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…

This dissertation contains two studies that examine family therapy services within public schools related to behavioral or discipline concerns. Both studies stem from an ecological and family systems theoretical framework in examining relationships between the student, family, and school systems. The first study is a scoping review on family…

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…

One of the controversies surrounding charter schools is whether these schools may either "cream skim" high-performing students from traditional public schools or "pushout" low-achieving students or students with discipline histories, leaving traditional public schools to educate the most challenging students. In this study, we…

This quantitative study examined the influence of the Latinx cultural value of "educación" on high school students' disciplinary behavior and its relationship to college degree expectations and academic achievement. Because student misbehavior is often identified as one factor that may contribute to low academic achievement, the study…

School discipline research has demonstrated that the labeling of student behaviors as requiring disciplinary action is a selective process in which school staff take into account other factors than the characteristics of the behaviors. We argue that school staff react in a disciplinary way to students with negative attitudes toward the educational…

The school discipline literature has expanded rapidly in recent decades, yet the conceptualization and measurement of school discipline patterns remains overlooked. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analytic framework to examine school discipline patterns that encompasses school-level metrics that capture the prevalence and disparity in…

Purpose: The purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to determine the primary reasons that students are assigned exclusionary discipline consequences. Another purpose involves ascertaining the degree to which differential consequences are present by student ethnicity/race in the discipline consequence assigned for the same misbehavior.…

One of the controversies surrounding charter schools is whether these schools may either "cream skim" high-performing students from traditional public schools or "pushout" low-achieving students or students with discipline histories, leaving traditional public schools to educate the most challenging students. We use these terms…

In recent years, the media has highlighted the disrespectful and sometimes violent manner in which SROs respond to Black girls' behaviors. Few studies question how SROs in schools might influence traditional school discipline outcomes such as suspensions for a double minoritized group (race and gender) such as Black girls. Leaning on the Black…

Exclusionary discipline is a consequence of behavior for students who break the student code of conduct. Extensive research about the effects that exclusionary discipline can have on secondary students, as evidenced by reduced graduation rates, has been conducted; but, research studies investigating the potential impact that exclusionary…

In preschool, Black children are over-represented in percentages of children suspended or expelled. Teachers' perceptions of and responses to children displaying disruptive behavior may be different depending on the race of the teacher and child. Although teacher-child race match is associated with a number of outcomes in K-12 students, research…

Exclusionary discipline practices routinely exclude students from the academic environment through means such as office discipline referrals, suspension, and expulsion. These strategies, in turn, initiate student involvement in the School to Prison Pipeline (STPP). This form of discipline also affects minoritized students disproportionately.…

Rather than mitigating behavioral issues, exclusionary school disciplinary practices can actually increase student misbehavior and school dropout. However, the impact these sanctions have on students may vary based on school climate, particularly whether the environment is inclusive or punitive. Relying on a sample of over 2,000 students within 26…

This study examined the proportion of time students identified with Emotional Disturbance (ED) spent in the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) and the potential variables associated with a higher proportion of time spent in more restrictive settings. There were 111 students in the study. Students were grouped based on the amount of time they…