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Noncognitive constructs such as self-efficacy, social awareness, and academic engagement are widely acknowledged as critical components of human capital, but systematic data collection on such skills in school systems is complicated by conceptual ambiguities, measurement challenges and resource constraints. This study addresses this issue by comparing the predictive validity of two most widely used metrics on noncogntive outcomes--observable academic behaviors (e.g., absenteeism, suspensions) and student self-reported social and emotional learning (SEL) skills--for the likelihood of high school graduation and postsecondary attainment. Our findings suggest that conditional on student demographics and achievement, academic behaviors are several-fold more predictive than SEL skills for all long-run outcomes, and adding SEL skills to a model with academic behaviors improves the model's predictive power minimally. In addition, academic behaviors are particularly strong predictors for low-achieving students' long-run outcomes. Part-day absenteeism (as a result of class skipping) is the largest driver behind the strong predictive power of academic behaviors. Developing more nuanced behavioral measures in existing administrative data systems might be a fruitful strategy for schools whose intended goal centers on predicting students' educational attainment.

Zero tolerance policies in urban schools increased the disparities in urban school discipline for Black youth in comparison to white youth. Restorative interventions continue to be a popular response to deviant student behaviors; however, exploring the impact of restorative interventions in reducing harsh discipline on Black youth should be a continued focal point for scholars. This study used a scoping review to explore the breadth of knowledge available regarding using restorative interventions in urban schools. Five databases were used to identify relevant literature. Seven pieces of literature met the criteria for inclusion in this review. Findings revealed that restorative interventions do not have substantially positive impact on Black youth's suspension rates; yet racial inequities in school and perceived negative thoughts about Black youth are among chief reasons Black youth are more likely suspended. Implications for future research and interventions are discussed.

Youths' subjective well-being (SWB) is theorized to be an integral element of school success. However, little is known about the relative predictive power of different SWB indicators on educational outcomes. Thus, we investigated youths' global and school-specific SWB as predictors of multidimensional educational performance. Participants were adolescent students (N = 893) in Grades 9-12 within one district and one school in the United States. Regression models were run using adolescent self-reported survey data and school-reported student sociodemographics and outcomes. Global SWB predictors were self-reports of life satisfaction and positive affect; school-specific SWB predictors were self-reports of joy of learning, school connectedness, educational purpose, and academic efficacy. The educational outcomes of interests were end-of-term grades in English language arts, math, and overall coursework, as well absences and suspension. Our models accounted for several student sociodemographic covariates that might affect academic performance. Results showed that, when general SWB predictors were modeled alone, life satisfaction was a consistently meaningful predictor of all educational outcomes. However, when school-specific SWB predictors were added to the models, the predictive power of life satisfaction attenuated, and academic efficacy emerged as the strongest and most consistent predictor of all educational outcomes. Interestingly, joy of learning, school connectedness, and educational purpose did not show meaningful predictive power across educational outcomes. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Expulsion is the harshest form of disciplinary action, and behavior policies are the foundation for this decision-making process. The purpose of this study is to uncover how behavior policies used in early childhood settings describe expulsion practices. Among the 111 early childhood programs in Western Massachusetts that met the search criteria for this study, only 31 programs posted their behavior policies online. Twenty four of the 31 programs contained sections on expulsion and suspension in their behavioral policies. Data from the expulsion and suspension section of behavioral policies from 24 preschool and childcare programs were analyzed using content analysis. Themes related to "child" (e.g., child-behavior), "program" (e.g., goodness of fit), and "family" (e.g., communication) were found. The behavioral policies lacked detailed information about the expulsion process, which allows for the misuse of expulsion as a form of behavior management. Based on the results, implications for future research and practice on early childhood expulsion are discussed.

School rules, classroom norms, and social and emotional learning (SEL) modules carefully define, hone, and regulate what counts as "appropriate" and "inappropriate" behavior from students. While the stated intention behind these practices is typically to promote a sense of safety, well-being, and productivity in schooling, behavioral rules can also uphold racist, ableist, and neoliberal practices that pathologize and exclude children's bodily expressions. The line between behaviors that are "dangerous" versus "different" is laden with hegemonic power dynamics, and teachers must be encouraged to recognize these dynamics and resist them. I collaborated with six elementary-school teachers in the northwest United States to speak critically and self-reflectively about educational practices including SEL and classroom management. This paper explores instances in which the teachers grappled with where and how to draw lines around acceptable and unacceptable behavior, resisting an immediate exclusionary response to any behavior deemed undesirable. The teachers' affective dialogue demonstrates that reconsidering the limits of appropriate behavior is crucial yet complicated. I call for greater value and support to be placed on opportunities for teachers to openly discuss where lines should be drawn and where they might be loosened in ways that advocate for children's agency, diversity, and social-emotional wholeness.

