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. 2022 Apr 11;15(4):1247–1253. doi: 10.1007/s40617-022-00695-8

Schooling While Black: Analyzing the Racial School Discipline Crisis for Behavior Analyst

Mawule A Sevon 1,✉
PMCID: PMC9744995  PMID: 36618110

Abstract

The persisting issue of racial injustice within disciplinary action referred to as the school-to-prison pipeline has been frequently examined and studied across multiple disciplines spanning education, public policy, criminal justice, and others. The racial school discipline crisis is the disproportionate and differential use of exclusionary action against Black children in school. While disproportionate exclusion occurs throughout the educational continuum, early childhood expulsions and suspensions are a growing concern and are linked to further problems in kindergarten and beyond. With national attention from civil rights organizations drawing eyes to the injustices, educational systems are looking to solve the over-use of suspension and expulsion to address student behavior. Behavior analysts are often tasked with addressing and reducing the behavioral concerns of students; however, there is a gap in the behavior analytic literature on racism in schools. Bringing awareness to anti-Black racism in American schooling is an initial step for behavior analysts to take toward dismantling oppressive systems within education.

Keywords: School-to-prison pipeline, anti-Black racism, implicit bias, school discipline, Black children, intersectionality

As the national conversation around the brutal treatment and untimely deaths of Black individuals at the hands of the police rises, analyzing the connection between educational practices and continued racialized violence of Black communities is crucial. Injustices within educational policy continue to lead to inappropriate special education eligibility determinations, inequitable academic opportunities, and harsher discipline practices enacted against Black students relative to their White peers. Across the globe, Black people experience policing of their bodies, hair, and cultural expressions (Hines & Wilmot, 2018); criminalization of their children (Goff et al., 2014); and development of damaging stereotypes (Wilson et al., 2015). These forms of racialized violence are perpetuated by racism and anti-Black sentiments that have leaked into the inner workings of American schools (Wun, 2016; Lopez, 2020; Dumas, 2016). As a result, public schools across the United States largely contribute to the marginalization of Black children. The ramifications of these failing systems have led to generations of poor outcomes, creating the school-to-prison pipeline. The pipeline flows with anti-Black policies such as high stakes assessments and zero tolerance which significantly places the lives of Black people at risk. The criminalization of Black children through disciplinary action steeped in racial bias requires educational reform.

Solutions to the historical school-to-prison pipeline and the inhumane treatment of Black children require addressing the history of racism, and its by-product, implicit bias. At the foundation for changing the system to educate Black children is the need to understand the development of racism and how it impacts educators’ interactions with students. There is not a quick solution to the injustices facing students in schools. Additionally, due to the complexity of the problem, there is not just one solution to remedy the condition of education for Black students. For behavior analysts, the conversation around racism in the educational context has not yet been deeply analyzed. This article aims to highlight a persisting presence of anti-Black racism and how it has created injustices within school discipline. Behavior analysts are uniquely trained to truly understand behavioral change and, therefore, are often positioned to address student’s behaviors (Shepley & Grisham-Brown, 2019). With the frequent assumption that Black students possess a behavioral challenge, behavior analysts are called to support these students. Acknowledging that many of the referrals may not be a student problem but rather an educator problem of bias will be a step toward equity in education (Sevon & Dowtin, 2020). Thus, assessing for the presence of bias throughout the behavior analytic process when consulting in schools is crucial (Hollins & Peterson, 2021).

The history of Anti-Black racism in the United States

Historical context is required when exploring racial disparities in any space or system. Race is a social construct which changes throughout history depending on the group in power and their intentions (Degruy-Leary, 2017; Kendi, 2019). The racial disparities present in American schools are not happenstance but are instead a direct result of centuries of oppression built on racist ideas (Dumas, 2016; Kendi, 2019). In the United States, race has long been used to justify the removal of Black people’s humanity (Tatum, 2017). Black people were not only viewed as other than white or European but rather other than human (Hines & Wilmot, 2018). These viewpoints supported the maltreatment and torture of Black people and continue to persist to this day (Dumas, 2016). Since the removal of African people from their native land and forced labor in the newly developed nation, they’ve had their rights and human dignity removed by established policies and practices. These policies and practices tied to the exploitation of Black people were established to maintain White American wealth, and the remnants of this system remain today (Tatum, 2017). For example, English literacy was forbidden among enslaved Africans to maintain the system of oppression. Later, discriminatory laws of “separate but equal” in educational institutions were created to maintain white dominance.

