Chapter 10: Middle Level Administrators’ Perspectives on Disciplinary Consequences Assigned to African American Female Students

Nationwide, African American girls have the highest suspension rates among all racial and ethnic groups and are the most severely and disproportionately affected by school discipline policies and practices when compared to other girls (Smith & Harper, 2015). Despite these alarming statistics, limited empirical research exists to explain this phenomenon (Crenshaw, Ocen, & Nanda, 2015). Unfortunately, empirical researchers often leave out African American girls when they consider factors of race and gender, and they rarely capture and report the narratives and experiences of being African American and female, more directly, being “pushed out” of schools as compared to African American males (Blake, Butler, Lewis, & Darensbourg, 2011; George, 2015; M. Morris, 2012, 2016; Rollock, 2007; Wun, 2015). This chapter provides insight beyond the “discipline data” to tell the narratives of three middle school leaders curiously juxtaposed between working with adolescent African American girls and enforcing school discipline policies. It explores mitigating factors that may account for the disproportionality experienced by African American girls and school discipline from the perspectives of three African American male middle school leaders.