Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2022
Publication Title
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
Abstract
In Rhode Island, out-of-school suspensions were excessively and disproportionately used to penalize low-level infractions. To address this problem, the Rhode Island General Assembly passed legislation, effective May 2012, prohibiting out-of-school suspensions for attendance-specific infractions. Four years later, the Assembly passed additional legislation to curb out-of-school suspensions for disruption-specific infractions. This study examines the impact of these suspension reforms on out-of-school suspension outcomes for treatment infractions and corresponding racial-ethnic disparities. To execute the analyses, the study uses student-level administrative data (AY 2009–2010 to AY 2017–2018) from the Rhode Island Department of Education, along with quasi-experimental estimation. The study finds that only the first reform lowers out-of-school suspension outcomes for attendance-specific infractions and corresponding racial-ethnic disparities.
Keywords
attendance infractions, disruptive infractions, exclusionary discipline, minor infractions, out-of-school suspensions, quadruple-difference estimation, quasi-experimental models, racial-ethnic disparities, Rhode Island, suspension reforms, triple-difference estimation
DOI
10.3102/01623737221090264
ISSN
01623737
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Rights
Licensed to Smith College and distributed CC-BY under the Smith College Faculty Open Access Policy.
Recommended Citation
Craigie, Terry Ann, "Do School Suspension Reforms Work? Evidence From Rhode Island" (2022). Economics: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/eco_facpubs/66
Comments
Peer reviewed accepted manuscript.