Study: Small Number of Teachers Account for Half of Racial Discipline Difference

Although there’s little to no evidence to show that Black schoolchildren misbehave more than white ones, a growing body of research has shown that Black children are disciplined very differently. Black children are punished more severely than white children for the same infractions and are likelier to receive consequences that take them out of the school environment, like suspensions and expulsions. These sorts of punishments have been linked to negative outcomes later in life, such as academic achievement gaps and contact with the justice system.

Now, researchers studying K-12 disciplinary referrals have made a surprising discovery: more than half of the disparities between white students and students of color can be traced back to a shockingly small group of teachers.

Dr. Jing Liu, assistant professor of education policy at the University Maryland College ParkDr. Jing Liu, an assistant professor of education policy at the University Maryland College Park, and his colleagues looked at Office Discipline Referrals (ODRs), in a large, diverse, urban K-12 school district in California. ODRs are a record of a critical step in the disciplinary process—when a student is sent to the principal’s office. Liu found that most teachers send a student out of the classroom less than once every two months. However, the 5% of teachers who issued the most ODRs did so at a much faster rate—about once every four days. This small group of teachers—80, in a district with nearly 3,000 instructors—had an outsize effect on racial discipline gaps. Without them, Black students received ODRs 1.6 times as much as white students. With them, the total more than doubled, to 3.4 times as much. Similar effects were observed for Hispanic and multiracial students.

Liu and his colleagues found evidence that implicit bias is a key cause: the study showed that the increase in the gap was primarily driven by referrals for subjective reasons, such as interpersonal offenses and defiance, rather than more objective ones, like violence, drugs, or truancy.

“More subjective reasons for referral tend to be more likely to contain bias,” said Liu. “The criteria to write a referral based on those reasons are a little bit fuzzier.”

However, these high-referring teachers aren’t necessarily more biased than their colleagues. The reason for their high rate of referrals may be troubles with classroom management. The researchers found that the top referrers were most likely to be white middle school teachers in the first three years of their careers.

“The first few years of being a teacher is overall challenging,” said Liu. “They haven’t accumulated enough experience working with students.”