Dive Brief:
- New research in December’s issue of the American Sociological Review asserts that students attending schools with high suspension rates have lower test scores, even if they are not the students being suspended.
- Past studies have shown that high incarceration rates can have dire impacts on those in the community beyond just the offender, and this study — conducted by University of Indiana professor Brea Perry and University of Kentucky professor Edward Morris — applies that notion to a K-12 setting.
- According to the Huffington Post, factors typically associated with low-test scores, such as poverty, were controlled by the researchers.
Dive Insight:
To get their data, the researchers spent six semesters following 16,000 Kentucky middle school and high school students. They then looked at the students' test scores and compared them to the school's suspension rates.
Interestingly, the report found that the most harmful reactions occurred when high suspensions happened at schools with low violence.
"Kids are looking around saying, ‘This is happening way too often, things in school are great, and you’re using suspension,’” Perry told the Huffington Post.