Do Suspensions Affect Student Outcomes?

Discipline reformers claim that suspensions negatively affect suspended students, while others suggest reforms have unintended consequences for peers. Using student panel data from the School District of Philadelphia, we implement student fixed effects and instrumental variable (IV) strategies to examine the consequences of suspensions for offending students and their peers. A suspension decreases math and reading achievement for suspended students. The effects are robust to IV estimates leveraging a district-wide policy change in suspension use. Suspensions are more salient for students who personally experience suspension than for their peers. Exposure to suspensions for more serious misconduct has very small, negative spillovers onto peer achievement, but does not change peer absences.

Scope and Sequence for a Problem-Solving Curriculum

“The development of problem-solving ability should direct the efforts of mathematics educators through the next decade. Performance in problem solving will measure the effectiveness of our personal and national possession of mathematical competency… The mathematics curriculum should be organized around problem solving.” (NCTM, An Agenda for Action) It was with these things in mind that the School District of Philadelphia and its Division of Mathematics Education took on as one of its major priorities the creation of a scope and sequence outline for problem solving. We also recognized, from the very inception of this project, that teachers would need activities, direction, guidance, and materials to effectively implement the program.