students' learning trajectories in a California school district…

Background/Context: There has been growing attention to the disproportionate and harmful effects of school exclusion, including suspension and expulsion, on boys of color. Restorative justice may be one possibility for addressing these disparities. Yet the research on restorative justice in schools is nascent, and in particular, little is known…

Increasingly, district leaders are turning to a community-based alternative to suspension called restorative practices (RP's). While they correlate with lower suspension rates, Black, Latinx, and Native students continue to be more frequently and harshly disciplined than their White peers (Office of Civil Rights, 2014). The Kirwan Institute (2015)…

The purpose of this study was to examine the Problem of Practice (POP) to determine if Restorative Practices (RP) can have an impact on the disproportionality of out of school suspensions (OSS) for Black and Multi-Race students at Eastern High School. RP has emerged as a promising intervention to mitigate racially disproportionate practices in…