A friend was sharing a story today about how his kid got suspended this past year when an acquaintance handed him a water bottle in the school hallway and urged him to take a drink.

Turned out the liquid in the bottle was vodka, not water. And even though my friend’s kid was, essentially, pranked, the school’s no-tolerance policy resulted in the suspension.

Coincidentally, I heard this story a day after the release of a major study that tracked every student in Texas over three years through high school and beyond to see the impact of student discipline on academic outcomes. The study was done by the Justice Center at the Council of State Governments, a nonpartisan group.

The study points out that suspensions and expulsions have increased significantly over the past two decades, with unintended consequences.

“When students are suspended or expelled, the likelihood that they will repeat a grade, not graduate, and/or become involved in the juvenile justice system increases significantly,” the study’s authors say.

Moreover, the study found African-American students and children with particular educational disabilities who qualify for special education were suspended and expelled at especially high rate.

From a New York Times story on the report:

Raising new questions about the effectiveness of school discipline, a report scheduled for release on Tuesday found that 31 percent of Texas students were suspended off campus or expelled at least once during their years in middle and high school at an average of almost four times apiece.
When also considering less serious infractions punished by in-school suspensions, the rate climbed to nearly 60 percent, according to the study by the Council of State Governments, with one in seven students facing such disciplinary measures at least 11 times.

In the last 20 to 25 years, there have been dramatic increases in the number of suspensions and expulsions, said Michael Thompson, who headed the study as director of the Justice Center at the Council of State Governments, a nonpartisan group. This quantifies how youre in the minority if you have not been removed from the classroom at least once. This is not just being sent to the principals office, and its not after-school detention or weekend detention or extra homework. This is in the students record.

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