Exclusionary disciplinary practices negatively and disproportionately impact Black students academically, socially, and emotionally and have been attributed to the school-to-prison pipeline. This research was conducted to determine the impact of restorative justice practices on exclusionary discipline by evaluating the lived experiences of school leaders and teachers. The findings of this research determined that restorative justice practices can effectively interrupt the over-suspension and expulsion of Black students if implemented as a practice as opposed to a program. Additionally, the following barriers to implementation were identified through this study: time, mindset, lack of resources, and professional development and involvement of all stakeholders. Critical race theory and labeling theory were the theoretical lenses through which this research was conducted. Sixteen school leaders and teachers were interviewed using Zoom. Interviews were transcribed and coded to identify themes. Through this research, some of the barriers to implementing restorative justice practices were identified based on the lived experiences of school leaders and teachers. Additionally, this study identified how restorative justice practices can impact exclusionary disciplinary practices. From the results emerged the following themes and subthemes: sense of community; school avoidance; negative impact on learning and growth; restorative circles as prevention and healing; developing communication and building relationships; shift in school culture; training and resources; times; mindset and stakeholder involvement. Based on the results of this study, three recommendations were made for future research. A qualitative study can be done comparing and contrasting the lived experiences of Black girls at schools that implement restorative justice practices and schools that do not. Another suggestion for future research would entail a qualitative study that requires engaging in a restorative circle as a participant observer. The third recommendation would be a mixed methods study evaluating the effectiveness of the Restore and Heal Wheel on various elements of school culture.

The school reliance on exclusionary discipline drives behavioral inequities and sustains the marginalization of youth in schools. The narratives of punishment often extend beyond the walls of the school system and may be reinforced by news media discourse. Never-the-less, the relationship between news media discourse and the school disciplinary structure is an understudied area of research. Using critical discourse techniques--with a theoretical framework of critical race and news framing theories--we analyze news coverage of exclusionary discipline across (N = 64) newspaper articles. Our findings underscore news discourse with a hyper-focus on youth deficits, stigmatizing portrayals of violence and blame, and teacher resistance to discipline alternatives and reform. Discursive absence included a lack of youth and family voices and perspectives, and a disconnection from the systemic mechanisms that shape the disciplinary structure. We conclude with implications for educators, policymakers, and scholars--as we advocate for a re-invigorated focus to-ward the equitable support and inclusion of youth.

While the disproportional application of school discipline has garnered notable attention, the relationship between trauma or adversity and school discipline is under examined. The purpose of the current scoping review was to map the state of the literature, empirical and theoretical, at the intersection of school discipline, and trauma or adversity. The findings identified a gap in our knowledge as only 14 of the 49 included articles detailed empirical studies focused on the relationship between adversity and school discipline, with very few from outside of the United States. However, this burgeoning body of knowledge points to a significant relationship between trauma/adversity and experiencing school discipline that warrants further study and contextualizes expanded adversities, including poverty and racism as adversity. We believe this is necessary to acknowledging the hidden and unaddressed trauma among students being disproportionally disciplined, leading to a greater understanding of student lives, and evidence-based, trauma-informed, and culturally attuned discipline.

The objective of this constructivist grounded theory study was to understand the experiences of students who have been disciplinarily excluded from school. Fifteen students (male, n = 11; Black, n = 10; having special education needs, n = 9) and 16 multidisciplinary staff in Ontario participated. Students experienced high rates of expanded adversities, including school and community violence, systemic racism and inequity. The importance of connection wove throughout the data; however, three themes were found to block connection: unacknowledged impact of adversity, a climate of fear, and the disproportionate impact of limited resources. Trauma-informed culturally attuned approaches that focus on the disproportionate impact of adversity and school discipline at the point of a disciplinary response, and throughout a student's educational experience, are essential.

Although Black and Latinx students disproportionately face exclusionary school discipline, prior research finds that the likelihood of suspension for Black students decreases when they are taught by greater proportions of Black teachers. Little prior work, however, has examined whether these effects generalize to large, diverse, urban school districts or to Asian American or Latinx students and teachers. Using student fixed-effects models and 10 years of data from New York City, we find that assignment to greater proportions of ethnoracially matched teachers decreases the likelihood of suspension for Black and Latinx students. The magnitudes of these effects are small but suggest that diversifying the teacher workforce could lead to significant decreases in exclusionary discipline in urban districts.

