Chapter 1: Humanize First, Discipline Second: Unadultifying African American Students in K–12 Schools

Millions of African American learners in K–12 classrooms have some form of interaction with a school discipline outcome each year (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights [OCR], 2018). Whether they are sent to the office via an office discipline referral (ODR), remanded to a classroom for a day (or more) through an in-school suspension, subjected to multiple days of limited (if any) access to their home school because of an out-ofschool suspensions, permanently stripped of their right to return to their home school because of their expulsion, or referred to law enforcement, African American students receive the largest share of these outcomes (between 22% and 37%), but only comprise 15% of the U.S. P–12 student population. In some extreme cases, the execution of these outcomes are warranted (i.e., violent offenses, drugs, guns, threats, etc.); however, what researchers who specialize on the topic of school discipline have unraveled is that for many African American students, their office referrals are often for subjective offenses (defiance, disengagement, disrespect, etc.), which could have been resolved with less punitive measures by school staff (Girvan et al., 2017; Hilberth & Slate, 2014; Irby & Clough, 2015). This expedited trajectory for minor offenses exposes African American students to a greater chance of receiving harsher penalties, due to multiple ODRs within the same day, week, month, semester, or academic year. Scholars and practitioners attribute the inequitable differences in school discipline outcomes between African American and their peers to macro-and microfactors along societal and education structural fault lines.