Disproportionality and Risk of High School Students Suspensions due to Non-parental Involvement

Abstract

A recent study (Bryant & Wilson, 2020) investigates disproportionality of Charter High School students’ suspensions due to students’ ethnicity, socioeconomic status and gender, and it concludes that ethnicity and social status significantly affect students’ suspension. Many researches argue that parental activity is significantly related to improved students’ outcome (e.g., see Liu et al., 2020). However, the parental and family involvement activities have not been investigated in relation to the high school students’ suspension. The purpose of this study is to investigate high school students’ suspension due to ethnicity, socioeconomic status and gender adjusted for the parental and family involvement factors in education and vice versa, by employing the data from the United States National Household Education Surveys. Bivariate analyses suggest that six out of the eight parental factors are significantly related to high school students’ suspension (chi-squared p-value<0.05). Adjusted multiple logistic regression analyses suggest that four out of the eight parental involvement factors significantly (p-value<0.05) affect high school students’ suspension with non-parental involvement showing higher odds of suspension. Our findings have significant implications for practicing and policymaking, as educators and policymakers seek to reduce students’ suspension in the face of adverse students’ outcomes. Keywords: Highschool students’ suspension, Parental involvement, Adjusted analysis, Multiple logistic regression. DOI: 10.7176/MTM/11-4-03 Publication date: September 30 th 2021