Are School Discipline Practices Pushing Students out…to Another School? A Longitudinal Analysis of School Transfers in Five Midwest Counties. EdWorkingPaper No. 25-1156

Abstract

Sociology of education scholars have positioned punitive discipline practices as factors that work to "push" unwanted students to drop out of school before graduating. However, limited research examines how punitive discipline practices may push students to transfer to another schools--potentially acting as a critical step in the process of pushing students out of the formal education system altogether. Using nine years student- and school-level data across five large counties in a Midwestern state we examined both (1) the impact of high school punishment on within-school year transfers through random effect panel regression models and (2) the ways in which this impact operates over time through survival models. Results demonstrate that punishment significantly increases the odds of transferring during the following school year, by 64% for in-school suspension and by 77% for out-of-school suspension. Data also suggest that Black students, students with IEPs, students qualifying for free lunch, and students in urban areas experience disproportionate rates of mobility. Our findings broaden the conceptualization of the pushout process, to now include students being pushed to transfer to another school, in addition to students being pushed to leave school entirely.