Exposure to Same-Race Teachers and Student Disciplinary Outcomes for Black Students in North Carolina

Observers of the American educational system have long been concerned over unequal educational opportunity for students from different demographic backgrounds. Achievement gaps that see Black and Latino students trailing their White and Asian peers in achievement (Reardon & Robinson, 2008) and graduation rates (Murnane, 2013) have received the bulk of attention from researchers. While these gaps are viewed as a source of persistent racial disparities, a smaller body of literature has revealed that Black and Latino students are also disproportionately subject to harsh discipline actions (Skiba et al., 2011; Skiba, Michael, Nardo, & Peterson, 2002). Indeed, this concern over disparate disciplinary outcomes has come to fuel concern over what is commonly called the “school-to-prison” pipeline, in which students who experience harsh discipline see higher likelihoods of eventually becoming engaged with the justice system (Curtis, 2014). One disciplinary technique that causes particular concern is exclusionary discipline, whereby students are removed from the classroom as punishment. Exclusionary discipline is especially pernicious because removing students from the classroom decreases instructional time, feeding into achievement gaps as well as discipline gaps (Morris & Perry, 2016). The overreliance on exclusionary disciplines for students of color, for Black students in particular (U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, & U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 2014), is a cause for concern. One common policy prescription to address these disparities in outcomes for students of color is to increase the share of Black and Latino teachers (National Education Association, 2014). 693109 EPAXXX10.3102/0162373717693109Lindsay and HartSame-Race Teachers and Student Discipline research-article2017