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Trouble at School: Understanding SchoolDiscipline Systems as Nets of SocialControlDecoteau J. Irbya

a University of Wisconsin—MilwaukeePublished online: 14 Nov 2014.

To cite this article: Decoteau J. Irby (2014) Trouble at School: Understanding School DisciplineSystems as Nets of Social Control, Equity & Excellence in Education, 47:4, 513-530, DOI:10.1080/10665684.2014.958963

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EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION, 47(4), 513–530, 2014Copyright C© University of Massachusetts Amherst College of EducationISSN: 1066-5684 print / 1547-3457 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10665684.2014.958963

Trouble at School: Understanding School DisciplineSystems as Nets of Social Control

Decoteau J. IrbyUniversity of Wisconsin—Milwaukee

Getting in trouble at school is often a student’s first point of entry into the school-to-prison pipeline.What trouble entails is shaped by underlying and complex notions of justice that operate in a givenschool setting. These notions of justice shape the range of responses social actors use to address stu-dents who break school rules. These include, as is the case in society at large, establishing strategiesto stop rule violations or repeat offenses, punishing wrongdoers for their offenses, removing offend-ers from the community, teaching wrongdoers a lesson, and helping offenders to help themselves(Daly, 2001). In this article, I argue that improving school discipline is a matter of balancing andmanaging complex, differentiated, systems of trouble. To advance this understanding, I use a socialconstructionist perspective to theorize school discipline systems as nets of social control that, if tooexpansive and overly punitive, can be counterproductive to the educational mission of schools.

Getting in trouble at school is a social process whereby students are condemned and sanctionedin accordance with specific school rules. It is often the first point of entry into the school-to-prison pipeline. What trouble entails is shaped by underlying and complex notions of justice thatoperate in a given school setting. These notions of justice shape the range of responses socialactors use to address students who break school rules. These include, as is the case in society atlarge, establishing strategies to prevent violations or repeat offenses, punishing wrongdoers fortheir offenses, removing offenders from the community, teaching offenders a lesson, and helpingoffenders to help themselves (Daly, 2001). Philosophical justifications associated with fairnessunderlie the policy and practice responses that social actors in schools put to use. The socialactors in schools, in order to address the complexities of school discipline, are probably not atliberty to eliminate all or some of these disciplinary elements. Instead, they combine them.

Similar to punishment in society at large, getting in trouble (and out of it) at school is complexand differentiated. As Garland (1990) noted, it involves “discursive frameworks of authorityand condemnation; ritual procedures, a repertoire of sanctions, institutions, and agencies . . . andrhetoric of symbols, figures, and images” (p. 17). Improving school discipline is as much a matterof balancing and managing systems of trouble as it is a process of responding to specific studentbehaviors. Before this balancing can occur, it is important to conceptually understand schooldiscipline systems. Within discipline systems, which I argue are in constant flux, adults force

Address correspondence to Decoteau J. Irby, University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, Administrative Leadership, P.O.Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201. E-mail: irbyd@uwm.edu

Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/ueee.

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upon children their competing notions of fairness and justice. In this article I elaborate on theseclaims by theorizing school discipline systems as nets of social control.

A school discipline net is a socially constructed, contested, and symbolic “space of trouble” thata student falls into when she or he behaves outside of the normative expectations of a school setting.I generated this concept by conducting a critical analysis of policy and policy-related documentsfrom a large urban school district. Using this ethnographic content, I studied the ways thatschool discipline policies and practices changed over an almost two-decade period. Specifically, Ianalyzed the reclassifications of behaviors, the shifting nature of disciplinary consequences, andthe personnel responsible for enacting the policy changes (as reflected in district-wide codes ofstudent conduct). I also conducted interviews with school leaders to contextualize the changes inrelation to broader structural and historical contexts that shape school environments (Irby, 2013).What emerged from my research was “the school discipline net of social control,” a heuristic forunderstanding the evolving nature and extent of social control, and the ways that social actorscreate counterproductive disciplinary cultures that usher students into school-to-prison pipelines.In this article, I present the school discipline net framework to promote a systems-focusedorientation for understanding research on discipline gaps and disproportionality. By regardingwell-documented school discipline and punishment trends as reflections of disparate treatment atthe hands of moral entrepreneurs who create and maintain systems of social control, I point theinquiry lens away from the youth and children, whose bodies and experiences are reflected withinthe research literature as statistics, and turn it toward discipline and behavior moral entrepreneursand the systems in which they work.

OVERLY PUNITIVE AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE PUNISHMENT

I do not regard getting in trouble or punishment as inherently negative. Eliminating punishmentfrom schools, either symbolically or in practice, is not a possible or desirable goal. Getting intotrouble and punishment need not be a bad thing for children. Getting in trouble—and out of it—canbe instructive and valuable, even if it involves punishment, which is in many cases a reasonableresponse to a wrongdoing. To distinguish this reasonable response to wrongdoing from what Iregard as negative punishment, throughout this article I use terms such as “harsh punishment,”“overly punitive,” and “counterproductive punishment” (Kupchik, 2010). These terms point outmore precisely that there are problems with punishment and absolves punishment itself of critique.Punishment itself does not cause discipline gaps, racial punishment disproportionality, or funnelstudents into school-to-prison pipelines. Even restorative approaches (B. Morrison & Vaandering,2012), which are growing in popularity as alternatives to exclusionary discipline and zero tolerancepolicies, contain punitive, albeit coercive, elements (Daly, 2001).

