Examining the Impacts of Middle School Disciplinary Policies on Ninth-Grade Retention

We estimate the relationship between exclusionary discipline given in eighth-grade and the probability of ninth-grade retention. We use a rich 7-year, student-level, panel data set from Arkansas. We use a novel approach by limiting our sample to students who switch schools between eighth and ninth grades. This movement gives each student a fresh start and removes the potential confound of a student’s reputation as a “problem student” that could influence teachers to be harsher on students who already have a disciplinary record. Further, we control for student infractions in eighth-grade, to focus on the relationship between the exclusionary consequence (rather than the precipitating behavior) and future academic success. We find that students who receive exclusionary discipline in eighth grade are more likely to be retained in ninth-grade compared with similar students whose infractions did not result in exclusionary discipline. Moreover, we find that the likelihood of ninth-grade retention increases with the number of days of exclusionary discipline. We, however, did not find any statistically significant subgroup differences.