Law, Legal Consciousness and Student Discipline

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Law, Legal Consciousness and Student Discipline

• Common Good Class Disrupted Forum
• Richard Arum
• October 2007

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Key Policy Questions

• How have legal cases over school discipline
  changed over time?
• How has law affected school practices and been
  understood by students, teachers and
  administrators?
• What effects has this had on moral authority,
  youth socialization and student achievement?

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Sources

• School Rights Project Arum, Edelman, Morrill and
  Tyson surveys, interviews and ethnographies in 24
  high schools AEMT
• Legal Ambiguity and Case Decisions Beattie,
  Arum and Roksa analysis of school discipline
  court cases extended through 2002 BAR
• Disparate Impact of Adversarial Legalism Arum
  and Velez reanalysis of 2003-04 Harris survey
  data of public school teachers and administrators
  AV
• Judging School Discipline (HUP, 2003) with
  Beattie, Pitt, Thompson and Way JSD

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Landmark Supreme Court cases (1967-75)

• In re Gault (1967) Granting of procedural
  rights to youth in juvenile courts prelude to
  expansion of student rights.
• Tinker (1968) Granting of free speech rights to
  students. Students suspended for wearing
  arm-bands protesting the Vietnam War.
• Goss v. Lopez (1975) Granting of rudimentary due
  process rights to students facing even minor
  public school discipline. Students suspended for
  ten days without due process for involvement in
  disruptive school protests.
• Wood v. Strickland (1975) Establishes liability
  for public officials knowingly and willingly
  violating student due process rights. Students
  sue administrators and board members over being
  expelled for spiking the punch at a Home
  Economics extra-curricular school event.

JSD
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School discipline court case data

• 11,291 state and federal appellate cases
  1945-2002 (collected from LEXIS-NEXIS)
• 1,976 relevant cases cases involving students
  contesting the rights of schools to discipline
  and control students (excluding pure free speech
  and teacher dismissal cases)
• Content-coding of relevant cases (94 inter-coder
  reliability)
• Individual characteristics (Gender or race
  identified alleged gender or racial
  discrimination)
• School characteristics (Sector, Grade-level)
• Disciplinary practice (Corporal punishment,
  Expulsion, Suspension, Search and seizure, School
  transfer)
• Type of Student Misbehavior (Drugs, Alcohol,
  Violence/Weapons, Political Protest, Free
  expression)
• Direction of court-decision - social (not legal)
  meaning Pro-school, Ambiguous, Pro-student

BAR
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BAR
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BAR
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2000-02 court cases and school characteristics
(CCD 2001-02 data)
Note Differences statistically significant
(plt.05) U.S. Secondary School sample weighted by
school-size.
BAR
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Courts decisions and perception of school
discipline
JSD
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School Rights Project Survey Data

• School Rights Project questionnaire on perceived
  legal rights, fairness of school discipline,
  mobilization of law, social background,
  individual experiences and school behavior.
• 5,092 students and 310 teachers and
  administrators in 24 high schools (NC, NY, CA)

AEMT
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Rights Consciousness in Schools
AEMT
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Student perceptions of legal entitlements and
fairness of school discipline
AEMT
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Perceptions of rights, discipline and student
educational commitment
AEMT
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National Probability Teacher Survey Data

• Harris Interactive survey of law and education
  national probability sample of 600 public school
  teachers and administrators with school level
  identifiers (AY 2003-04).
• U.S. Department of Education Common Core of Data
  file on school-level characteristics (AY
  2001-02).
• Merged dataset with non-missing data includes 330
  teachers and 269 principals.
• Measures of educators personal contact with suit
  or legal challenge from student or parent and
  fear of legal challenge.

AV
15
Educators experience of legal challenge
AV
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Educator Fear of Legal Challenge IndexTo what
extent does fear of legal challenge affect your
willingness or ability to

• Teachers (participate in extracurricular
  activities comfort or console students maintain
  order in the classroom give honest and candid
  evaluations of students deal with unreasonable
  demands by parentscreate a good learning
  environment.
• Administrators (fire a bad teacher deal with
  unreasonable demands by parents deal with
  student discipline create a good learning
  environment try new reforms or ideas maintain
  order in your school)

AV
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Educators fear of legal challenge
Controlling for school characteristics (percent
poor, school size, elementary/secondary, region)
and individual characteristics (gender, race,
age, educational work experience, educational
attainment).
AV
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Conclusion

• Increasing school discipline litigation over time
• Successful litigation and increased sense of
  legal entitlements associated with decrease in
  school discipline, declining moral authority of
  educators and lower educational performance.
• Effects of adversarial legalism have exacerbated
  existing social inequalities in schools.