Breaking Schools’ Rules: A Statewide Study of How School Discipline Relates to Students’ Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement

This report from the Council of State Governments Justice Center provides a summary of trends in suspensions and expulsions in Texas for the aggregate population and for subgroups, including African American and Hispanic students, and students with disabilities. The report also evaluates the correlation between suspensions/expulsions and entering the juvenile justice system. Because this report looks at individual student data for the state, it identifies the highly varied rates in disciplinary incidents at schools with similar demographics and concludes that there is an important school-level impact on rates of disciplinary incidents and engagement with the juvenile justice system.