Race and Ethnicity Effects in School Discipline: A Coarsened Exact Matching Analysis

Abstract

Much prior work has revealed that minority students are more likely than White youth to experience school suspensions, expulsions, and office referrals. However, the research establishing these patterns has relied exclusively on regression-based methods, which may not ensure adequate between-group balance on the measured covariates. Using data from the 2012 to 2019 8th/10th grade cohorts of the Monitoring the Future survey (N = 62,962), this study compares the treatment effects estimated following coarsened exact matching (CEM) with those generated using conventional methods on unmatched data. The results from both sets of analyses reveal notable effects of race but less consistent findings for Hispanic ethnicity. Further, while the effect sizes are similar, the average adjusted predictions from the matched data are more modest.