Abstract

School discipline in the US is racialized. Previous research has clearly demonstrated that Black students, especially Black boys are more likely than their white peers to be punished for their behavior in school (US Department of Education, 2005; US Government Accountability Office, 2018). Previous research has also found that school resource officers contribute to this racialized discipline (Homer and Fisher, 2019; Weisburst, 2019). Covid-19 has completely changed the American education system causing many schools to switch to virtual schooling. How has this affected discipline? Using a combination of secondary data analysis and interviews, this project helps fill this gap through an exploration of how virtual schooling has impacted school discipline. Through my interviews, I found that schools are using new surveillance technologies to monitor student behavior and enforce school rules. I also found out that school codes of conduct have not adapted to address problems specific to virtual schooling. Finally, I found an extreme lack of data on school discipline during virtual schooling. Suspension and expulsion rates in schools are dropping, but students are still being removed from their online classes, even for days at a time. Schools are not coding these removals as suspension which disguises disciplinary disproportionality and makes it harder for the public to access disciplinary data. I hope that this study will inspire future studies about disciplinary disproportionalities during virtual schooling and how covid-19 has impacted school discipline.

Advisor

Nurse, Anne

Department

Education; Sociology and Anthropology

Disciplines

Educational Sociology

Keywords

Discipline, Disproportionality, Surveillance, Virtual Learning, Suspension, Expulsion, Racialized Discipline

Publication Date

2021

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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© Copyright 2021 Jonah Kadens