Forms of Bias and Their Impact on Disproportionality in School Discipline

Initially, this paper explores fifteen published articles that report on the disproportionate amount of disciplinary actions handed out along racial lines in U.S. public schools. Additionally, this paper examines the relationship between the number of students affected by said disciplinary actions and the loss of what is called “seat time” within certain minority groups. Finally, it considers the reasons for disproportionate disciplinary actions and how those reasons impact minority ethnicities throughout our education system. Complicating the exploration and explanation of the relationship between disproportionate disciplinary actions and minorities is the fact that the articles consulted in the research vary in their definitions and uses of the term cultural mismatch. Staats (2014) suggested that cultural mismatch between teachers and students can activate implicit racial bias and limits what constitutes a true definition. DeMatthews (2016), on the other hand, referred to this same topic as critical race theory (CRT), broadening the definition of the term by implying that the nature of white dominance generally in U.S. education is responsible for the unseen, covert, and less obvious acts of racism that are present and persistent in U.S. schools. Gregory, Skiba and Noguera (2010) used two different terms to describe this phenomenon. The first term is differentiated selection, which refers to the “selection at the classroom level that contributes in some way to racial/ethnic disproportionality in school discipline outcomes” (p. 62). The second term is differential processing, which refers to a hypothesis that “discrimination occurs in courts and correctional systems, which leads to a disproportionate arrest and incarceration rate of minorities” (p. 63). The authors expanded this notion to include the school setting and its racial/ethnic disproportionality in application of disciplinary procedures.