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Schools use discipline to deal with behavior that disrupts learning or threatens safety. But how discipline is applied has long been criticized. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights describes exclusionary discipline as removing a student from class, school or activities for breaking a rule — detentions, in-school and out-of-school suspensions, bus suspensions, expulsions, transfers to alternative schools, referrals to law enforcement and school-related arrests. Decades of research tie such discipline to poor academic results and to arrest and incarceration, and some studies have linked suspension to depression, substance use, self-injury and suicide.
Much less is known about discipline and health. This CDC report is, its authors say, the first to examine it in a nationally representative sample of U.S. high school students — and the first to ask not whether students were disciplined, but whether they felt they had been disciplined unfairly.
The question
The 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (20,103 students in grades 9–12, public and private schools, all 50 states and DC) asked: “During the past 12 months, have you been unfairly disciplined at school?” The item comes from a scale measuring perceptions of racism among young people of color, and research with Black students shows they can tell discriminatory discipline apart from discipline that is deserved.
Who reported unfair discipline
19.3% of students said yes.
- Black students (23.1%) reported it more often than Hispanic (18.4%) and White (18.1%) students. American Indian or Alaska Native students had the highest figure (32.0%), but with wide uncertainty it did not differ significantly from other groups.
- Boys (21.6%) reported it more than girls (16.4%), and students in grades 9 and 10 more than those in grades 11 and 12.
- Students who described their sexual identity in some other way (23.8%) reported it more than questioning students (14.2%).
- Two small groups stood out: among American Indian or Alaska Native students who described their sexual identity in some other way, 81.7% reported unfair discipline, as did 57.1% of such multiracial students. Among multiracial students, 32.6% of lesbian, gay, bisexual, questioning or otherwise-identified students reported it, against 16.7% of heterosexual students.
Linked to every risk examined
Students who reported unfair discipline had a higher rate of every behavior and experience the report measured:
| Behavior or experience | Unfairly disciplined | Not |
|---|---|---|
| Bullied at school or online | 41.6% | 20.9% |
| Skipped school because they felt unsafe | 21.8% | 11.2% |
| Did not get mostly As and Bs | 37.3% | 25.4% |
| Poor mental health | 38.0% | 27.2% |
| Persistent sadness or hopelessness | 53.1% | 37.5% |
| Seriously considered suicide | 29.1% | 17.5% |
| Attempted suicide | 15.3% | 7.3% |
| Carried a weapon at school | 8.3% | 3.1% |
| Ever misused prescription opioids | 17.8% | 9.1% |
| Less than 8 hours’ sleep on school nights | 81.2% | 75.5% |
After adjusting for race and ethnicity, sex and grade, students reporting unfair discipline were 2.05 times as likely to have been bullied, 2.00 times as likely to have skipped school out of fear, 2.12 times as likely to have attempted suicide, 1.95 times as likely to have misused opioids and 2.52 times as likely to have carried a weapon at school.
The pattern held within most racial and ethnic groups, and every group showed at least one link to mental health or suicide risk. Among students who reported unfair discipline, persistent sadness ranged from 48.4% (Asian students) to 77.6% (American Indian or Alaska Native students), serious thoughts of suicide from 22.4% to 36.8%, and suicide attempts from 12.4% (Black students) to 20.7% (multiracial students).
What the authors conclude
The authors call school discipline an urgent public health problem. Federal data show Black students in K–12 public schools are disciplined at a higher rate than any other group — a gap that differences in income, behavior or grades do not explain, and that the authors attribute to structural racism dating to desegregation. Students who are disciplined unfairly may skip school to avoid it, at a time of sharply rising chronic absence.
Suggested responses:
- Inclusive supports: LGBTQ+-inclusive curricula, gender and sexuality alliances, cultural and ethnic affinity clubs, and training on cultural bias and anti-racist practice.
- Equity reviews of policies, budgets and programs, like the tool Boston Public Schools developed.
- The Department of Education’s Guiding Principles for fair school climates — among them a welcoming environment, a diverse workforce, and involving students, families and staff in writing and tracking fair discipline.
- CDC’s action guide Promoting Mental Health and Well-Being in Schools.
Limits: the survey is a snapshot, so the linked problems may accompany or even cause the discipline rather than follow it; unfairness is self-reported, though research shows students can recognize it; and students whose unfair discipline included expulsion may be under-represented.
Sources
Based on Krause KH, Bell C, Jordan B, et al., "Report of Unfair Discipline at School and Associations with Health Risk Behaviors and Experiences — Youth Risk Behavior Survey, United States, 2023," MMWR Supplements Vol. 73, No. 4, CDC (as corrected); a work of the United States government in the public domain. The report’s discussion says more than half of students reporting unfair discipline felt persistently sad, while its results give a range starting at 48.4%; the page uses the overall figure and the range.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.cdc.gov
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