During the period of legal enslavement and beyond, Black people’s narratives were created to diminish their humanness and create a shared belief of Black inferiority among Americans (Hines & Wilmot, 2018). The harm of America’s racial history extends beyond those who are direct descendants of enslaved people in the United States but includes all Black people living in the United States. Black immigrants also suffer from racial abuse connected to violence toward Black individuals (Kendi, 2019). This practice led to the collective acceptance of anti-Blackness, which positions Blackness in a deficit frame requiring fixing (Dumas, 2016). The national subscription of anti-Black racism is now embedded in every level and corner of American life. The residual outcome of bias extends well into the walls of classrooms (Wun, 2016; Sondel et al., 2019).

The school discipline crisis

Traditionally, education is seen as a method for social mobility; however, historically, it has not always been accessible to Black students (Hines & Wilmot, 2018). For Black people, there was a time when the act of attempting to obtain an education was illegal. Following the removal of this human right, the United States’ legal system enforced racial segregation in schools and currently upholds policies and practices (e.g., the use of standardized and high stakes assessments) that underfund and under-resource schools in predominately Black communities (Wald & Losen, 2003; Pearman, 2020). Particularly within the process of school discipline, practices of the highly oppressive criminal justice system, such as zero tolerance and the default use of punitive discipline, have been integrated into standard educational practice (Wald & Losen, 2003). These ineffective and racially biased school discipline practices are connected to poor educational outcomes beginning early in the education continuum and span well past high school graduation (Lopez, 2020; Meek & Gilliam, 2016). The act of criminalizing students is the underlying mechanism that makes schools harmful spaces for Black students and is known as the school-to-prison pipeline (Morris, 2016).

The glaring connection between schooling and confinement caused observers to investigate the “prison track” or what we now know as the school-to-prison pipeline (Wald & Losen, 2003). The findings from empirical evidence have led to changes in policies and best practices within public schooling. Policies have been created and implemented to disrupt the overwhelming use of suspension in early childhood, but data show that the use of exclusionary discipline, such as the removal from the classroom or in school suspension, continues (Loomis et al., 2021; Strauss, 2020). Moreover, the racial disproportionality within exclusionary school discipline persists and greatly impacts Black students at alarming rates.

Schools utilize police officers in educational settings to enforce rules (Blad & Harwin, 2017), and students as young as 5 years old have been arrested in a school setting (Holloway, 2013). National data reveal Black students are disproportionately impacted by these practices (U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2014). The vital work of educational scholars has influenced many of the changes; however, these policies have not addressed racism as underpinning the structural problem within public education. For behavior analysts to disrupt the harmful patterns in schools, our field must dissect the connection between racial oppression and educational success particularly when examining school discipline. It is imperative that a solution to the racial disparities within American schooling be made to acknowledge and address the history of racism in the United States and how it manifests in schools (Sevon et al., 2021).

The discipline gap is the disproportionate and differential use of exclusionary action against Black and other racially marginalized children in schools (Gregory et al., 2010; Thomas & Stevenson, 2009). A U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (2014) study of national school discipline data shows that Black students are significantly more likely to be suspended or expelled than White students, based on their representation in the school population (U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2014). While girls generally experience less exclusionary discipline in schools compared to students of other genders, Black girls and gender nonbinary students are still at an increased likelihood to be suspended compared with their peers (Morris & Perry, 2017).

