Academic Outcomes
As a result of zero tolerance policies which proved to be a factor in the overrepresentation of African American male students in receiving exclusionary discipline consequences, missed classroom time was severely affected. When students are absent from the classroom due to suspensions or expulsions, they miss valuable classroom contact hours which places them at risk of falling behind their classmates leading to academic failure, increased school dropout rates, and brushes with law enforcement (Steinberg & Lacoe, 2017). Allday and Christle (2015) concluded that students who were recommended for expulsion tended to perform at a lower level than their counterparts. As students moved into higher grades from lower grades, their …show more content…
Similarly, McNeill, Friedman, and Chavez (2016) found that students, beginning in elementary school, who were suspended began to disengage from academics, as well as social interactions, thus increasing the likelihood of later suspensions in middle and high school. As stated by Gonzalez (2012), academic disengagement may not always be school-related, but behavior indicators of student disengagement, such as poor school attendance and suspensions, show themselves directly at school. Early warning signs for school dropout include receiving unsatisfactory behavior grades or out of school suspensions at the middle school level or in the ninth grade (Gonzalez, 2012). These outcomes, according to Allday and Christle (2015), pose harsh consequences not only for the individual student, but for society as well. Gregory, Cornell, and Fan (2011) noted that students who routinely receive out of school suspensions are more likely to cut class and skip school which places them at …show more content…
As noted by Perry and Morris (2014), schools began to resemble criminal justice institutions. Schools now have law enforcement personnel and surveillance technology along with metal detectors and body searches (Perry & Morris, 2014). Students are more often placed in police custody and charged with criminal infractions for school offenses that were handled school personnel in the past (Perry & Morris, 2014). Curtis (2014) noted that in recent years, police officers in schools, or school resource officers (SROs), have increased as the adoption of zero tolerance policies began to increase. In the early 1990s, SROs were practically nonexistent in many parts of the country (Curtis, 2014). However, Curtis (2014) noted that the U.S. Department of Justice in 1999 established the COPS in Schools program which forwarded the idea of “community policing in and around primary and secondary schools”. The SROs served as “conduits” between schools and juvenile courts which allowed them to handle school-based problems (Curtis, 2014). Consequently, misbehaving students at these schools, especially African American males, were viewed more as suspects than students and were more likely to be removed from school via suspension, expulsion, alternative school, or juvenile detention (Perry & Morris, 2014). Unfortunately, such a paradigm