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“We are stuck in punitive sands as racial disparities in students’ disciplinary outcomes remain persistent. We need a better plan.”
Richard O. Welsh, Founding Director
The School Discipline Crisis
The School Discipline Lab is the premier hub for practitioners, researchers and educational stakeholders working to disrupt racial inequality in exclusionary discipline. We produce original scholarship, publish the views of experts, and aggregate news and research on school discipline from across the U.S.
OUR WHY: SCRUTINIZING STRUCTURES, NOT STUDENTS
By leveraging research evidence, we help foster learning environments where historically-marginalized students equitably experience transformative education.
Deeper blues illustrate states with higher disparities for in-school suspension for Black students over white students.
For almost every disciplinary metric, there is racial disparity. In every region of the United States, Black students are subjected to punitive measures, from referrals to expulsions, at rates over and above their peers. In 2015-2016 , when all students lost 11 million days of instruction from suspension, Black students lost nearly 5 times the number of days as white students. Rather than these punitive experiences arising from student behavior, a body of research, including that of SDL and our affiliates, demonstrates that discrepancies arise from administrative and high-level policy, processes, and philosophies. SDL is focused on better understanding the systemic drivers of such disparities and disseminating research to shape the way district and school leaders think about and approach the persistent inequities in school discipline.
All Eyes on Discipline
Guest-authored essays and papers written by researchers in accessible language
From Scholarship to Practice
Research Aggregator
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Richard O. Welsh, Luis A Rodriguez, and Blaise B. Joseph
School Effectiveness and School Improvement
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