Overrepresentation in exclusionary school discipline is extensively documented for certain groups of students, particularly students of colour and those with disability, yet while these groups may overlap, policies that aim to address disproportionality tend to consider equity factors in isolation. The majority of research on overrepresentation, intersectionality and disproportionate risk has been conducted in the United States, yet there has been limited research within an Australian context despite reports of the overrepresentation of students in priority equity groups: students with a disability, Indigenous students and those living in out-of-home care. To disentangle the intersectionalities between these three priority equity groups, we created seven independent groups in which one or more of these factors was present. We then compare each of these seven groups to one referent group (not Indigenous, no disability, not in care) to examine trends in Queensland state school suspensions from 2016 to 2020. Findings show that students in the seven groups were issued suspensions at rates disproportionate to enrolments, in contrast to the referent group, with the risk of suspension increasing with greater intersectionality. Further analyses highlight disability as a common underlying factor, both in terms of increasing risk of suspension and in its repeated use, particularly for students recorded as receiving adjustments in the Social-Emotional category. These findings underscore the need for more nuanced reform and support strategies that can better account for the intersectionalities between groups.

School discipline is a significant educational policy and equity issue in K-12 education due to well-documented racial inequality in exclusionary discipline and the deleterious effects of exclusionary discipline on academic and adult outcomes. Drawing on interviews with district and school administrators and teachers in an "urban-emergent" district, this exploratory qualitative case study identifies and explicates the key factors that shape disciplinary practices within schools. Two major factors emerge as critical to school discipline practices in K-12 schools: (a) teacher preparation and (b) modeling of effective school discipline practices (how school leaders support teachers and how mentors support school leaders in the disciplinary process). Four key themes regarding teacher preparation emerge (a) relationship building, (b) classroom management, (c) cultural responsiveness and proficiency, and (d) experiential learning. The race and gender of educators permeate these factors. Implications for education policy and practice are discussed.

Suspension and expulsion have been documented concerns in childcare centers throughout the United States for nearly 20 years. This study examined suspension and expulsion practices in community childcare centers two years into the COVID-19 pandemic (May 2022). Survey data from 131 administrators of community childcare programs were analyzed. It was found that at least 67 individual children were reported expelled across 131 programs, a rate similar to pre-pandemic rates and higher than rates at the height of the pandemic. For suspension, 136 individual children were suspended from early learning programs during this time; a rate almost double pre-pandemic levels. Factors (availability of support, prior suspensions, suggesting the program is not a match, reported turnover, waiting lists, enrollment capacity, administrator reported stress, and teacher perceived stress) were examined to determine if they predicted expulsion. None of these factors significantly predicted expulsion. These results and their limitations and implications are discussed.

This study evaluated the comparative effects of presession and interspersed attention on the disruptive behavior of an at-risk student in an inclusive fourth-grade classroom. Data indicated a decrease in disruptive behavior during both presession and interspersed attention conditions with the interspersed condition producing the lower level. Social validity measures also indicated the student was satisfied with the intervention and felt that it had a positive impact on his behavior. Additionally, social validity measures completed by the teacher indicated that while both interventions were reasonable to implement, appropriate for addressing the student's disruptive behaviors, did not detract from the learning environment, and possibly improved classroom productivity, she preferred the presession attention intervention based on its simplicity and ease of implementation. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Restraint and seclusion (R/S) are practices employed by schools to address severe student behavior. Although the use of R/S has been shown to have harmful impact for students, staff, and schools, there is no federal law that addresses its use in schools. A lack of a universal approach leaves each state to determine its own legislation and policy. The current study seeks to extend previous research efforts on state policy guidance and legislation reviews on the use of R/S by reporting on key similarities and differences across states policy guidance and legislation. Specifically, policy guidance and legislation on the school use of R/S are reviewed from the U.S. states and territories, including Washington, D.C.; Puerto Rico; Guam; and the Virgin Islands. Most states and territories were found to have either legislation or policy guidance on the use of R/S in schools. However, there are many differences across the states, including on its use and reporting for students with disabilities. Findings are also compared with the proposed federal bill Keeping All Students Safe Act. Finally, given the lack of passage of the federal law, highlights and recommendations are provided for state leaders on considerations for improvement as R/S remains a state regulated educational issue.

