Reducing racial and ethnic disproportionality in school discipline through an assessment‐to‐intervention process: A framework and process

Abstract

Racial and ethnic disproportionality in discipline (REDD) represents a longstanding and pervasive issue in the United States educational system. However, researchers and interventionists have not sufficiently provided educators with appropriate frameworks and feasible tools to disrupt REDD and promote equity. The goal of this paper is to present a framework of eight malleable factors associated with REDD and describe the Disproportionality in Discipline Assessment for Schools (DDAS). The DDAS is a suite of user‐friendly tools based on this framework, designed to help school teams identify and address REDD. Two studies are described. Study 1 presents the results of educator feedback on a presentation of the framework and the DDAS in terms of their perception of its feasibility, usability, and validity/logical soundness. Study 2 presents the process of applying the DDAS in four real‐world school settings. Results indicated that the framework and the DDAS were useful and feasible tools to help schools increase equity and address REDD. Modifications to the framework and the DDAS were made to improve validity and appropriateness.

Embedding equity into school mental health theory: Introduction to Part 2 of the special issue series

“…They also present pathways through which Black children and adolescents' risk for suicidal thoughts or behaviors are increased, including inadequate healthcare and discrimination, as well as sources of accountability that can reduce this risk, including culturally relevant and antiracist practices across assessment, prevention, intervention, and service engagement/utilization. Pullmann et al (2022) focus on reducing the disproportionate representation of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous youth in exclusionary discipline practices. They outline a framework of eight domains theoretically and empirically associated with discipline disproportionality and present a suite of assessment‐to‐action tools that schools can use to identify and implement contextually relevant practices aligned with these domains to reduce disproportionality.…”