Murry, Crystal (2019-07). Zero Tolerance School-Based Policies: The Effect of Early Punishment on School Feelings and Later Punishment. Doctoral Dissertation.
Thesis
Punishment in its varying forms and application is an integral part of American culture. As such, school punishment has received considerable attention from social scientists and legal scholars because classroom misbehavior has been met with rigid disciplinary measures. Some school-based zero tolerance policies and the use of teacher discretion have led to selective enforcement of said policies with disproportionate effects. Minority youths are disproportionately more likely than their white counterparts to receive excessively strict school-based sanctions. The purpose of this dissertation is to expound on prior studies by analyzing the effects of race and gender on punishment outcomes in school and subsequently how early punishment influences feelings about school and later punishment. To explore these effects, I utilize parental data of participants from the first generation and three waves of children's data from the second generation of the Howard Kaplan Longitudinal and Multigenerational Study. I employ a series of regression models to test the relationship between race, gender, negative school feelings, in-school punishment, and later punishment. I also test the mediating effect of early in-school punishment on later in-school punishment. The results show that there is a significant relationship between race, gender, in-school punishment, and convictions in young adulthood. The data reveal that early in-school punishment does have an effect on later in-school punishment. This relationship of the race effect is mediated by early in-school punishment. I also find that early in-school punishment leads to more negative feelings toward school for non-minority students. Thus, feelings aside, I conclude that there is little difference between black boys and girls and in-school punishment and that the disparity for later in-school punishment is due to the disparity in early school punishment. The significance of these findings are also discussed.
