These different approaches show in the data, beginning with how likely schools are to use punishments. For example, though Alabama and Washington report incidents to the Department of Education’s CRDC at similar rates, Alabama suspends students roughly two to three times as often as Washington. Or consider Louisiana and the District of Columbia, the areas with the highest incident rates in 2021–2022. Though D.C. reported about a 50 percent higher incident rate than Louisiana, it was seven times less likely to expel students.
One reason for this discrepancy could be that states experience violent behavior differently. Where violence is more prevalent, administrators may feel greater urgency to intervene quickly and efficiently.
But this likely only partly explains why many states still struggle with violence and disorder. The latest available data for schools reporting “widespread disorder” between the 2019–2020 and 2021–2022 school years show that Southern schools remained stable. By contrast, disorder grew at schools in the Northeast, Midwest, and Western regions and was also much higher than at those in the South.
Approaches in red states differ in another key aspect: their schools preserve broad discretion to enforce rules early, before small problems become big ones. Louisiana law says that teachers may “take disciplinary action” against any student or behavior that “interferes with an orderly education process.” Administrators may not return that student to class until they employ one of several “disciplinary measures.” Even small behaviors can trigger a consequence, and three removals can trigger a parent meeting and more severe disciplinary action.
States like Alabama and Tennessee have recently spearheaded laws that give teachers more authority to remove unruly students from the classroom and compel administrators to impose more consequences. These laws faced opposition from equity advocates, but they go a long way toward explaining why classroom disorder didn’t worsen in the South, and why educational outcomes for poor students have improved so dramatically there—the very thing equity hawks claim to want.