Study links school resources, discipline, and achievement in Florida high schools

A recent study examining Florida's public high schools has explored the complex relationships between socioeconomic status, school resources, student discipline, and academic achievement. The research, which utilized structural equation modeling (SEM), aimed to understand the dynamics of the School-to-Prison Pipeline (STPP) framework through the lens of Ecological Systems Theory (EST).

The study drew data from multiple sources, including the Florida Department of Education, the U.S. Census American Community Survey, and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. While the findings suggest that achievement, discipline, resources, and socioeconomic status (SES) are interconnected, the researchers noted limitations due to poor model fit.

Despite these limitations, the results indicate a potential for increased resource availability to mitigate the negative effects of socioeconomic disadvantage on student achievement. Furthermore, the study suggests that considering contextual factors within schools can help explain some of the observed relationship between student discipline and academic outcomes.

Future research directions proposed by the study include the addition of a latent factor for school characteristics, further testing of the synthetic cohort method by incorporating more time points, and expanding the SES and resource latent factors.