Black girls are the only group of girls across the United States disproportionally suspended from school. Studies have documented that disproportionality cannot be explained solely by greater misbehavior among students of color. Instead, discipline disparities are also informed by punitive/inequitable discipline policies and practices, less discussed has been the relationship between childhood adversity and school discipline outcomes at the intersection of race and gender. Examining this phenomenon is important and timely as schools are increasingly providing trauma-informed practices to support socioemotional learning. Yet doing so without data-driven practices rooted in an understanding of disproportionate adversity may render these practices insufficient for Black girls. Thus, this study asks, what types of childhood adversities do Black girls have the greatest risk of experiencing? Using 2016-2019 data from the National Survey of Children's Health (N = 63,674), risk ratios and Pearson's chi-square test of independence were performed to determine across-race and within-gender group differences by the type of childhood adversity. Analyses demonstrated that Black girls had a greater risk for six out of nine adversities compared with other girls of color and seven out of nine compared with White girls.

The relationship between academic tracking and exclusionary discipline actions has only been studied in a limited number of empirical studies. By placing students at the lower strata, schools deprive them of the educational opportunities, widening the educational opportunity gap in a process we define as "opportunity stratification." Using a quantitative analysis of data from the Educational Longitudinal Study, we found students in low-track, non-college preparatory courses had higher odds of experiencing both in-school and out-of-school suspensions when compared to students in the high-track, college preparatory courses. Our findings support the intersecting role of exclusionary discipline and tracking in opportunity stratification.

Adolescent behavior now occurs offline and online. Frequently studied and treated independently, the relationship between offline problem behaviors and online risk taking is not well understood. This study asked whether there are any problematic behaviors predictive of online risk taking by high school students. Using a 2009 dataset of 2,077 high school students grades 9-12, five areas of offline problematic behaviors were examined: Academic problems, anxiety, behavioral wrongdoing, bullying, and social-emotional. Nine binary results were classified as online risk: Sexting, online harassment (perpetrating and experiencing), visiting sex sites, talking about sex, receiving sexual pictures, meeting offline, anything sexual happened, feeling nervous or uncomfortable. Behavioral wrongdoing (fighting, school suspension, trouble with police, theft), emerged as a significant predictor appearing in all nine models, followed by bullying experience (bully or victim) in six models. Identifying common problem behaviors that predict online risk taking are key components in developing strategies to promote adolescent health and well-being.

Background: Previous evidence has suggested a strong association between school exclusion and health outcomes. However, as health risks are themselves related to the risk of experiencing a school exclusion, it has been challenging to determine the extent to which school exclusion impacts later health outcomes, as opposed to reflecting a marker for pre-existing risks. Aim: The aim of the current study was to address this challenge in estimating the medium-to-long-term impact of school exclusion of health and well-being outcomes. Methods: To this end, we used an inverse propensity weighting approach in the Next Steps data set (N = 6534, from wave 1, 2014, to wave 8, 2015). Results: We found that after weighting for propensity of treatment scores estimated based on a wide range of factors, including previous health indicators, there was a significant effect of school exclusion on a wide range of health and well-being outcomes. Discussion: These results provide some of the most robust evidence to date that school exclusion harms long-term health outcomes. Conclusion: The findings suggest that policies should aim to reduce exclusion and ensure access to preventative health support for those who experience a school exclusion.

School absenteeism among children and adolescents has been associated with a myriad of adverse outcomes. Despite a substantial amount of research on school attendance, our understanding of absenteeism in elementary-aged children with mental health difficulties is limited. The current study used a mixed-method sequential explanatory design to gain a better understanding of the links between children's mental health symptoms, age, gender and school absenteeism. The study included two phases: Phase I presented a quantitative investigation of the links between absenteeism and mental health symptoms in a large sample (N = 750) of primarily White (74%) clinic-referred children aged 5-12 years. Phase II used a participant selection model and chart review design to garner a deeper understanding of how school absenteeism presents in children with mental health problems in the elementary years. Results suggested that internalizing symptoms were significantly related to school attendance problems, and this association worsens as children age and as internalizing symptoms increase in severity. Externalizing symptoms were associated with absenteeism as well, but these findings showed that school attendance problems were worse for younger children with low to moderate levels of externalizing symptoms. The qualitative chart review illustrates the complex interplay of school absenteeism and child mental health, particularly for children experiencing co-occurring internalizing and externalizing problems. Children often struggled academically and socially, with some exhibiting increasing levels of school refusal and truancy and others displaying aggressive behaviors resulting in suspensions. Future studies that examine additional contextual factors, such as school and family variables, with longitudinal cross-lagged models and diverse families are needed to develop a comprehensive understanding of causal associations and their impact on children's school attendance across children's development.