Racial disparity within school discipline practices runs through the entire educational continuum, with evidence indicating unacceptable trends as early as preschool. Black preschoolers represent less than 20% of the population but are the subjects of nearly half of exclusionary disciplines in preschool settings (Gilliam et al., 2016). Overall early childhood expulsions and suspensions, in particular, are a national concern and occur at a rate much higher than that of students in higher grades. This early pattern is linked to further problems throughout the K-12 trajectory, including academic underachievement and the commencement of challenging behaviors in school (Gilliam, 2005; Zeng et al., 2019). Evidence suggests that K–12 suspensions and expulsions can be traced back to preschool suspensions. Students who have experienced exclusionary discipline prior to kindergarten are nearly four times more likely to be suspended in elementary and secondary grades compared to their peers. Research also indicates that children suspended in preschool are ten times more likely not to finish high school and experience incarceration or confinement when compared to children who do not have a history for suspensions or expulsions (Loomis et al., 2021; Meek & Gilliam, 2016). Exclusionary discipline practices beginning in preschool have a significant connection to later student involvement in the carceral system (Chu & Ready, 2018).

The disparities exist well into students’ kindergarten year and beyond (Sevon et al., 2021). While Black students make up less than a fifth of school enrollment, they represent nearly a third of referrals to law enforcement and over a third of school-based arrests (U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2014). This connection between exclusionary discipline and involvement in the judicial system, pushes Black children out of educational settings. Unjust school discipline practices have devastating implications for Black children and their communities and are a significant contributor to poor health outcomes in adulthood (Carone, 2019; Skiba et al., 2011). Nicholson-Crotty et al. (2009) investigated later life outcomes and found that increased rates of disproportionality in special education leads to additional exposure to racialized violence. Overall, when students experience the harmful practices of harsh exclusionary school discipline, they face adverse outcomes later in life (Gilliam et al., 2016; Wun, 2016).

Taken together, these studies demonstrate the level of risk attached to Black students when bias and ineffective behavior responses are used in schools. The reactions from educators and other adults in schools exponentially increase Black children’s likelihood of later racial abuse or possible threats to their existence. Current exclusionary disciplinary practices create an uninviting experience for Black children in schools creating the push-out effect. The push-out effect goes as far back in educational literature to the mid-twentieth century and looks at students being excluded from their right to an education (Sevon & Dowtin, 2020). Despite significant research regarding the dangers and ineffectiveness of punishment as a behavior management strategy (Robinson et al., 2005), schools continue to use punishment as the primary means of discipline (Hirsch et al., 2017). This tendency is particularly problematic for Black students who are disproportionately impacted by school discipline policies relative to their peers (Gregory et al., 2010; Thomas & Stevenson, 2009).

Implicit bias in schools

Implicit bias is an unconscious thought based on a particular characteristic such as race. In the context of schools, implicit bias describes an underlying reason that Black children are harshly and more frequently disciplined even when, at times, a behavioral concern is not present (Ramey, 2015). Using eye-tracking technology, Gilliam et al. (2016) found that when teachers were told to report challenging behaviors, participants increasingly observed the Black children. The study also found that even when behavioral concerns were not present, regardless of race and ethnicity, participants inaccurately reported seeing behavioral concerns from the Black children. The study’s findings highlight a trend of implicit bias among educators. Black students are assumed to be disruptive or to have behavioral challenges, and when they engage in developmentally appropriate behavior, they are accused of much more (Gilliam et al., 2016). The underbelly of the school-to-prison pipeline is implicit bias derived from anti-Black racism, leading to harmful outcomes for Black children (Shores et al., 2020; Thomas & Stevenson, 2009).

The presence of Black students in educational spaces continues to be viewed through a lens of bias. Racial bias contributes significantly to decision-making among classroom teachers, school leaders, school psychologists, behavior analysts, and beyond (Sevon et al., 2021). The differential treatment of Black students results in prevailing unjust outcomes in all areas of student development. At its core, implicit bias is a set of unconscious attitudes that affect our perceptions and behaviors (Greenwald & Krieger, 2006). The science surrounding implicit bias reveals the perceived threat attached to Black skin and its abilities to impair accurate judgment (Staats, 2014). Therefore, when adults continue to respond to students without addressing their implicit biases, they may react to a perceived threat and are making decisions that are harmful to Black children (Thomas & Stevenson, 2009). Because direct and indirect messaging about human characteristics completely surrounds us, no one is exempt from implicit bias. In fact, research has demonstrated that implicit bias is pervasive (Kang et al., 2011). Even those with deep commitments to anti-racism can make biased decisions (Beattie et al., 2013). Social attitudes of White superiority and anti-Blackness persist today across racial groups (Hines & Wilmot, 2018; Kang et al., 2011), not because we consciously choose them, but because they are the perspectives on which we are all conditioned. Acknowledging and addressing implicit bias birthed from Anti-Black racism is necessary for equity in school to be obtained.

