Discipline Practices in Chicago Schools: Trends in the Use of Suspensions and Arrests

W. DAVID STEVENS is Director for Research Engagement at UChicago CCSR. He received his PhD in sociology from Northwestern University. LAUREN SARTAIN is a research analyst at UChicago CCSR. She has a BA from the University of Texas at Austin and a MPP from the Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, where she is currently a doctoral student. ELAINE ALLENSWORTH is the Executive Director of UChicago CCSR. She conducts research on factors affecting school improvement and students’ educational attainment, including high school graduation, college readiness, curriculum and instruction, and school organization and leadership. RACHEL LEVENSTEIN is the Senior Manager for Survey Research at UChicago CCSR, where she oversees the annual census of roughly 225,000 Chicago Public Schools students, teachers, and principals. She directs all aspects of the survey process, including content design and pretesting, data collection, documentation, item analysis, and tests for response bias. She is also involved in reporting and dissemination of the results to the nearly 700 schools in CPS. Her research specialties include nonresponse and measurement error issues in survey data collection. The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (UChicago CCSR) builds the capacity for school reform by conducting research that identifies what matters for student success and school improvement. Created in 1990, UChicago CCSR conducts research of high technical quality that can inform and assess policy and practice in the Chicago Public Schools. UChicago CCSR studies also have informed broader national movements in public education. UChicago CCSR encourages the use of research in policy action and improvement of practice but does not argue for particular policies or programs. Rather, UChicago CCSR helps to build capacity for school reform by identifying what matters for student success and school improvement, creating critical indicators to chart progress, and conducting theory-driven evaluation to identify how programs and policies are working.