Educators need not abandon the notion of punishment altogether. Rather, educators mustcommit to developing a critical lens about the problems with punishment. These problems areevidenced if and when punishment fails to advance the school’s educational mission or producesunintended negative consequences for students and school communities. Disproportional racialtargeting and alienating students from a rigorous and relevant academic curriculum are casesin point. Kupchik (2010) argued that contemporary discipline policies and practices are overlypunitive and counterproductive for four reasons. First, discipline reflects an overreaction aboutwhat constitutes school violence and misbehavior. Second, schools, because of a narrow focus on

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rules and adherence to procedural norms, tend to miss opportunities to address the real reasons formisbehavior. Third, students often do not learn from the disciplinary experiences and, fourth, somepolicies and practices worsen student misbehavior. Kupchik’s four criteria for what constitutesoverly punitive discipline are useful in that they demonstrate a central concern for understandingproblems with punishment rather than with punishment itself. His orientation toward problemswith punishment is consistent with my assertion that a child getting in trouble at school is not asmuch a problem as is the nature, extent, and duration of trouble that the child experiences.

Students are more likely to get in trouble at school today than in years past. Yet, overlypunitive punishment is pronounced in urban schools serving low SES and racial minority studentpopulations. In the 1970s, black students were suspended at a rate of about 6%, placing them attwice the likelihood of suspension in comparison to white students (about 3%). From 1973 to2006, black children experienced a nine-point increase in suspension rates to 15%. Over this sametime period, the suspension rate for white students also grew, but by less than two percentagepoints. The black/white suspension gap grew from three percentage points in the 1970s to over tenpercentage points in the 2000s. Blacks, by 2010, were over three times more likely than Whitesto be suspended (Losen & Skiba, 2010).

Black males and special education students are most affected by overly punitive discipline andmore likely to receive disciplinary referrals, be suspended, expelled, and placed in a school-to-prison track (Giroux, 2003; Krezmien, Leone, & Achelles, 2006; Mendez & Knoff, 2003; Monroe,2005; Morris, 2005; G. Morrison & D’Incau, 1997; Skiba, Michael, Nardo, & Peterson, 2002;Skiba & Peterson, 1997). The risk of facing harsh disciplinary regimes also is higher for studentsattending an urban school that has a large percentage of racial and ethnic minorities (Gregory,Cornell, & Fan, 2011). Even in a climate of increasing adoption of positive schoolwide behavioralinterventions and supports, schools and districts continue to subject students to discipline policiesand practices that do not align to students’ educational best interests (Ayers, Dohrn, & Ayers,2001; Casella, 2005; Giroux, 2001).

A CONSTRUCTIONIST THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE

I assume that in the same way criminal justice systems are systems and studied as such (Irwin,1985; Whitman, 2005), school discipline systems are systems and should be studied as such. Iunderstand student misbehavior as socially constructed. I ground the work in a constructionist orlabeling tradition in sociology and criminology (Becker, 1973). Within this tradition, changes indeviance result from philosophical and moral changes in society. Rises in violence, crime, anddeviance are social constructions. Deviant behavior is deviant because it is labeled as such bysocial actors. The social construction of deviant behavior is apparent in the different ways thatmarijuana use is labeled or not labeled as a criminal act. In most US States, it is a criminal offenseto possess or smoke marijuana, while in other states, it is not an offense. Whether marijuanapossession or use is considered criminal depends upon how a given set of social actors label thebehaviors. In some states, legislative representatives have chosen to view it in non-criminal terms.

In Visions of Social Control (1985), Stanley Cohen explored societal shifts in ideas and practicesin crime control and deviance. In the text, he argued that throughout the 1960s, decriminalizationefforts paradoxically bred new forms of state control and coercion. The new social controlwas carried out by new professionals who exercised nuanced, and in some ways more extensive,

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control over criminals and delinquents (e.g., US probation system). Cohen evoked the metaphor ofa widening net of social control to characterize the complex web of institutional policies, practices,and professionals who comprised new and emergent systems. He theorized social control netsas malleable and adaptable, subject to shifting societal perceptions on crime and delinquency.If, for example, popular sentiment within a society shifted toward a belief that being arrestedfor marijuana possession or use is too harsh a penalty, then social actors responsible for makingrules would respond by creating laws to reduce these penalties. Rule makers might instead createnon-institutional forms of punishment for marijuana use. New professionals would be requiredto respond to the new non-institutional consequences. The entrepreneurial new professionals notonly create rules, but also establish the mechanisms to enforce rules. Becker (1995) refers to thesocial actors who create and enforce behavior-related laws and rules as moral entrepreneurs.

Becker (1973) discussed the concept of moral entrepreneurship in his seminal text Outsiders,to theorize the roles social actors play in creating and enforcing rules and how this process createsdeviant outsiders. He theorized that values find material substantiation through the codificationof rules and gain legitimacy through enforcement. Groups of people or individuals perceive somearea of their existence as troublesome, difficult, and in conflict with their values. Because values,Becker argued, do not translate well into action, societies and groups deduce values to specificrules that can be applied to concrete life and social situations. The rule is deduced from theconcern, framed to be consistent with the value, and conveys with relative precision four ideas:actions that are approved, actions that are forbidden, the situations to which the rule applies, andthe sanctions for breaking the rule (Becker, 1973). In a given society and its social settings, moralentrepreneurs drive this rule creation and enforcement process.

