This report investigates the implementation of Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) during the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on school discipline. It highlights the challenges faced by educators, including increased student problem behaviors due to disruptions in traditional schooling. The study evaluates how different tiers of…

Involvement with the juvenile justice system carries immense consequences both to detained youth and to society more broadly. Extant research on the "school-to-prison pipeline" has often focused on school disciplinary practices such as suspension with less attention on understanding the impact of school referrals to the juvenile justice…

This paper offers analysis of the policy drivers and legal frameworks associated with school exclusion in Northern Ireland. This activity is timely given limited analysis in this area in recent decades. The research is an element of an UK-wide, multi-strand, ESRC Large Grant project, examining the Political Economies of School Exclusion and their…

Using data extracted from the Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey of the 2019 National Household Education Surveys Program, this study used a series of linear probability models to examine the association between family-school relationships and exclusionary discipline. The sample included 15,360 U.S. families of K-12 non-homeschooled…

Research suggests that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) profoundly affect multiple aspects of childhood development. The present study endeavors to elucidate the impact of ACEs on critical school-related outcomes within the areas of internalizing and externalizing behaviors, academics, and school disciplinary measures. Utilizing a…

This study examined the impact of a classroom-level component of The Inclusive Skill-building Learning Approach (ISLA), an instructional and restorative alternative to exclusionary discipline, on student behaviors and school discipline practices in middle schools. Intervention implementation, classroom observations, and all other data collection…

This study explores trends and disparities in school discipline during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the persistence of racial gaps in exclusionary practices. Using student-level data from Arkansas from 2017/18 to 2022/23, we study how disciplinary outcomes relate to student race while controlling for factors such as the type and frequency of…

The purpose of this study was to identify emotional, behavioral, and academic co-occurring risk profiles of third-grade youth and to understand how they are longitudinally associated with later outcomes in sixth grade. The latent profile analysis of data from a U.S. Midwest community sample of 1,785 third graders resulted in five classes of risk…

Richard O. Welsh takes on the school discipline crisis in "Suspended Futures," delineating the persistent racial disparities in how educators perceive and respond to the behavior of students. Welsh offers a framework for disrupting and dismantling a disciplinary system that disproportionately disadvantages students of Black, Latinx, and…

Although behavioral threat assessment and management (often shortened to "threat assessment") has become widely used in US schools, no studies have systematically examined how frequently schools conduct threat assessments and how threat assessment rates vary as a function of student and school demographics. Of particular concern is that…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate Achievement Mentoring, a school-based mentoring program designed to enhance high school student retention and achievement once identified as being at-risk for dropping out before graduation. We present findings from an individual-level randomized controlled trial that included 393 10th and 11th-grade…