This study uses data from the New York City School Survey to explore the relationship between school discipline policy under the Bloomberg and De Blasio administrations and students’ and teachers’ perceptions of school climate.
According to the author, between 2011–12 and 2015–16, the number of suspensions in New York City Schools declined by almost fifty percent, thanks in part to two major discipline reforms: one at the beginning of the 2012–13 school year (under Bloomberg) and one in the middle of the 2014–15 school year (under de Blasio). In the first wave of reform, the Bloomberg administration revised the discipline code so students could no longer be suspended for first-time, low-level offenses. In the second wave, the de Blasio reform went further by requiring that principals obtain written approval from the city Department of Education Office of Safety and Youth Development to suspend a student for “uncooperative/noncompliant” or “disorderly” behavior.
Interestingly, although perceptions of school climate were relatively unchanged during the Bloomberg reforms, they deteriorated sharply as the de Blasio reforms were being implemented, raising the possibility that the later reforms undermined schools’ ability to maintain order. For example, between 2013–14 and 2015–16, three times as many schools reported increases in physical fights, gang activity, and drug use as reported declines in these areas. And this pattern is even starker for schools where at least 90 percent of students were low-income or minority. For example, in approximately half of these schools, the percentage of students reporting that there were physical fights increased.
Notably, when the data are broken down at the school level, a larger decline in suspensions is not associated with a larger increase in reports of disorder, leading the author to speculate that “the number of suspensions may matter less for school climate than the dynamics fostered by a new set of disciplinary rules.” But of course, other interpretations are possible. For example, students’ and teachers’ impressions of school climate may have been affected by contemporary news reports that focused on disorder rather than actual changes in behavior, or the fidelity with which suspensions were officially reported in the wake of the policy change may have varied at the school level.
As the author acknowledges, the study is correlational rather than causal, making it difficult to draw any firm conclusions without more information. Ultimately, linking the results of the climate survey to the contemporary changes in discipline policy requires at least two assumptions: first, that New York schools actually became more disorderly as students and teachers reported; and second, that the changes in discipline policy were the cause of this change.
Obviously, both of these assumptions can be questioned. Still, given the massive push for “alternatives to suspension” that has occurred in recent years, it would be foolish to dismiss the worrisome patterns the study highlights out-of-hand. After all, as the author rightly notes, when it comes to school discipline, “success should not be measured by the number of suspensions, but by the number of schools with an improved school climate.”
SOURCE: Max Eden, “School Discipline Reform and Disorder: Evidence from New York City Public Schools, 2012-16,” Manhattan Institute (March 2017).
