Black and White Texas middle school student discipline referral consequences and their relationship to academic achievement

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to analyze data to determine the extent to which discipline referrals assigned to Black and White students enrolled in Texas middle schools were related to student achievement on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) Reading and TAKS Math tests. In the present study, middle school discipline and TAKS data were analyzed on all of the Black students and White students in Texas. The effect of in-school suspension (ISS), out-of-school suspension (OSS), and discipline alternative education program (DAEP) placement on the academic achievement of the study participants was determined.;Method. The research design was a causal-comparative quantitative design. Participants in the study included more than 500,000 Grade 6, Grade 7, and Grade 8 Black students and White students who were enrolled in public schools during the 2008-2009 school year. Data were obtained from the Texas Education Agency and were reported through the Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) report Data, obtained on student grade level, ethnicity, discipline consequences assigned, TAKS Reading scores, and TAKS Math scores, were analyzed to determine if students who received discipline consequences had lower TAKS Reading scores and TAKS Math scores than students who did not receive discipline consequences. Analyses were performed to determine if the number of days students were assigned discipline consequences influenced their TAKS scores. And finally, data were analyzed to determine how many White students and how many Black students from the sample had received discipline consequences.;Findings. In the present study, all Black and White middle school students who received the discipline consequence of ISS, OSS, or DAEP had statistically significantly lower TAKS Reading and TAKS Math scores when compared to their counterparts who did not receive discipline consequences. Discipline consequence effects were slightly more apparent in some cases for Black students as opposed to White students. Further, TAKS Reading scores and TAKS Math scores decreased as assigned consequences increased across all student groups. The present study also supported other research findings in which middle school Black students were assigned discipline consequences at a statistically significantly higher rate than middle school White students.;KEY WORDS: Discipline, Middle school, Academic performance, Discipline gap, Achievement gap.