Moral entrepreneurs create and enforce rules (Becker, 1995). Rule creators, concerned withthe content of rules, are driven by a strong desire to stamp out what is deemed bad in a socialsetting. The crusading spirit of rule creators is usually driven by the best of intentions and framedto be to the benefit of those beneath them. Rule creators (Becker also refers to them as moralcrusaders) are relentless in their efforts to correct what they believe are fundamental wrongs.Their reform agendas often have strong humanitarian overtones. They believe that if deviants dowhat is “right” and follow their rules, it will be good for them (the deviants) and may preventcertain kinds of exploitation of one person by another.

Rule enforcers, on the other hand, are more concerned with compliance with a rule ratherthan the content of it. Becker explained that a police officer is a rule enforcer who is, withsome exceptions, not as concerned with the content of any particular rule as he or she is withthe job of enforcing the rule. When rules are changed, the officer punishes what was onceacceptable behavior just as she or he ceases to punish behavior that has been made legitimateby a change in the rules. Moral entrepreneurship, if the crusader is successful, breeds newindustry and organizational structures (Hawkins & Tiedeman, 1975) or what Becker refers toas “enforcement machinery” to support and manage the rule. After a new rule is established,the moral entrepreneurs, having met success, develop into professional discoverers of additionalwrongs to be righted and situations requiring new rules.

I apply the social control net and moral entrepreneur concepts to school discipline. I useCohen’s (1985) social control net metaphor to theorize changes to school discipline policyand practice. I frame them as “school discipline nets” of social control, a space and web ofrelationships where the enforcement machinery of school discipline coalesces to give valuessymbolic and material meaning. I give attention to the form and fluidity of discipline nets, and the

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ways that the web of professional perspectives, philosophies of discipline, policies, and practicesare subject to shifting societal moods and tolerance based on the school’s embedded position inthe nation, state, region, district, and neighborhood contexts. I draw on Becker’s concept of moralentrepreneurship to theorize the interplay of school personnel, the (re)creation of rules, and theinstitutionalization of values as codified in rules that occur within school settings. These factorsare central to the nature and extent of a school’s discipline system of social control.

The concept of moral entrepreneurship is useful for exploring the disciplinary functions thatsocial actors in school settings engage in, including the varied, shifting, and conflicting perspec-tives and roles that school personnel bring with them to their work. Thus, I frame school-basedand non-school personnel whose work involves theorizing, researching, reforming, and managingdiscipline policies and practices as moral entrepreneurs. These personnel include lawyers, aca-demics, policy-makers, teachers, school counselors, school social workers, school psychologists,school resource officers, police officers, Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (PBIS)trainers, and others whose moral preoccupations are to develop innovations—creating rules andenforcing rules—to discipline and manage students in school settings. These social actors’ con-tinual insistence on particular and perpetually changing kinds of order fosters professionalization,job creation, and institutional development. These professionals, some staples of school settingsand some new, and the daily practices they engage in, reflect an enforcement machinery thatcharacterizes the post-Columbine economy of schools (Lewis, 2003). I synthesize these conceptsinto a framework for understanding how school spaces concurrently shape and are shaped bythe institutionalization of racialized and gendered ideologies about what constitutes appropriateschool behavior.

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE NETS OF SOCIAL CONTROL

A school discipline net is a socially constructed, contested, and symbolic “space of trouble” that astudent falls into when she or he behaves outside of the normative expectations of a school setting.Students who violate school rules find themselves in trouble and are made outsiders within theschool organization. The nature and extent of the trouble a student falls into for engaging in aprohibited act, or (mis)behaving in a particular way, depends in part on the discipline net of thestudent’s school, district, and state. Figure 1 is an illustration of a school discipline net. Schooldiscipline nets have width and depth that reflect the likelihood of getting into trouble and theseverity of trouble to which students are subjected. In what follows, I theorize the layers of spaces,relate each to the concept of moral entrepreneurship, and reference the issues of social justicethat relate to different layers of the net.

The Upper Net

If a student gets into trouble, teachers are usually the first disciplinary authority she or heencounters. I refer to the uppermost context of trouble, occupied primarily by teachers andteaching support staff, as the upper net. Teachers are the most plentiful and arguably the mostimportant in-school personnel that students encounter. Over the last three decades, the moralauthority of school personnel, especially teachers, has been usurped by professional and legal

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FIGURE 1 Depth of school discipline nets.

authority (Arum, 2003; Kafka, 2011; Nolan, 2011). The result is that teachers rely more heavilyon systematic behavioral models and programs to foster relationships, discipline their studentbodies, and manage their classrooms and other school spaces, while depending less on developingcommunities and cultures of mutual respect (Kohn, 1993, 1996).