Despite impacting almost three million students annually, and disproportionately impacting Black students, little is known about district policy and central office staff in the use of in-school suspension. The purpose of this study was to understand how districts use in-school suspension over time, with attention to racial disparities, programmatic changes, and central office perspectives. Case study methods were used to examine in-school suspension in one large school district in the Western United States. Data included two district board school discipline policies, quantitative in-school suspension data, and interviews with central office staff. We found a history of on-going racial disparities for Black and Latinx students and that decisions made by central office about in-school suspension had likely sustained these disparities over time. District policy goals of reducing racial disparities were found to be largely rhetorical in the face of an ethos of non-enforcement. Central office administrators believed they lacked the power to hold school principals accountable for implementing school discipline policy with fidelity to redressing racial disparities. Through the concept of Whiteness as Property, we argue these patterns demonstrated central office administrators' protection of White educational and political propertied interests above those of educational opportunities for Black and Latinx students. This study contributes to the literature on in-school suspension by finding discrepancies between policy and practice and contributes to the field's understanding of how school autonomy can undermine equity-oriented school discipline policies through racial negligence.

Exclusionary school discipline is one of the primary ways that schools address student behavior. Existing scholarship has focused on examining the implications of exclusionary school discipline for two sets of outcomes: academic achievement and future juvenile and criminal legal involvement. However, these two areas of scholarship are largely treated as separate. In this paper, we bridge these two research areas by drawing on scholarship examining the negative educational consequences of police contact for youth. Specifically, we formally test the proposition that the association between school suspension in childhood and adolescent academic achievement is mediated by police contact experienced in early adolescence. Using data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we find support for this hypothesis: Early adolescent police contact explains approximately 30% of the association between school suspension in childhood and adolescent GPA. By relying on exclusionary school discipline, our results suggest that schools are setting the stage for youth to become involved in the criminal legal system, which, in turn, hinders future academic achievement.

In this article, we examined predictive validity of the newly defined "Student Risk Screening Scale--Internalizing and Externalizing" (SRSS-IE 9, with nine items) when used by teachers for the first time, with a sample of 24,535 elementary students from 74 schools in four U.S. geographic regions. Results indicated fall externalizing and internalizing latent factors as well as subscale scores (SRSS-E5 and SRSS-I4, respectively) from the SRSS-IE 9 predicted year-end behavioral outcomes (office discipline referrals, suspensions, and nurse visits), academic outcomes (reading and math scores and course failures), as well as referrals to special education for elementary students. SRSS-IE 12 subscale scores for externalizing (SRSS-E7) and internalizing (SRSS-I5) using the original 12-item version subscales were similarly predictive of these outcomes. We discussed educational implications, limitations, and directions for future inquiry.

The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to examine how the perceptions and experiences of teachers relate to the suspension and expulsion of preschoolers in Catholic schools. Results indicated that teachers have a range of experiences with suspension, from children being removed from the classroom temporarily to out-of-school suspensions lasting up to a week. Most participants also had experienced expelling a student because of behavior. Patterns that emerged from the data included a frequency of extreme behavior from some children, the application of various strategies in response to challenging behavior, the use of exclusionary discipline when other strategies did not work, and a resistance to change practices without additional supports. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

It is stated that the "School Change" sanction should be applied to secondary school students if the acts listed in Article 55th of the Regulation on Pre-School and Primary Education Institutions of the Ministry of National Education are committed. Although the aforementioned Regulation states that the student behavior evaluation board should consider the student's age, developmental characteristics, and problems in implementing this sanction, it is known that the "School Change" sanction is applied in practice. The "School Change" sanction foreseen especially for students under the age of 12 in secondary schools may adversely affect the psychological, economic, and academic success of the child. However, in the TPC, it is stated that the child under the age of 12 does not have a criminal capacity and cannot be punished, as she cannot foresee the legal meaning and consequences of the act committed. On the other hand, there are differences in the evaluation and implementation of acts that require disciplinary punishment and those that constitute a crime. Even in terms of discipline, if a child under the age of 12 cannot perceive the meaning and consequences of an act, imposing a punishment that will negatively affect her future may cause irreparable consequences. For this reason, it is recommended to apply the "Condemnation" sanction instead of the "School Change" sanction for students younger than 12 years old.