Does school-level use of exclusionary discipline mediate the relation between school segregation and academic achievement?

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This study evaluated the relation between ethnic/racial and economic school segregation and math achievement in public school students participating in the nationally representative High School Longitudinal Survey of 2009. Previous research has demonstrated that economically and racially/ethnically segregated schools are associated with lower academic performance on the student level, controlling for individual student characteristics. Existing empirical work has also demonstrated the school process variables explain some of the variation in achievement in segregated schools compared to schools with lower concentrations of racial ethnic/minority students and those living in poverty. The present study assessed both the direct impact of school segregation on math achievement as well as indirect effects mediated by exclusionary discipline practices including in-school suspension and out of school suspension. Study findings suggest that that racial/ethnic and economic segregation results in reductions in math achievement through indirect effects associated with the school-level proportion of students receiving out of school suspension.