School Punishment, Special Education, and Childhood Behavior Problems

学校惩罚、特殊教育和儿童行为问题

• 批准号: 1823632
• 负责人: David Ramey
• 金额: $ 25.78万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-08-15 至 2022-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1823632&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Punishment; Special; Education; Childhood; Behavior

There is growing public and scholarly attention given to changes in school discipline and special education policies in the United States. Some researchers suggest that school discipline policies have become increasingly severe, resulting in a growing number of students receiving school suspensions at all grade levels. At the same time, as schools expand special education plans to provide services for children with medically recognized behavior disorders, a growing number of children are receiving diagnoses and treatment for conditions such as ADHD. School disciplinary and special education practices are intended to allow adults to recognize and respond to perceived child misbehavior. As such, experiences with school punishment, special education, and diagnoses or treatment for behavior disorders should be appropriate and improve future behavior. However, there is growing concern that school discipline and special education practices and interventions intended to improve the learning environment for all youth are instead applied unevenly across children from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. NonHispanic White children are more likely to attend schools with robust special education programs and lower rates of school punishment than racial and ethnic minority children. Consequently, racial and ethnic minority children have higher rates of suspension and are less likely to receive quality special education or medical treatment than White children. As evidence continues to demonstrate the harmful effects of early school punishment on academics and behavior, there is a growing push for schools to adopt approaches to perceived misbehavior that consider underlying behavior problems and disorders. Understanding how school discipline, special education, and diagnoses/treatment for behavior problems affect all children, including marginalized and at-risk youth, will help to craft policies that best serve children with behavior problems in the United States. There is disagreement regarding whether school discipline and special education improve or disrupt educational progress. Additionally, few studies consider school punishment and special education or therapy/medication as opposing or collaborative approaches to child social control. This project combines data from a sample of at-risk households in large U.S. cities (Fragile Families Child Wellbeing Study) and district- and school-level data on disciplinary and special education practices (e.g. Civil Rights Data Collection). The project uses two broad statistical approaches to answer multiple questions. First, standard linear and non-linear regression models and matching models (e.g. propensity score weighting) will be used to estimate how school discipline and special education policies and practices affect (1) adult perceptions of child behavior; and (2) child experiences of school suspension and/ diagnoses/treatment. This will be achieved by comparing children attending schools with different suspension and special education enrollment rates. Second, mediation and moderation models, including interaction terms, will be used to examine whether caregiver and/or teacher perceptions of child behavior explain the relationships between school discipline and special education practices, childhood social control experiences, and future behavior problems and academic achievement. The project will address issues of selection in mediation and moderation models by using matching techniques, fixed-effects estimation, and placebo regression.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

美国对学校纪律变化和美国特殊教育政策的变化的越来越多。一些研究人员认为，学校纪律政策变得越来越严重，导致越来越多的学生在各个年级接受学校停学。同时，随着学校扩大特殊教育计划，为患有医学认可的行为障碍的儿童提供服务，越来越多的儿童正在接受ADHD等疾病的诊断和治疗。学校纪律和特殊教育实践旨在允许成年人认识并应对感知到的不当行为。因此，在学校惩罚，特殊教育以及对行为障碍的诊断或治疗方面的经验应该是适当的，并改善未来的行为。但是，越来越担心的是，学校纪律和特殊教育实践和干预措施旨在改善所有年轻人的学习环境，而是在来自不同种族和种族背景的儿童中不均匀地应用。与种族和少数民族儿童相比，非西班牙裔白人儿童更有可能参加具有强大的特殊教育计划和较低的学校惩罚率的学校。因此，与白人儿童相比，种族和少数民族儿童的停职率更高，接受高质量的特殊教育或医学治疗的可能性较小。由于证据继续证明了早期学校惩罚对学者和行为的有害影响，因此越来越多的学校推动采用方法来感知行为的行为不当，这些行为是考虑潜在的行为问题和疾病。了解学校纪律，特殊教育以及对行为问题的诊断/治疗如何影响所有儿童，包括边缘化和高危青年，将有助于制定最适合美国有行为问题儿童的政策。 关于学校纪律和特殊教育是否改善或破坏教育进步存在分歧。此外，很少有研究认为学校惩罚和特殊教育或治疗/药物是对儿童社会控制的相反或协作方法。该项目结合了来自美国大城市（脆弱的家庭儿童健康研究）和学科和特殊教育实践（例如民权数据收集）的地区和学校水平数据的数据。该项目使用两种广泛的统计方法来回答多个问题。首先，将使用标准线性和非线性回归模型以及匹配模型（例如倾向得分加权）来估计学校纪律和特殊教育政策和实践如何影响（1）成人对儿童行为的看法； （2）学校停学和/诊断/治疗的儿童经历。这将通过比较参加不同停学和特殊教育入学率的学校的儿童来实现。其次，调解和适度模型（包括互动术语）将用于检查护理人员和/或教师对儿童行为的看法是否解释了学校纪律与特殊教育实践，儿童社会控制经历以及未来的行为问题和学术成就之间的关系。该项目将通过使用匹配技术，固定效应估算和安慰剂回归来解决调解和节制模型中的选择问题。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响来通过评估来支持的。