Closing the School Discipline Gap: Research to Practice Conference Summary

The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA's Civil Rights Project, Education Week, Gallup, and the Equity Project at Indiana University hosted Closing the School Discipline Gap, a one-day conference at exploring the impacts of exclusionary school-discipline practices, research-based approaches to reducing the discipline gap, and efforts to end the school-to-prison pipeline.

The event was held at the Gallup Building, 901 F St. NW, Washington D.C., on January 10, 2013. The conference will highlight new studies by leading national researchers, who will discuss ways to improve school climate through effective alternatives to punitive disciplinary approaches and strategies for eliminating disparities in school discipline based on race, gender, and disability status. The event will also feature new survey results from Education Week and Gallup and the public unveiling of the 2013 edition of Education Week’s Quality Counts report, which examines school climate and discipline issues. The educational and social costs of excessive and disparate disciplinary exclusion have begun to receive attention from a larger national audience. Most notably, the Supportive School Discipline Initiative—launched in 2011 by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder—seeks to bring this issue into the public dialogue and build consensus around solutions. The need to redress excessive discipline has been linked to efforts to improve school attendance, achievement, and graduation rates. The conference comes at a time when the federal ESEA and the IDEA laws are overdue for reauthorization and the administration is poised to make far-reaching changes to education and juvenile-justice priorities and policies. 

For a detailed list of the reports, click here.

To view the conference agenda and reports, click here.