By Rhonda Bryant

Discipline in schools, when appropriately used, can help to create structure and establish rules for a well-functioning classroom and school. All students should feel safe, and have a positive environment in which to learn. The underlying empirical data show that the harsh discipline policies that have proliferated for the last 30 years, such as out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, school-based arrests, and transfers to alternative education settings, have had the opposite result. These policies have been unevenly applied to boys of color. The educational experience for boys of color is weakened by these unfair discipline polices that impact them more heavily than their white peers. They find themselves outside of the school doors instead of in the classroom learning, and this loss of precious classroom time difficult, if not impossible, to make up.

“Empty Seats,” provides historical context for school discipline policies, explains how they funnel young people into the justice systems, provides data showing inequitable enforcement against students of color, and provides productive alternative discipline strategies.

Washington, DC: CLASP, 2013. 16p.