Beyond the 9 to 5

Abstract

Students in the United States missed more than 11 million school days in the academic year 2017-2018 due to out-of-school suspensions. Research has shown that suspension has adverse short- and long-term consequences, such as lower academic achievement and lower graduation rates. With school suspension affecting approximately one-third of students across their K-12 experience, policymakers, researchers, and professionals have outlined school suspension as a major problem. Maternal involvement has been identified as a significant factor in student achievement, motivation, and aiming toward higher education, but little is known of the influence it may have on reducing exclusionary discipline—particularly for mothers with nonstandard employment. Exclusionary discipline is discipline practices that isolates students from the classroom environment. Guided by disability critical race theory, role conflict theory, and ecological systems theory, this dissertation utilized the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing dataset to assess the relationship between maternal nonstandard employment and three response variables: mothers’ (1) school-based and (2) home-based academic involvement; and (3) children’s school suspension rates. Children’s special education status was tested as a potential moderator for all three response variables, and maternal academic involvement was tested as a potential mediator between maternal nonstandard employment and children’s school suspension rates. There was a positive relationship between mothers working a sporadic schedule and their school-academic involvement, but not their home-academic involvement. There was a negative relationship between mothers working on the weekends and home-academic involvement, but not school-academic involvement. There was a negative relationship between mothers working on the weekends and youth school suspension, but the association was lost when covariates were included in the model. Despite the fact that Black mothers had a higher likelihood of academic involvement (both school based and home based) than White mothers, Black children also had a higher likelihood of school suspension than White children. Similarly, mothers with youth in special education had a higher likelihood of academic involvement (both school based and home based) than mothers with youth not in special education, however youth in special education also had a higher likelihood of school suspension than youth not in special education. Additional factors that were shown to decrease the odds of school suspension include- youth engaging in no or less externalizing behavior, being a boy, higher income status and higher maternal education. These results show the need to improve anti-racism and anti-ableism initiatives to reduce the suspension gap through implicit bias training, increased community engagement efforts, and restorative justice practices.