Education scholars have given much attention to the perceptions and practices that shapestudent-teacher relationships as they relate to discipline. Disciplinary moments, researchers con-cur, are shaped by teachers’ racial and gender ideologies (Casella, 2003, 2005; Monroe, 2005;Morris, 2005). A critical point in the literature is the consistent finding that black and Latinostudents are more likely than their white counterparts to get into trouble because of subjectiveinfractions such as disobedience and insubordination (Kupchik, 2009; Mendez & Knoff, 2003) ordisruptive behavior/other (Skiba et al., 2002). Because racial and cultural collisions are regardedas the roots of racial disparities in discipline, the ability to help students get out and stay out oftrouble rests largely on teachers’ moral authority (Arum, 2003; Kafka, 2008; Nolan, 2011), whichcan be undermined by color-blind ideologies (Bonilla-Silva, 2014) or lack of sufficient resourcesin the school environment (Nolan, 2011).

Successful teachers are moral authorities that engage in authentic supportive relationships withstudents as a foundation of establishing an authoritative influence (Gregory, Cornell, & Fan, 2011;Gregory, Cornell, Fan, Sheras, Shih, & Huang, 2010). They also possess strong instructional skillsand provide educative structure (P. S. Wilson, 1971). Such teachers are best able to instill disciplinethrough persuasion, compassionate “truth-telling” guidance, and a providing of educative order(P. S. Wilson, 1971). Teachers who are unable or unwilling, for whatever reasons, to manage a

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student’s (mis)behavior, often refer the student to school personnel whose primary purpose forbeing in the school is to support the teaching and learning mission of the school.

The Middle Net

The middle net is comprised of personnel such as school counselors, school social workers, schoolpsychologists, school deans, school climate teams, and assistant principals. Pushing students intothe middle net where disciplining responsibilities fall to these individuals fosters school order bymaking classrooms and other school spaces in the upper net temporarily trouble-free (J. Wilson,1981). Moral entrepreneurship thrives within this area of the net, which is comprised of bothrule creators and rule enforcers. The central concern for moral entrepreneurs in the middle net ismaintaining school order and providing support to students who break rules and find themselvesin trouble. They do this by structuring positive whole school culture and supporting individualstudents to modify their behaviors to fit the mold of the school. But their practices may or maynot create disciplined students or educative school spaces (P. S. Wilson, 1971).

Nolan’s (2011) research demonstrates that the effectiveness of these personnel, especiallydiscipline deans, depends largely on how well they are able to be more teacher-like. Personnelin the middle net typically derive their school-based authority primarily from their professionalexpertise, credentials, and knowledge of behavioral assessment; management approaches; andtechniques that support teachers. They are responsible for identifying and diagnosing behavioraldisorders, adopting and administering proactive and corrective programs and services (e.g., bully-ing interventions) that address individual and group (mis)behaviors, and in some cases monitoringthe hallways and other communal school spaces (Nolan, 2011). They promote specific rules andthey enforce rules. Middle net moral entrepreneurship is intensively focused on individuals andgroups of students. Especially useful are social-emotional approaches that educate and assiststudents with skill acquisition and support that are related to emotional regulation and buildingand maintaining positive relationships (Weissburg, 2000).

Although personnel in the middle net are trained to offer students resources and services, suchas individual and group counseling and therapy, school-based mental health and counseling ser-vices are often regarded as stigmatizing, especially amongst boys (Chandra & Minkovitz, 2006).Much of the conflict related to counseling and therapy relates to the diagnosing of disabilitiesand access to school-based services. Racial, ethnic, and language minority children are underrep-resented in receiving appropriate mental health diagnoses and services (Miller, Nigg & Miller,2009). A large body of research documents the higher tendency for black males to be diagnosedwith behavioral conduct disorders. They also are less likely to be accommodated with appropriateservices than their white peers (Clark, 2007). Given the historical mistreatment of racial minoritygroups at the hands of mental health professionals, the concern for the stigmatizing and harmfuleffects of school-based counseling and mental health services remains a concern. Yet, overall,research suggests that socioemotional approaches positively impact students (Durlak, Weissberg,Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011). These strategies are usually used to support individualstudents, especially those who have individual education plans. Positive Behavioral Interventionsand Supports (PBIS) is a three-tiered response-to-intervention framework for managing behaviors(Sugai & Horner, 2002). At Tier One, schools adopt and teach a series of acceptable behaviors to

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all students through teaching expectations, providing repetitious messaging, and rewarding desir-able behaviors. Tier Two provides interventions to targeted students who require more intensivesupports. Students who do not respond to Tier Two are provided individualized behavior plans.Numerous research studies illustrate that PBIS, when implemented with high fidelity, reducesdisciplinary referrals, suspensions, and expulsions in primary school settings (Sugai & Horner,2002). Consequently, PBIS is widely used in US schools. Restorative approaches (B. Morrison& Vaandering, 2012) are gaining popularity; however, the research base to document their effec-tiveness is scant. The championing of these approaches falls under the scope of personnel in themiddle net.

Compared to teachers, professionals in the middle net are too often distanced from the aca-demic curriculum. This can contribute to their marginalization within the school setting. Conflictsare especially likely when principals, social workers, counselors, and school psychologists drawfrom their organizational, sociocultural, and socioemotional expertise to analyze the school en-vironment and teaching practices within it. In doing so, these professionals may inadvertentlybecome professional discoverers of wrongs to be righted amongst teachers themselves. Irby andClough (2014) note such teacher and non-teaching personnel disconnects as vertical inconsisten-cies, whereby both parties struggle to get and remain on the same page regarding the need forand best approaches to discipline. Even restorative approaches have limits if and when restorativework restores students to academic and social contexts that are fundamentally flawed by in-equitable access to educational opportunities. If moral entrepreneurs in the middle net are unableor unwilling to deal with a particular child’s behaviors, or if the behavior is deemed as a seriousthreat to the educational setting, they will often send the child to the lower net.

