National patterns of vulnerable decision points in school discipline

In this study, we identified the specific discipline decision situations (i.e., vulnerable decision points [VDPs]) that contribute most to racial discipline disparities from a sample of 2020 schools across the United States. We also examined how much VDPs contributed to overall discipline disparities and the extent to which there was similarity among the strongest VDPs within each school. Last, we directly compared the VDP that contributed most to disparities in each school to situations with the highest rates of office discipline referrals (ODRs) to identify the extent of agreement with overall school discipline patterns. We found the most common VDPs within schools to be subjective behaviors (e.g., defiance, disruption) in classrooms throughout the day, with ODRs for physical aggression contributing notably to disparities among the top 10 VDPs. The strongest single VDP accounted for an average of 17% of racial disparities across the school and the top three VDPs accounted for 37% of disparities. The strongest three VDPs within schools also were remarkably consistent across behavior and location. Finally, there was moderate agreement between situations with the most ODRs and those with the strongest racial disparities, with 63% of schools in the sample having VDPs identical to their situations with most ODRs. In the absence of prescriptive analysis of their own school data, the results of this study provide school leaders and intervention researchers with more precise, promising targets for intervention to increase educational equity.