(I’m republishing my favorite posts from the second half of 2023. You can see them all here)
This finding is surprising to me, but it may not be that surprising to many principals.
The headline of this article from The American Educational Research Association says it all: Study: A small number of teachers effectively double the racial gaps among students referred for disciplinary action.
I’m certainly going to have conversations with principals I know to see if this reflects their experience.
What have you found in your present, or past schools?
ADDENDUM: This Ed Week article provides a good summary and an interview with one of the paper’s authors:
— Jing Liu (@DrJingLiu) June 18, 2023
This statistic does not surprise me. In the 1990’s my innercity high school did a study of two years of teacher referrals as part of an effort to get a handle on a erratic and overwhelmed school discipline system. While we found that 3% of students were responsible for 45% of referrals, we also found that most teachers issued very few referrals or classroom suspensions, while relatively few teachers had rates of 10x the average. Future administrations focused extra counseling on the high activity students, and on the high activity teachers.
I always assumed that high schools tracked discipline events by teacher as well as by student. That this is “news” in 1994 strikes me as a byproduct of personel confidentiality policies rather than an oversite by school administrations.