The Lower Net

Some students behave in ways that are in direct conflict with the normative school expectations orbreak rules that pose serious threats to the school environment. These students find themselves introuble in the lower discipline net that is occupied by security personnel, school resource officers,local law enforcement officials, and representatives of hearings boards. These personnel act asrule enforcers. Security-related presence has increased over the last three decades, as schoolshave adopted order maintenance strategies grounded in incorrect interpretations and applicationsof the broken window theory. The extent and nature of security and police involvement variesgreatly from school-to-school (Travis & Coon, 2005). While some, mostly those from withinthe law enforcement community, tout the advantages of increased police presence in schools(Dickman & Cooner, 2007), others have published studies that demonstrate increased policepresence can deteriorate the learning environment and make students, especially in urban schoolswith substantial racially and ethnically diverse student bodies, feel less safe (Christle, Jolivette, &Nelson, 2005). School security tends to subject students to rigid “get tough” forms of control andauthoritarian interactions that constitute youth criminalization (Brady, Balmer, & Phenix, 2004).

Security-related personnel in the lower net derive authority to enforce discipline from nei-ther personal relationships born of teaching functions nor professional expertise. Their authorityderives from national, state, and district-level policies and laws. Since most security-based per-sonnel rely on legal and law enforcement disciplinary perspectives, they tend to focus on ordermaintenance, are authoritarian and confrontational in style, and rely on quarantining as a first

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approach to order the school environment. Such practices are in stark contrast to the relationaland socioemotional approaches on which personnel in more shallow depths of the net are moreapt to rely. Students who fall into this depth of the discipline net become subject to stigmatizationand criminalization that place them at high risk for exclusion.

Bottom of the Net

Legal, law enforcement, and central administrative personnel are responsible for systematicallyremoving students from the traditional school environment for rule breaking behaviors. Insteadof expelling students to the streets, most districts usher students into alternative disciplinaryschools (Geronimo, 2011, Kennedy-Lewis, 2012) juvenile justice facilities (Simmons, 2009), orday treatment programs. Students who fall through the discipline system at their respective districtor school get funneled into school-to-prison pipelines. At this point, getting out of trouble andovercoming stigmatization and criminalization becomes increasingly difficult for students andtheir families. Deep in the net is where the so-called color-blind procedural justice perspectivesthat sparked the Critical Race Theory movement (Crenshaw, 1996) are deeply rooted. Studentsand their parents encounter cumbersome systems that require a deep understanding of due processand legal rights.

At this depth of the net, educational and juvenile justice systems both overlap and becomedisjointed. As the judicial perspectives encroach upon school settings, moral entrepreneurs mayadvocate for disciplinary alternatives to suspensions, such as youth courts and alternative schools.School-based youth courts ask children and youth to judge and punish their peers for minor disci-plinary infractions. Although these courts reduce (or pass off) court costs and reduce recidivism(Cole & Heilig, 2011), there is almost no research on the effectiveness of school-based youthcourts as an alternative to harsh punishment. Philosophically school-based youth courts, despitetheir growing popularity, remain steeped in flawed notions of procedural justice. They may notdisrupt the authoritarian and retributive underpinnings of school discipline. They pass the respon-sibilities for meting out punishment on to youth, conditioning youth to accept the standards setforth by the US court system, which is mired in racially unjust practices, especially in regard toits color-blind approach for addressing “justice.”

Alternative disciplinary school settings fare no better (Geronimo, 2011, Kennedy-Lewis,2012). Alternative schools can be as damaging and stigmatizing as juvenile facilities (Mahoney,1974). Because these settings are difficult to access, they can be black holes for educationalresearchers (Simmons, 2007, 2009). Police and security officers and personnel in highlycontrolled spaces are reluctant, and in some cases forbidden, to engage with researchers. In suchspaces, it is difficult to obtain trustworthy or sufficient information, or high quality data, abouteducational or social outcomes that can provide insight to student experiences (Simmons, 2009).

THE EVOLVING EXTENT AND NATURE OF SCHOOL DISCIPLINE NETS

School discipline systems have changed over time. To direct attention to the changing extent andnature of school discipline itself, I regard students’ behaviors as socially constructed and filteredthrough racial and gendered lenses. Students’ likelihood of getting in trouble at school is shaped

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by the intersections of students’ identities; teacher beliefs; school practices; national, state, andlocal policies; and school locations. These influences ebb and flow over time and space. Thegrowing rate of reported misbehavior and discipline disparities in official reports does not solelyreflect actual changes in the ways children and youth behave.

The positivist premise that student behaviors have changed over time as reflected in officialdiscipline reports is problematic, if this premise is disembodied from the recognition that valuesand their material forms also have changed. Society and the world children inherit from adultsdiffer from the social world in which adults learned and lived in years past. Human behaviorschange and evolve. So, too, do views about values, beliefs, and what is regarded as right andwrong, acceptable and punishable. Each generation tends to regard themselves as inherently morevirtuous that those that come behind it. Modern technology and telecommunications, unfilteredaccess to information, and the pace at which information is shared in a global society, shape youthbehaviors, and the ways adults view youth behaviors.

