Dr Tolani Britton, study co-author and assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of EducationStudies repeatedly show that students of color in K-12 schools are suspended more often and harder than white students. Yet, from ten years of data from New York City public schools in Grades 4-8, a new working paper found that black, Latin American and Asian students were less likely to experience to such an exclusionary discipline when their teachers corresponded to their racial or ethnic origin.

“This is part of the national debate on diversifying the teaching force not only as good policy because we love diversity,” said Dr Tolani Britton, one of the co-authors of the article and assistant professor at the ‘University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. . “But we see it has a real impact on student outcomes, both socially, emotionally and academically.”

Dr. Adrian Huerta, assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California, also highlighted the negative long-term consequences of student discipline. Studies have shown that after children are suspended, they are less likely to go to college. Given the high stakes of these disciplinary disparities, Huerta said that the article’s “hyperfocus” on student-teacher ethnoracial matching is “deep”.

“If we can reduce the total number of suspensions in elementary and middle schools, it will not only enrich the learning environment as a whole, but will not mark some students as so-called bad kids,” Huerta said. “Because once a child is hung up one, two or three times, that child is seen as a constant problem. They then become less likely to get support from their counselors and teachers about college opportunities in their future.

From the New York City data that Britton and other researchers looked at, Huerta said he would like to know where students of color later ended up who had ethnoracially matched teachers. Such future studies may further illustrate why reducing glaring disciplinary disparities for children is important.

“The same thing we see in Kindergarten to Grade 12 is what we see in college,” said Dr. Donald Easton-Brooks, dean of the College of Education at the University of Nevada, who has studied the positive impacts ethnoracial matching between students and teachers. good. “When students of color in college engage with counselors of color, their GPA increases, their retention increases, their sense of belonging increases. These are really critical things throughout a person’s education.

Along with Britton, the co-authors of the article, Drs. Matthew Shirrell and Travis Bristol, began this study after noticing research on the impact of ethnoracial student-teacher matching on disciplinary disparities focused on black students, not Latin and American-born students. Asian. They also wanted to study twinning in a large urban and very diverse school district.

However, Shirrell, assistant professor of educational leadership and administration at George Washington University, said the document emphasizes more than the importance of hiring and retaining teachers of color.

“Sometimes when people see these kinds of results, they say, ‘Oh, we have to hire more black and Latin teachers,’ which is absolutely true,” said Shirrell, calling such initiatives critical. “But sometimes people don’t take the next step to ask, ‘What’s going on below the surface here? Because we’re not going to be able to engage in the kinds of disciplinary practices that we want for students of color. It’s wider than that.

Shirrell and Britton insisted on not placing the burden on teachers of color of supporting students of color that other teachers see as a challenge. This misses an important opportunity for white teachers and school leaders to learn.

“The question is, what are these teachers doing that keeps students in school,” Britton said. “It’s not that the black teacher had a black student, so something just isn’t happening in the classroom right now. There are some current practices that other teachers can learn.

In New York City data, researchers did not have access to information about the particular incidents that led to the suspensions. But they would like to understand these details to unwrap implicit biases and other factors that may explain why students of color are disciplined more often and harder than white students.

“The teacher is the one who makes the decision to escalate an incident to a higher level, so teachers have a lot of leeway,” said Shirrell. “We need to learn more about those times when a teacher judges whether or not to bring up this incident. That way we can find ways to train all teachers to approach these times differently. “

Shirrell added that administrative safeguards on what types of exclusionary discipline school districts and at what grade levels can further help students as well as teachers. But Shirrell and Britton agree that more research is needed.

“The point is not to demonize teachers but to call for more support for teachers to better support their students,” said Britton. “And to call for more studies on what teachers do well.”

Rebecca Kelliher can be contacted at [email protected]