Intersectional bias at work

To interrogate equity in classrooms, it is essential to examine the intersection of race and other identifiers. Black children are not monolithic and hold experiences with varying nuances. Centering racial identity and adding additional social categorization such as gender identity, ethnicity, social class, and other socio-demographics, highlights the complexity of individual experiences and acknowledges intersectionality. The theory of intersectionality arose from the works examining Black women who experience double discrimination based on racism and sexism. Black girls experience barriers because of both anti-Black rhetoric and the over privilege of boys in a patriarchal society (Crenshaw, 1989). These barriers continue throughout their educational experiences and into their careers. Examining racism in schools from an intersectional lens removes the invisibility of particular groups (i.e., Black girls, students with different abilities, LGBT youth) from the literature. As the conversation of “All Black Lives Matter” in the social movement platform rises, there is space for a similar rally in the educational arena.

Black girls are disproportionately disciplined for objective and less threatening offenses, such as dress code violations, noncompliance, and disruptive behaviors (Morris & Perry, 2017). Analysis of these infractions is often missing operational definitions for these noted behaviors or an uninformed response. The responses to Black girls’ actions are often harsh, developmentally inappropriate, and differential from other girls and mainly based on interpretation. The harm of adult interpretation of student behavior magnifies the implication of unacknowledged bias, which leads to Black girls having the highest rate of exclusionary discipline relative to similarly gendered students and, in many instances, more elevated than students who identify as boys (Kemp-Graham, 2018). Nationally, Black girls are the fastest-growing population in residential placement and confinement, which is connected to Black girls being the fast-growing group of students experiencing exclusionary discipline (Morris, 2013). The overlapping obstacles created by racism and sexism contribute to the distinctive experiences that have lasting impacts on the lives of Black women (Smith et al., 2007).

This phenomenon is created by an implicit bias that impacts Black girls differently than their peers (Epstein et al., 2017). Black girls experience a phenomenon of adultification. That is, Black girls are viewed as being older and more knowledgeable of adult topics. Adultification leads to the erasure of Black girlhood, leaving these students less nurtured and receiving less care. In turn, educators respond to students assuming they are more deserving of harsh discipline and more capable of handling it (Epstein et al., 2017; Hines & Wilmot, 2018). Racial bias normalizes White students’ expressions and behaviors, and when students live outside of that norm, their existence is perceived as disruptive. Considering the intersection of race and gender, Black girls are not only observed through their race but by their gender and how they fit the norm of white femininity (Morris, 2016). The danger of the comparison is that it invalidates differences in cultural expression and tends to punish those cultural practices of Black girls.

Continuing the examination of intersections, racial injustice in school discipline extends to Black children with disabilities or histories of adversity. Disproportionate special education decisions have long been a topic of justice in schools. Black students experience disproportionate and inappropriate placement in special educational programs. They are also exposed to harsh and ineffective disciplinary actions (Carone, 2019). Similarly, Black children with significant adversity or trauma experience increased risk of harmful educational practices (Burke et al., 2011). Studies indicate that a remarkable number of students arrive to class having experienced multiple forms of trauma (Felitti et al., 1998), and these same students are further impacted by unjust school discipline.

