| Sandra Way
University of Arizona
For their own good? The effects of school discipline on student behavior and academic achievement
FINAL REPORT:
In order to curb school violence and increase academic achievement, many parents and politicians have called for and often received stricter disciplining of children in public schools. Before more policy changes should be made, however, it is important to better understand the relationship between school discipline, student behavior, and student achievement. Deterrence theory predicts that stricter consequences will deter students from misbehaving and consequently increase academic achievement. In contrast, recent work in the sociology of law literature suggests that compliance is dependent on normative commitments to rules and authority which are dependent on perceptions of fairness and legitimacy. Drawing on notions of procedural justice and moral authority as well as deterrence, this study applies a normative perspective to school discipline and student behavior and achievement. The influence of school discipline, both policy and perception, on student behavior and achievement is explored. Applying a multi-level model to the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) survey data reveals that school discipline policy may have some influence on individual student behavior and achievement. More restrictive schools are associated with higher levels of educational commitment, suggesting that restricting student behavior may increase compliance on basic day-to-day school specific activities such as completing homework, bringing supplies, tardiness and truancy. In contrast, more school rules is associated with reduced improvements in test scores, indicating that the positive association between school rules and educational commitment may not translate into academic improvement. In addition, students who attend school with more severe punishments are less likely to graduate from high school than students in similar schools that have less severe punishment. Curvilinear effects are found for student perceptions of disciplinary strictness with lower achievement and more misbehavior associated with both lenient and harsh disciplinary policy. Overall, students' perceptions of fairness and orientation towards authority as legitimate are found to be the most important determinants of socially appropriate behavior and higher academic achievement. With respect to policy, the results indicate that simply implementing more restrictive rules and harsher punishments will not necessarily lower misbehavior and may instead result in lower, instead of higher, levels of academic achievement. These findings provide some support for implementing or maintaining a moderate level of discipline. More importantly, however, for disciplinary to be effective students must regard rules and punishments as fair and the adults applying them as legitimate. If school authority has been systematically eroded, strict rules and sanctions imposed by school personnel may be perceived as unfair, leading to further erosion of authority and a school environment less conducive to learning. One potential solution is to involve students, teachers and parents in the policy formation process.
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