Colorblind Policy in a Carceral Geography: Reclaiming Public Education

Abstract

During the last decade, the federal government, states, and school districts implemented changes in school discipline policy to shift schools’ reliance from punishment and exclusion toward prevention, intervention, and restoration. In order to assess the impact of the last decade of reforms on attempts to decrease punishment and increase equity in schools, we examine nine large metropolitan districts that both revised their Codes of Conduct to limit their reliance on exclusionary discipline and implemented schoolwide behavioral and/or restorative programs. We find that while reforms are associated with decreases in students’ experience of three of four exclusionary discipline outcomes from 2009 to 2015, these benefits tend to accrue to the least vulnerable students – White students without disabilities. One explanation of this finding is that colorblind, risk-based, carceral assumptions of school and state policies undercut efforts to increase equity in school discipline.