School Composition and Disproportionality in Discipline: A School-Level Analysis of Disciplinary Actions against Various Offense Types in the United States, 2007-2008

Abstract

This dissertation addresses race, poverty, and school locational and organizational characteristics to explore three specific questions: 1) Are there discrepancies across American public schools in terms of managing discipline? 2) What are the underlying factors that explain this discrepancy? 3)What are the school and organizational characteristics that are associated with the way in which students are disciplined? The school-level data for this study is based on the 2007-2008 School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) and the Common Core of Data (CCD), both provided by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES). Existing literature suggests that minority and poor students are disciplined differently - often more punitively - than White and affluent students. The findings from this research suggest that school level dynamics may be different than what the student level literature suggests. Specifically, the results indicate that racial and poverty concentrations do affect the types of violations that occur in schools and school officials' responses' to different offense types. However, it is not race and poverty alone that are associated with this. Racial and poverty concentrations are mediated by several school characteristics, and matter to a lesser degree when specific characteristics are accounted for. Additionally, disciplinary responses to violations depend on the type of violation, not necessarily on the racial or poverty make-up of the school.