Students holding diverse gender expressions or who do not fit in the problematic, heteronormative spaces in schools are also plagued by implicit bias. Studies have found that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students are faced with toxic educational environments and discrimination. They are often subjected to an over-policing of their gender expression and sexuality from their peers and adults (Burdge et al., 2014; Payne & Smith, 2012). Continuing with the awareness of intersectionality, Black LGBTQ students experience hyper-surveillance and reported experiencing exclusionary discipline near twice the rate of their cisgender/heterosexual peers (Chmielewski et al., 2016).

Implications for practice

Racial bias joined with additional oppressive systems plague the experience of Black students in school. The focus on implicit bias must penetrate schools as an ongoing discourse. Understanding implicit bias is not stagnant. Teachers and school administrators, directly and indirectly, impact the lives of students from policy creation, policy implementation, and general everyday interactions. Students’ behaviors are observed, measured, and addressed using biased lenses. At the foundation for changing the system to support and protect Black children is the need to understand the impact of historical oppression. Schools operate with an unchecked lens of racism and bias that permeates their decision making practices. In turn, Black students continue to be harmed by their experiences within American schooling.

The initial step of awareness of anti-Black racism is currently on the forefront of nearly every profession. However, it is generally not covered in the formal training of behavior analysts. To fulfill the mission of improving society with the science of behaviorism, upcoming professionals need to be knowledgeable about societal ailments such as racism. The realization of systems of oppression will lead professionals to understand how they can create social change within professional positions. The by-product of implicit bias has been heavily discussed in public discourse and professionals must start to continuously analyze and critique their biases, assumptions, and thoughts while recognizing how these beliefs seep into their work.

Eradicating the residue of racism in schools does not simply end at awareness, rather it must continue on the path of intentional liberation through action. Ensuring educators work to mend the racist ideals that American’s hold is an important first step. This stage of reconciliation could decrease the number of inaccurate and racially charged behavioral referrals of Black children. Following scrutiny of behavioral referral, the methods in which students are assessed needs to be examined. Assessments have historically been instrumental in maintaining oppressive systems and therefore require reform. Behavior analysts are tasked with conducting functional behavior assessments (FBA) in schools (Walker & Barry, 2017). Best practice supports the use of the FBA process and the development of a behavior intervention plan (BIP) to improve the behaviors of students (Hirsch et al., 2017). While an FBA and the corresponding BIP have empirically been found to be a solution to student behavior concerns, there is no evidence that they successfully diminish the racial discipline gap plaguing marginalized communities. Factors such as incorrect identification of behavior functions and missing critical environmental factors during the assessment process reduce the effectiveness of the corresponding plan. Gathering accurate data about the student, such as skill or performance deficits, and also accessible reinforcements, threaten the fidelity of a BIP (Hirsch et al., 2017). These identified factors jeopardize the potential for positive outcomes for students, particularly Black students, due to the biases of those implementing the intervention. Additional investigation is required to identify ways to ensure equitable responses to student behaviors are utilized.

Black children’s fundamental right to a public education is continuously jeopardized with the current school discipline crisis. Anti-Black racism and the bias, assumptions, and narratives it creates, exclude Black children from educational spaces and place them at risk for additional harm throughout their lifetime. Harsh and disproportionately punitive responses to children’s behaviors are not a reflection of student behavior, but rather they reflect adults’ biases. The national history of race and the environment of racism we all live in needs to be addressed directly if we truly intend to make schools accessible for Black students, which in turn will benefit all learners. Failure to resolve racism in education allows schools to continue to be an additional source of harm in the lives of Black communities.

Acknowledgments

This manuscript is being published on an expedited basis, as part of a series of emergency publications designed to help practitioners of applied behavior analysis take immediate action to address police brutality and systemic racism. The journal would like to especially thank Associate Editor, Dr. Kaston Anderson-Carpenter. Additionally, the journal extends thanks to Robin Williams for their insightful and expeditious reviews of this manuscript. The views and strategies suggested by the articles in this series do not represent the positions of the Association for Behavior Analysis, International or Springer Nature.

Guest Editor, Denisha Gingles

Declarations

Conflicts of interest

I have no conflict of interest to disclose

Research involving human participants and/or animals

“Not Applicable”

Informed consent

“Not Applicable”

Footnotes

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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