The increased commitment to stamping out bullying behavior is a case in point. Bullyinghas long existed. It will probably continue to exist. Yet, because of social media and moderncommunication, bullying, which was once regarded as a “school yard” behavior extends into theout-of-school lives of children and into the lives of adults, to be experienced by those whosechildren are bullied and not bullied alike. Cyber-bullying would not be possible without accessto a cyber-world. Children’s behaviors have not necessarily changed. Rather their access to andengagement with technology has changed. Technology allows children and youth to continue theirbehaviors beyond the school bell and the school yard. The increased prevalence of bullying madepossible by the telecommunications revolution stirs up concern prompting a societal belief thatsomething must be done to stop bullying. It is important to realize that behavior cannot be viewedapart from changes in our material reality and values. Each of these—behaviors, shifting values,and new material realities—shape social actors’ understandings of behavior and administrationof school discipline. Put differently, the social facts about disparities and (mis)behavior shouldbe regarded as emerging within a complex web of social and material interactions.

The school discipline system can be regarded as a social and material manifestation of con-temporary times. Focusing on how school discipline systems change is critical for advancingdiscourses and modes of research inquiry and critique. Social science derived statements, suchas “today’s black school children are ten times more likely to be punished than white chil-dren” can and should be regarded as reflective of disparate treatment at the hands of moralentrepreneurs in fluid systems of social control, not simply reflections of actual differences in stu-dent (mis)behavior. A student’s increased risk, over time, of getting into trouble can be regardedas an increased risk of being mistreated by an adult. The risk also could be regarded as reflectiveof the changing nature of punishment. To go back to the marijuana example, if alternatives toarrest for possession or use were instituted, then the number of those arrested would decrease,but the number of those who possess or use marijuana would not necessarily decrease.

Along these lines, I regard the existing and growing disparities, gaps, and rises in disciplineproblems as the socially constructed results of moral entrepreneurship and institutionalized racismthat stigmatizes and criminalizes children and youth. For the purpose of conceptual clarity I holdstudent behavior constant, and I realize this oversimplifies the actual changing nature of studentbehavior. I exercise this liberty for the sake of demonstrating a theory of systems change.

In Figure 2, the clusters represent student populations and their respective likelihoods to getinto trouble. Cluster 1-Low represents the vast majority of students who are not likely to get into

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FIGURE 2 School discipline net.

trouble. Cluster 3-Medium represents students who are not serious troublemakers or threats tothe learning environment, but who may occasionally misbehave or break school rules. Cluster2-High represents the very small number of children and youth whose behaviors are disruptiveto the academic and social milieu of the typical school. The student clusters are positioned abovethe school discipline nets according to their likelihood for the students above them to get intotrouble at school. Imagine where the students would land if they got into trouble at a school witheach net.

Net-Widening of School Discipline

Figure 3 is a visual representation of a wide/widening school discipline net in which more childrenhave the potential to be enmeshed in trouble. Net-widening results when more far-reaching effortsto deter and manage delinquency increases the number of youths subject to some sort of officialcontrol (Van Dusen, 1981). It emerges in two ways. The first way is order maintenance (Garland,2001). Order maintenance involves targeting specific spaces and populations. For juveniles, statusoffenses and youth who are engaged in subcategories of criminal activity (e.g., “anti-social”behaviors, low level offenses such as loitering and noise violations, also known a nuisancelaws) are targeted by social service agents and law enforcement in an effort to deter more seriouscriminal activities and minimize delinquency. The second is a capacity issue. Juvenile disciplinaryfacilities and courts become strained and overcrowded and create new enforcement mechanisms

FIGURE 3 Net-widening effects.

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to offset the “costs” associated with high caseloads and mass institutionalization. Rule creatorsand enforcers attempt to reduce the overload on state institutions by introducing “alternatives” toadjudication.

Within schools, net-widening reflects a type of moral entrepreneurship focused on keepingstudents out of deep trouble. Social actors target low-level misbehaviors with the intent ofdeterring more intensive misbehavior that create school disorder. The targeting takes the form ofcreating new and increasingly specific rules, and a commitment to be consistent in enforcing therules (Irby & Clough, 2014). The increased scrutiny and enforcement requires a new vigilance foradherence to rules that ramps up the commitment to discipline through surveillance (Foucault,1977). Playful banter among friends becomes regarded as suspect. A new uniform or dress codepolicy compels school personnel to pay closer attention to student dress (Morris, 2005), in effectinstitutionalizing a more expansive surveillance of student bodies. Although students may behavethe same way, these new rules recast their behaviors as suspect. The rules change. The personnelmodify the enforcement machinery. The school discipline net of social control expands. Studentsin Clusters 1 and 3 are more likely to get into trouble. Cluster 2 students’ likelihood of gettinginto trouble remains unchanged. Creating new rules that apply school or district-wide and moreconsistent enforcement foster control mechanisms that are likely to get students into trouble who,absent the new rules and enforcement, would not get into trouble.

