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There are racial/ethnic disparities associated with school punishment practices and academic progress. In addition, research suggests that urban schools have stricter school punishment practices and higher grade retention rates. What remains unknown, however, is the relationship between race/ethnicity, school punishment practices, and retention rates across urban, rural, and suburban schools. Thus, this study draws from the Texas Education Agency's Public Education Information Management System and Critical Race Theory to investigate if there is link between school punishment practices and academic progress, as well as establishing if there are racial/ethnic disparities in urban, rural, and suburban contexts.

African American and Hispanic students receive more punitive school discipline than White students even when students of color commit similar infractions as Whites. Similarly, students with a disability status are more likely to experience harsher discipline in schools compared to their counterparts without a disability label. This study examines whether these discrepancies are a result of a difference in the number of infractions students of different racial/ethnic groups and disability categories commit. Using secondary educational data from a state educational agency in the United States, we demonstrate that African American and Hispanic students and students with an emotional behavioral disorder status receive more severe sanctions than White students and students without a disability label at their first discipline encounter. This racial disparity in discipline severity continues through six sanctions and is eliminated at the 13th sanction. The disability disparity in discipline severity dissipates after 10 sanctions for students with emotional behavioral disorder and intellectual disability. Implications for school personnel and future directions are discussed.

While there is a growing literature investigating the causes and consequences of the US prison boom—the tripling of prison facilities between 1970 and 2000—much less is known about current patterns of prison closures. We use novel data capturing the universe of prison closures (N = 188) from 2000 to 2022 to identify and characterize what we term "the prison bust"—the period since 2000 when prison closures began to climb and eventually eclipse new prison building. We show that the prison bust is, in part, a consequence of development-oriented prison-building policies that aggressively used prisons to stimulate struggling local economies. The bust is primarily concentrated in the counties that pursued prison building most aggressively, reflecting a highly cyclical and reactionary pattern of prison placement and closure. We also show that, relative to counties with at least one prison but no closures, closures are concentrated in metro counties with stronger local economies and multiple prisons. Overall, we highlight the prison bust as an important new era in the history of US punishment and provide a new dataset for investigating its causes and consequences. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The current study examines the relationship between immigration, school punishment, and place in schools near the U.S.-Mexico border using a racial threat framework. Given the consequences of the immigration-crime link and the growing perception of the U.S.-Mexico border as a crime-ridden place, this study explores how immigration within certain places may differentially impact outcomes of school punishment. Methods: Using Generalized Linear Modeling (GLM) with a logistic link function, we examine the relationship between immigration and school violence by probing variation in school punishment and juvenile justice referrals across Texas schools given their proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border. Results: First, we find that Texas schools located near the U.S.-Mexico border have lower juvenile justice and school discipline rates net other variables in comparison to Texas schools away from the border. Second, we observe a negative relationship between a rise in the immigrant student population and punishment in Texas schools far from the U.S.-Mexico border and no relationship in Texas schools near the U.S.-Mexico border net of other factors. Conclusion: The current study highlights that the local context, such as proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border, is significant when examining the racial threat perspective in school punishment and warrants further attention in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]