Exclusionary School Discipline and Children's Physically Aggressive Behaviors

Background and Purpose: Exclusionary school discipline has become an increasingly common experience among U.S. children, with rates of suspension and expulsion highest among boys, minorities, and the poor. Although well documented among middle and high school students, less is known about the prevalence or consequences among younger children. The intent of exclusionary discipline may be to deter future misbehavior, but some theoretical perspectives (labeling, defiance, cumulative disadvantage) suggest it may instead increase misbehavior. Specifically, school discipline may increase children’s physically aggressive behavior, an important predictor of developmental adjustment and adult violence.

Method: We use the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a panel study of nearly 5,000 children born in 20 large U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000. First, we calculate weighted rates of exclusionary discipline among urban-born children across biological sex, race, and poverty status. Next, we examine the effect of exclusionary discipline on children’s physically aggressive behaviors with a series of linear regression and individual fixed-effects models. We limit our sample to 2,473 children whose primary caregivers provided valid data on physically aggressive behaviors (CBCL) at years 5 and 9. We include over 30 time-stable and time-varying control variables including child, parent, home, neighborhood, and school characteristics.

Results: By around age 9, we find 11% of urban-born children have been suspended or expelled. Even among young children, racial-ethnic differences are stark. Twenty five percent of black students have received exclusionary discipline compared to 10% of Hispanics and 3% of White students. Boys appear to be at higher risk than girls (13% compared to 8%) and poor children at higher risk than children from non-poor households (22% compared to 6%). When stratified across race, biological sex, and poverty status, we find half of poor black boys and a third of poor black girls have received exclusionary discipline. In our regression models, we find no evidence that school discipline is associated with a reduction in children’s physically aggressive behavior. Indeed, it appears to be associated with slightly higher physically aggressive behavior—with similar effects across biological sex, race, and class—even after attempts to minimize selection influences.

Conclusions and Implications: Exclusionary discipline is a common experience for many urban-born children in the first few years of elementary school and is highly stratified by race, biological sex, and poverty status. Contrary to the intended deterrent effect of exclusionary discipline policies, we find that children who have received exclusionary discipline have slightly higher aggressive behaviors. This result seems consistent with research among adolescents finding exclusionary discipline associated with subsequent delinquency and criminal justice involvement. Removing a child from school for a time may be a stressful life event, which imposes labels on poor and minority children at an early age. This may place demands on children they are too young to cope with and thus facilitate trajectories of cumulative disadvantage. If childhood aggression is a predictor of adult violence, early exclusionary discipline may play a role in this phenomenon.