Net-Deepening of School Discipline

Figure 4 illustrates a visual representation of a deep/deepening school discipline net. Net-deepening, unlike net-widening, which focuses on numbers of students under official control,relates to the qualitative and quantitative severity of consequences—in terms of immediacy, dura-tion, and intensity of punishment (Irby, 2013). It is the school equivalent of “get tough” policing.Net-deepening comes about when moral entrepreneurs in schools adopt policies and proceduresthat make discipline more punitive for students by ramping up the severity of disciplinary re-sponses. By way of example, suppose a central administration modified a code of student conductto fine-tune the prohibition of fighting. To do so, the rule creators add categories to fighting that

FIGURE 4 Net-deepening effects.

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include assault, simple assault, and aggravated assault. Re-defining or extending the prohibitionof fighting into assaults recasts certain acts as more serious than others. This value judgmentimplies that more severe disciplinary responses are warranted for certain behaviors.

The specificity of the fighting gradations reflects an attempt to re-articulate a problem in theform of a rule and considers the nature and outcome of a fight, including participants’ willingnessto fight, participants’ use of objects, and the extent of injury inflicted during the confrontation.But the re-labeling of “fighting” also requires new sanctions. If an aggravated assault is thoughtto be more severe than a simple assault and a simple assault more severe than a fight, the newconsequences attached to the rules will produce a net-deepening policy effect (Irby, 2013). Themore severe sanctions compel personnel to change the enforcement machinery in accordance withthe new values. The school discipline net of social control deepens, and the centralized personnelresponsible for administering disciplinary responses are further removed from the upper net.

The centralization of disciplinary decision-making reflects and fosters the depersonalizationof discipline (Kafka, 2008). Students subjected to decentralized, supposedly objective, disci-pline regimes are at risk for being punished more severely. Social actors who operate withindeep/deepening discipline nets frame fairness in terms of “an ethic of responsibility constitutingcontractarian forms of justice embedded in formal law” (Capeheart & Milovanovic, 2007). Thejustice referred to includes the rights of students who behave as expected to feel safe and haveuninhibited access to the academic and social curriculum as well as the rights of students who findthemselves in deep trouble to have due process. Centralizing discipline shifts decision makingto rule enforcers, who regard following the rules and policies as a critical aspect of ethical andprofessional responsibility.

Within schools, net-deepening reflects a moral crusade to eliminate high-level physical vio-lence, major acts of misbehavior, and disruptive and potentially traumatic events. Such incidents,including but not limited to weapons possessions, physical altercations, vandalism, smoking,alcohol and drug use, sexual harassment, and open racial threats, indeed pose serious threats tothe school environment. Moral entrepreneurs who create harsh consequences for these sorts ofviolations believe that the spectacle of highly visible, swift, harsh punishment of offenders isa means of deterring students from engaging in the same or similar acts. Unlike net-widening,which relies on expanding surveillance of students, net-deepening aims to discipline the studentbody through spectacle (Foucault, 1977). Police presence, metal detectors, drug-sniffing canines,locker sweeps, and reliance on suspensions and expulsions come to characterize the school dis-cipline system (Kupchik, 2009, 2010). The goals of creating an orderly school and disciplinedstudent body are conceded to the goal of having trouble-free schools (J. Wilson, 1981). Exclusionand removal provide an immediate (short-term) cure to classroom and school disturbances andviolence but, without remediation, does little if anything to help the punished students (Casella,2005; Mendez & Knoff, 2003; Noguera, 2003). Nor does it ensure the learning environmentwill be safer immediately or in the long run. Research suggests such practices may exacerbatebehavioral problems (Henderson & Freidland, 1996; Vavrus & Cole, 2002).

Net-deepening makes punishment for a select few students more severe. As depicted inFigure 4, it increases the likelihood that when students who do not fit within the normative schoolmilieu (Cluster 2-High) break rules, they will be in deeper trouble. Getting out of trouble ismade more difficult and less likely, especially if contact with law-enforcement-based disciplinaryagents stigmatizes and criminalizes students. For Clusters 1 and 3, although the system changes

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FIGURE 5 Net-widening and net-deepening.

would not make getting into trouble more likely, students would be subjected to more punitivediscipline.

Net-Widening and Net-Deepening of School Discipline

Moral entrepreneurs who attempt to gain social control by targeting low-level misbehaviors widenschool discipline nets. Their objective is to deter students from engaging in more serious acts ofmisbehavior. Those who attempt to gain social control by targeting high levels of misbehaviorto deter repeat occurrences deepen school discipline nets. As Figure 5 shows, a problem withpunishment emerges when the two entrepreneurial efforts interact within a context to construct awider and deeper school discipline net. Students in Cluster 1-Low are not only more likely to getin trouble, but also more likely to get in deeper trouble. The same is true for students in Cluster3-Medium. Students in Cluster 2-High are not more likely to be punished, but are likely to bepunished more severely.

DISCUSSION

The school discipline net framework uses a social constructionist heuristic to reframe increasingpunishment, racial disproportionality, and the discipline gap as problems with the punishmentsystems. With an analytic lens toward discipline systems and the social actors who comprisethem, the framework challenges assumptions about the ways that school discipline programsserve students. The net of social control metaphor offers a fundamentally different framingthan does the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports triangle. For black, Latino andother marginalized students, a layered net may better convey the functioning of the tiered PBIStriangle. Black and brown students are targeted disproportionately for Tier 3 interventions. Tier 1interventions, if they are not culturally responsive, do little to keep students out of Tier 2 services.Tier 2 services have the potential to stigmatize students of color. Students of color, despite thepositive aspects of PBIS, continue to get into trouble at school. These facts are not lost on PBISproponents who recognize that PBIS does little to abate the racial discipline gap. This has resultedin a call for Culturally Responsive PBIS that attempts to recognize the racial discrimination and

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cultural collision that are at the roots of many teacher-student encounters that lead to disciplinarymoments (Casella, 2003, 2005; Monroe, 2005; Morris, 2005; Vavrus & Cole, 2002).

