Sent Home and Put Off-Track: The Antecedents, Disproportionalities, and Consequences of Being Suspended in the Ninth Grade

By R. Balfanz, Vaughan Byrnes, J. Fox. Journal of Applied Research on Children, 2013

280 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Author(s): Balfanz, Robert; Byrnes, Vaughan; Fox, Joanna | Abstract: This study is based upon a longitudinal analysis of data for a cohort of 181,897 Florida state students who were first time 9th graders in the 2000-01 school year and follows them trough to high school and post-secondary outcomes. Analysis of 9th grade suspension data finds that black students, students who are economically disadvantaged, and special education students are three demographics subgroups that are disproportionately suspended, both in the frequency of suspensions and the duration in number of school days lost. While poverty and ethnicity are themselves highly correlated, poverty alone does not explain the disproportionate suspension rates amongst black students. Further analyses show that out-of-school suspensions in the 9th grade year are also significantly and negatively correlated to later high school graduation as well as post-secondary enrollment and persistence. Thus demographic disparities in disciplinary incidents serve to further widen any academic achievement gaps. Closer analysis though shows though that disciplinary incidents are interrelated with other of indicators of student disengagement from school, such as course failures and absenteeism. Therefore, policies seeking to address these issues cannot focus on reducing suspensions alone, but must also address student attendance and course passing in a comprehensive and systematic manner.

Subfields: Education, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2df42ba0bf77c66cd8007c44c052e48198dd4394

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

1. E. Greer
2. A. Gregory
3. Kerrin C. Wolf
4. S. Stone
5. J. Simmons
6. Jordan Farrar
7. Yolanda Anyon
8. A. Kupchik

In Safety Research

1. J. Jenson
2. S. Stone

Citations in the corpus

• Restorative Interventions and School Discipline Sanctions in a Large Urban School District (2016, background): “This in and of itself is a worthy goal given that negative academic and behavioral trajectories of referred students are exacerbated when they are excluded from instruction (e.g., Balfanz et al., 2015).”
• School Suspensions and Adverse Experiences in Adulthood (2017, background): “Suh and Suh (2007), as well as Balfanz, Byrnes, and Fox (2015) and Shollenberger (2015), similarly reported a connection between being suspended and dropping out.”