Researchers studying school discipline in Ohio found that “exclusionary school discipline” disproportionately affects students of color, as well as children with disabilities and those from lower-income families.
Ohio Children’s Defense Foundation Releases “2024”the state of school discipline in ohio”report examining measures such as suspensions and expulsions from school, finding that these practices “have been identified as contributing factors to Ohio’s ‘community-to-prison pipeline’ phenomenon that places too many children and young people on a path to incarceration.”
“Student discipline rates in Ohio are headed in the wrong direction, particularly for our middle and high school students and students of color,” said CDF-Ohio State Director Dr. John Stanford in announcing the report’s findings.
In a report released March 12, researchers found an enhance in suspensions and expulsions across all grades, from kindergarten through grade 12, from the 2021-22 school year to the 2022-23 school year.
“Students from low-income families accounted for 83 percent of all suspensions in Ohio public schools during the 2022-2023 school year,” the report found.
The study cited the state’s high rate of chronic absenteeism as part of the problem plaguing school districts. The study’s authors said school discipline “cannot be separated from Ohio’s alarmingly high rate of chronic absenteeism, defined as any student missing more than 10 percent of the school year for any reason.
“Exclusionary sanctions prevent students from accessing meaningful on-site learning and essential services that support their overall well-being, further widening the gap between those who need these services the most,” the CDF-Ohio report said.
Chronic absenteeism has plagued Ohio schools for years, as bipartisan sponsors of a bill aimed at curbing the problem noted during a January hearing introducing proposed two-year pilot program which would pay students to motivate them to attend school regularly.
The bill’s co-sponsor, state Rep. Dani Isaacsohn, D-Cincinnati, called chronic absenteeism “the number one problem we face in education.”
Another co-sponsor, Cincinnati Republican state Rep. Bill Seitz, said local leaders have tried every possible way to get kids back to school, but a concept like pizza day or similar tactics “it doesn’t seem to be working” to ensure children have access to schools.
The latest data from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce showed that chronic absenteeism among high school freshmen was 31 percent last school year. Kindergartners considered chronically absent were 29 percent during the same school year.
Overall, in the 2022–2023 school year, 26.8% of students in the country chronically missed classes.
This data appears even after Law 2018 banned the suspension or expulsion of students from kindergarten through third grade for “minor infractions.” The full implementation of the ban was phased in through legislation that is set to be completed in the 2021-2022 school year.
While the number of disciplinary actions for this age group has declined since the law was passed — from more than 31,000 cases in the 2018-19 school year to 10,048 in the 2021-22 school year — CDF-Ohio researchers found that “the full purpose of the law has not yet been fully realized.”
The report, citing ODEW data, found nearly 2,000 “disciplinary actions of exclusion against students in grades kindergarten through third for behaviors that did not qualify for dismissal.”
For the 2022-2023 school year, the number of suspensions and expulsions of students in kindergarten through third grade increased slightly, to 12,025.
A study by the Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio found that black students were 4.3 times more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than their white peers, and black female students were 6 times more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than their white peers.
The study found that black students accounted for 39.7 of every 100 students who experienced “discipline incidents,” while students with disabilities who were suspended or expelled from school accounted for 22.2 of every 100 students, and students considered economically disadvantaged reported 21.5 such incidents per 100 students.
“During the 2022–2023 school year, there were a total of 174,000 suspensions or expulsions of students who qualified as economically disadvantaged, compared with just 35,000 for students who did not qualify as economically disadvantaged,” the study said.
The report recommended increased funding for teachers and investigations into “unnecessary exclusionary discipline,” as well as community engagement and policies that address all impacts on children, even those that go beyond educational purposes.
“If we continue to assess how well children overcome barriers, rather than addressing the barriers themselves, we will continue to fail to create the supportive, safe and welcoming environments that all children deserve,” the report reads.
Among the recommendations in the CDF-Ohio report, researchers said a 2018 law banning suspensions and expulsions for pre-kindergarten through third grade should be expanded because it has proven to be “largely effective in reducing school indiscipline incidents” at those grade levels.
“Ohio legislators should expand the number of grade levels covered by this provision to extend protections to all students, especially all elementary school-age students,” the study recommended.
Further funding for school counsellors and “other social and emotional supports” were also cited as key elements to improving exclusionary practices.