This flipped perspective, which looks at moral entrepreneurs and the system these crusaders andenforcers co-construct, maintain, and often struggle against, recognizes that what is consideredamong moral entrepreneurs as appropriate services and supports may feel more like “being introuble” for some students. Given the variety of sites and practices of punishment, schools arelikely to be at once retributive, restorative, and preventive and to thus exhibit internal conflicts andambiguities (Garland, 1990), even among the ranks of teachers and school practitioners. Ratherthan see these justice principles as separate, it is critical to understand, for example, how theprinciples of retribution and restoration operate within the same space (Daly, 2001). The fact thatdiscipline reforms—ranging from PBIS, security approaches, or a restorative approach—reflectthe core values, philosophies, life, and professional perspectives of the moral entrepreneurs whochampion an approach should not be overlooked. Moral entrepreneurs express and impose theirvalues. These values shape the policies and practices and, by default, the extent and nature ofdiscipline nets within nested educational units—classroom, school building, district, and state.

CONCLUSION

This research reflects one approach to theorizing school discipline systems as nets of socialcontrol and attempts to consider the ways that discipline systems are complex and differentiateddiscursive frameworks of authority and condemnation (Garland, 1990). As Kupchik (2010) noted,punishment is negative if and when it is counterproductive or out-of-sync with the educationalmission of the school. Here, I have argued that wide and deep discipline nets are counterproductive.Discipline nets have widened and deepened, not primarily as a result of worsening studentbehaviors. Instead, as is the case with the criminal justice systems, discipline systems are negativebyproducts of changing societal views of people of color, inner-cities, youth, and overexposure andgross exaggerations about the nature and extent of school violence and crime. Overly punitive (i.e.,deep) discipline nets are not good for students. They alienate children from academic curriculumand erode the moral authority of schools. Students pushed into the bottom of the net are morelikely to be funneled into school-to-prison pipelines that will negatively impact their entire lives.

Researchers, teachers, administrators, and school workers must be mindful and critical of theirown moral crusades and the ways their well-intentioned entrepreneurial efforts may producewider, deeper nets of social control than are necessary to effectively improve school disciplineand safety. Overly punitive systems, as Kupchik (2010) suggests, include ones that are over-reactive about what constitutes school violence and misbehavior, narrowly focused on rules andprocedural norms, not focused on the real reasons for misbehavior, not reflective or able to learnfrom disciplinary experiences, or worsen student misbehavior. Overly punitive systems are wideand deep. They get more students into trouble than is necessary and get students into deepertrouble than is necessary, pile on sanctions, and make getting out of trouble difficult for studentsand families (Irby, 2013).

The net framework offers a new way for school-based authorities to think about how theiractions shape disciplinary systems and impact the students that encounter them. Given that overlypunitive punishment must be understood based on context and situation, there is not an idealnet-width and net-depth per se. Rather, the discipline net is a resource for thinking about what

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constitutes effective or ineffective policies and practices. Researchers, educators, and practitionersmight ask before or while deliberating a policy action or procedural modification if the said actionwill produce a net-widening or net-deepening effect as relates to rules and corrective actionsrespectively. What system changes will a particular rule creation and enforcement modificationcreate, and are the changes justifiable given what students might experience in different layersof the net? Ultimately, are the proposed changes or extant policies aligned with the educationalmission of the institution?

By way of example, an administrator might question how adopting and enforcing a morestringent student dress code might require some fundamental changes. She or he would haveto consider how appropriate dress is conceptualized, called out, and responded to by adults inthe school setting. For better or worse, the new dress code would foster different and, at leastinitially, more frequent interactions between teachers and students on the problem of dress. Asrule enforcers, teachers would be compelled to take on a new responsibility of enforcing thedress requirement as consistent with the newly established rule. They would become professionalfinders of dress code violations to be corrected. Where students are non-compliant with thedress code, new consequences, perhaps overly punitive ones, would be required. One mightimagine how this, or a range of well-intended entrepreneurial rule additions, would over timefundamentally alter a school’s approach to social control. Imagine this one policy change. Nowimagine it combined with multiple new rules that accumulate over time.

The important questions for educators to ask in light of these changes is: Do the changesconstitute the creation of more “trouble” for students to get into at school? And if so, are themoral entrepreneurs who are responsible for helping students get out of trouble aware of theirown positions and complicities within the system of social control? It is my hope that this newconception of discipline systems encourages this sort of justice-oriented critical thinking, andleads to the kinds of nets where relationships, restoration, and attentiveness to the underlyingcauses of (mis)behavior are valued over and above the narrow focus on rules, procedural dueprocess, and compliance that dominate contemporary US. school discipline systems.

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Decoteau J. Irby is an assistant professor in the Urban Education Doctoral and SchoolLeadership programs at University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee. His research, teaching, and serviceexplores cultural-politics in urban education; school safety and discipline policies; urban schoolleadership; and schooling and labor experiences of black males.

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