Students in stricter middle schools are more likely to end up in jail or prison later in life, according to co-authored by Stephen Billings, associate professor at 彩民宝典鈥檚 Leeds School of Business.
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Stock image of a prison.
Billings and two co-authors, Dave Deming and Andrew Bacher-Hicks from Harvard鈥檚 Kennedy School, found attending a school with a higher suspension rate could mean a 15% to 20% higher likelihood of a child being incarcerated as an adult.
They found those impacts are strongest for males and minorities.
Deming and Bacher-Hicks first approached Billings about conducting a study on school suspensions after the Obama administration called for alternatives to harsh school discipline policies.
Billings specializes in data research on housing, schools, neighborhoods and crime. As he got into the topic of school suspensions, he also came across the so-called 鈥渟chool to prison pipeline.鈥�
鈥淥ften, this is a story of things like peers, gangs and how school environments may facilitate this interaction,鈥� he said. An underexplored component: how the suspensions play into a child鈥檚 future outcomes.
Billings and his co-authors took a closer look at data from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District (CMS) in North Carolina. Because the district had a major boundary change in 2002, causing half of CMS students to attend a new school, it basically made for a perfect experiment.
The researchers found middle school students who were moved to schools with historically higher suspension rates were more likely to be suspended, whether they had disciplinary history or not.
Kids who were suspended, Billings and his co-authors found, were much more likely to be incarcerated between ages 16 to 21.
The study also found suspension rates can significantly change with a new principal, meaning school leaders鈥� decisions around discipline can have major impacts on kids鈥� outcomes.听
Even if you don鈥檛 have kids at a school with suspension problems, Billings said the study鈥檚 findings are noteworthy for all of us.
鈥淓veryone, including businesses, should care about the high cost of school policies that hurt human capital development,鈥� he said.
The bottom line, according to Billings, is that suspensions aren鈥檛 a good strategy for dealing with bad behavior.
鈥淪chool suspensions are not an effective policy to handle misbehavior among kids in the long-run even if it may provide immediate relief for disruptive kids in the classroom,鈥� said Billings. 鈥淲e need other policies that better assist struggling kids.鈥�
