Teacher Revisions African American Suspensions PDF

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Running Head: SUSPENSION AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN OUTCOMES

Suspension and African-American Outcomes Carolina Hausmann-Stabile Research Informed Practice Summer 2019 Trenessa Moses

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Abstract This literature review is a paper relating to high suspension rates concerning AfricaAmerican students attending public educational institutions. The literature review indicates that African-American students attending public schools have higher suspension rates as opposed to those of other races. This study reveals alternatives that educational staff can conduct to decrease the rates of African-American suspensions in school. The references that I have used consist of case studies, quantitative research, qualitative research, and collect statistical data. The examples of different methods that schools and administration can use to handle at-risk students and African American students and data, shows the disproportionate suspension rates regarding those of African-American decent while comparing the results with students who are of Caucasian descent. The more suspension rates increase for African-Americans, the less likely they continue with their studies and enter college. An increased chance of violent behaviors and encounters with the law is prevalent among the African-American males given the higher rates of suspensions and expulsions in the educational setting.

Out of School Suspensions and Impact on African-American Males Start with your overall statistics. Include some statistics about the number of suspensions for African American males and White males and show how different they are. Also include some statistics about educational outcomes for African American males and White males. This will help you establish the need for your study. Quantitative research allows us as human being to take a more in-depth look at complex problems and issues. If the data is collected, correctly, quantitative research can also provide a solution to a complex problem. Literature reviews aid in providing careful analyses of the source

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for hypothesis supported as well as answering the question relating to the thesis. The essential purpose of this study is to identify the reasonings as to why African-American male suspension rates are higher to those of the Caucasian race and what the outcomes of their education concludes for them (Maynard, 2013). Also, this review will examine and provide different alternatives methods that schools, teachers and administrators can use in handling African American male students and at-risk students. Also, this review is intended to provide insight into why and how the African-American students are getting suspension at much higher rates as opposed to the Caucasians and what educational outcomes are related to the increased suspensions. The data will also show the correlations of environmental factors that both African American and Caucasian students face in the educational system. African-American educational levels become hindered, given the high increase levels of expulsions and suspensions. There is an increased chance for African-American males to give up on their educational endeavours due to the system failures in educational departments and racial disparities targeting them. Literature Review The study questions that the literature review should answer include: Is there racial disparities relating to school suspension? What are some states in the United States of American, where African American students have high suspension rates? What is teacher’s perception of out of home suspension and the school climate? Instead of suspending students, what are some alternative methods schools can use to lower suspension rates? Is there a racial gap of discipline in the classrooms? This review is categorizing into five categories: The Suspension rates of African American male students and the states have the high African American suspension rate, the racial disparities relating to school suspension, comparison of African American students

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versus Caucasian American Students relating to school suspension, and the different methods schools are using to lower suspension rates. This literature review depicts the concerns revolving around increase suspension rates of African-Americans in the public-school setting. Studies reveal that numerous emerging elements have constituted for this increasecontributed to the increased suspension rates of African American students, including. Those elements consist of povertyy levels, high violent environments, and racial disparities (Fisher & Hennessy, 2016). When comparing the rates of high suspensions regardingbetween African-Americans and Caucasians, it has been noted that African-Americans received more than three times the suspensions of the Caucasians (Cite). The perceptions of instructors and school climate differ in methods ofcontribute (?) to lowering school suspension rates for the male African-American populationAfrican American males (Fenning & Rose, 2007). All these different shows a connection with each other relating to the proposed question.

The suspension rates have been high for an extended period in individual states across the country. Each state has policies and regulations that school systems must obey to provide a positive learning environment. A lot of these policies are neglected the needs of those who are African-Americans. Smith stated that “on a national level, 1.4 million African-American students have been suspended from a public institutional education facility in one academic year and that nearly 56% of those were suspended in the southern states (Fisher & Hennessy, 2016). States in the south also accounted for a high increase of expulsions concerning African-Americans (Smith & Harper, 2018). Here is some example of states with high suspension rates Texas has 13 of

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Black students enrolled 13%- 31% suspended, Virginia 24% enrolled 51% suspended Mississippi 50% enrolled 74% suspended etc. (Smith & Harper, 2018). There has been low support nationwide to lower school suspension rates. A growing body of evidence has long revealed discriminatory tenancies tendencies in the way school districts across the country dish out discipline.discipline. Like many states across the country, the State of California is dealing with the issue of racial disparities too. Loveless (2017) states, “The Department in the United States of America in the education's office resulted to a stir in the year 2014 where it revealed data that showed that African-American students are three times more likely to be expelled or suspended than white students. This report noted that the black students are quite discriminatorily dealt with the cruellest penalties being school expulsions and suspensions. The rate of African stands out because for every thousand blacks’ students that had enrolled in California two hundred and thirty-five students got a suspension. Black student’s rate of suspension is on the high side, while Asian rates are low, and Hispanics and Whites rates are on the national average (Loveless 2017). African American students are issued school discipline sanctions are at an alarming rate across the country. Teachers, administrators and others that are involved in the classroom setting can learn how to build positive relationships with Black students, and that can have a considerable impact on the learning environment for Black students (Fisher & Hennessy, 2016). A focus on teachers learning how to build relationships with others and providing involving instructions may be useful for the welfares of students who are in the danger of having unfriendly interaction with teachers. For instance, one study showed that in the elementary school’s teachers tend to connect poorly and less degree of warmness in their interactions with the Black students as compared to white students (Gregory, Hafen, Ruzek, Mikami, Allen, &

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Pianta, 2016). Relating to African American students, the teachers and administrators should do their best to keep African American students in the classroom. Research studies have shown that every suspension that is given to an African American student decreases their odds of graduation from comparing to their friends, these suspended youths have a very high chance of interacting with the juvenile criminal justice system from adolescence and possibly into their adult years (Gregory et al., 2016). Barriers and Limitations of Current Research During the Literature Review, we have covered the high rates of school suspension of African American students. The comparison of these numbers is extremely high compared to Caucasian students in the public-school system. There have been many studies showing factors for the school suspension on both the white and black students based on their circumstances. One can say that the socioeconomics cause African-American students to get suspended more than white students, but there is no data to support that hypothesis. So, what are the factors that cause Black students to get suspended in the public-school system? Those elements consist of the communities and neighborhoods in which the students are involved and living in, the school suspension rates for the given institution, the family structure and income level, as well other contextual elements that directly and indirectly affect African-American males. However, these elements do not hold a strong validity in explaining high rates of suspension of African American students compared to Caucasian students (Ganaon & Silvestre, & Glenn, 2013). Ganao et al. (2013) stated that those findings showed the factors found in the family, models at community levels and individual are a good indicator in predicting for the school suspensions for the white student, a few of the findings are good at predicting of black student suspension. This is in terms of age grade level, the individual of the level model, physical abuse,

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friend's problems were relevant for the white race; whereas, for the Blacks, neglect was the only relevant predictor of suspensions in schools" p.405). The drop-out rate of African American students and Caucasian students is another component that is connected with school suspension rates. Studies have identified variables that contributing to dropout gap. Variable such as gender, several suspensions, the family composition, time spent on doing homework, and parental engagement as discrimination factors between various racial groups (Ganaon & Silvestre, & Glenn, 2013). Among the different suspensions, variables and being held back and parental engagement most accounted for creating a small gap between black and Caucasian student bodies. (Suh, Malchow, & Suh, 2014). The task of lowering the suspension rate in the school system is a daunting task. There are many conventional and unconventional alternatives to lower the suspension rate. In Delaware, the school districts are focusing on the changes made regarding the perceptions of the teachers and on how they view teaching and how they view their students. The student’s outcome in class can be connected to the teacher’s perception of school climate and their job satisfaction. Teacher's know-how of the school environment can be directly like their given job fulfilment burnouts and retention rates. (Bear, Yang, Pell, and Gaskins 2014). When a teacher is happy, they tend to communicate and build strong relationships with their students and that action can lower the rate of teachers writing up students for discipline problems. The Delaware School System created a Likert Scales questionnaire to gather the information that it is made up of 24 items with seven subscales. Furthermore, four of these subscales are aligned almost close with the dimensions of social wellbeing: like student to student relations (are four items), teacher to student relations (are three items), diversity respect (three items) and Teacher–Home Communications (are five items) (Bear et al., 2014).

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By creating this survey, Delaware School systems gather information about the school climate relating to teacher and implemented plans to create a better environment for teachers, raise the job morality of teachers and directly or indirectly that can lower the suspension rate. Another method that has been implementing around the country to lower suspension rates of African American students is the creation of community based alternative suspension programs. These programs increase social connectedness, reduced re-suspension rates, resilience among youth (Henderson, & Green, 2014). Henderson et al., 2014) stated that by use of open-ended interviews from a nested sample of participants who were youths, qualitative data were collected. This was to talk about the goals of the study, several questions brought up in the research process: (1) was there an effect from the program in which it affected the youth from baseline to post-intervention in social connectedness and resilience among the youth? (2) Are social connectedness and resilience significant in predicting if the youth were not being re-suspended three months after their experience in the program? (3) Its impact on their lives, how the youth describe their experience in the program. This program was designed to offer an alternative space for these suspended youths and maintain their engagement in activities that benefit the community such as recreational activities and other activities to strengthen their social and critical thinking skills to decrease that students from getting suspended again. Henderson et al (2014) stated that the results from the study revealed that there were immediate benefits for youth who had engaged in communities-based alternative-to-suspension programs and demonstrated how CBOs, like the YMCA, had continued to address a variety of the developmental needs of the youth and acted as "safe places" for these youth (p.19).

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After your lit review, you need a conceptual framework. If you are having a difficult time coming up with one, we can talk about it more. A potential framework you could use is the biopsychosocial framework – how a biopsychosocial / ecological perspective gives insight into why these higher rates of suspension for African American males exist. Methods of Research Variables were classified as two. Dependent variables include the number of days in out of suspension, which ranges from 1 to 20 days. The other dependent variable is the cause of suspension which could be fighting, disruption or truancy. The other analyzed dependent variable is the punishment that was given following the punishment which included court referral, alternative school placement, etc. on the other hand independent variables used in this research were race and gender. Data were obtained from a database with approval of data access by the district's research committee. This was an official source and had a large variety of variables. Other different sources were also used, such as the UCLA report and the civil rights Data Collection Survey. Comparing to their Caucasian counterparts’ black boy are approximately three times more probable to receive a suspension. This CDSR of 2013-2014 looked at 16,758 school districts that had 50,035,744 students in 95,507 schools. For our case study school with low African-American enrollment, e.g. elementary and K-8 schools had a low percentage (6%) on the suspension rates. According to the CRDC survey, black students in grade K were 3.8 times compared to the Caucasian counterparts more likely to get at least one out-of-school suspension. Breaking this down to race and gender 18% black boys compared to 10% of black girls while the Caucasian counterparts were 5% for the Caucasian boys as well as 2% for the Caucasian girls. For preschoolers, black kids were 3.6 more times likely to get out-of-school suspension (one or more than) compared to their Caucasian counterparts. Out of these

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percentages, black boys suspended made up of 45%of the 19% of male enrollment while for the African-American girls, 54% were suspended out of the 20% of female enrollment. Measurements Although the suspension rate has decrease generally among all ethnic groups, the racial disparities associated with suspension rate has not changed (Told son et al., 2015). Our study calculates suspensions rates in terms of the number of suspensions which involve a specific race which is then divided by the total number of enrolled students from that race. In 2015, the national full suspension rate for African-American was 17.8%. This meant that out of 100 African-American students, there were 17.8 suspensions. Compared to the same research Hispanics were 5.2%, Caucasians were 4.4%, and the Asians 1.2%. Schools that were associated with these high rates were middle schools, schools that had a higher percentage (i.e. 16%) of African-American students’ enrollment and large schools especially those that had a population of more than 1300 students. Conclusion There are five major themes in the literature review concerning the high rate of suspension of African-American students in the public-school system. Those elements consist of: the suspension rates of African American students and the states have the high African American suspension rate, the racial disparities relating to school suspension, comparison of African American students versus Caucasian American Students relating to school suspension, and the different methods schools are using to lower suspension rates. Research indicates that African American are receiving unfair treatment with it come to being disciplined in the school system.

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The research will show that African American students suspension rated is high across the United States, and that is not by chance either. African American students are getting suspended as many two times as much as their racial peers. Also, the research showed the adverse effects of out of home suspension on African American mental, social and emotional development. Overwhelmingly, many quantitative and qualitative research articles speak on behalf of the rate of suspension among African-American students in the public-school setting. This topic and these articles provide the data that reflects on the severity of this topic. Research solutions are provided in these articles and all the school systems across the country must do is try in implementing the right solutions to fit their school culture and that will indirectly or directly solve the problem of African American suspension rate.

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References Bear, G.G., Yang, C., Pell, M., Gaskin, C. (2014). Validation of a brief measure of teachers’ perceptions of school climate: relations to student achievement and suspensions. Learning Environ Research (2014) 17: 339. https://doiorg.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1007/s10984-014-9162-1 Ganao, J. S. D., Silvestre, F. S., & Glenn, J. W. (2013). Assessing the differential impact of contextual factors on school suspension for black and Caucasian students. The Journal of Negro Education, 82(4), 393-407. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login? url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.liberty.edu/docview/1498933616? accountid=12085 Gregory, A., Hafen, C. A., Ruzek, E., Mikami, A. Y., Allen, J. P., & Pianta, R. C. (2016). Closing the racial discipline gap in classrooms by changing teacher practice. School Psychology Review, 45(2), 171-191. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login? url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.liberty.edu/docview/1831200690? accountid...