Giving Compass' Take:

• Linda Jacobson reports that research has linked the Black-white discipline gap with the achievement gap. 

• How can funders help schools to close the discipline gap? What do the discipline and achievement gaps look like in your community? 

• Learn how restorative justice can help students of color stay in school.

When a school district’s black-white discipline gap increases, so does its black-white achievement gap, according to a new study published Wednesday in AERA Open, a journal of the American Educational Research Association. The findings show a 10% jump in the discipline gap between those student groups in grades 3-8 predicts a gap in achievement 17% larger than the average gap between black and white students.

The inverse is also true — when the achievement gap between black and white students increases, so does the discipline gap, the authors write. But in a press release, co-author Francis Pearman of Stanford University said, “Initiatives aiming to close either the racial achievement gap or the discipline gap may have an indirect consequence of closing the other.”

The researchers, who analyzed data from the Civil Rights Data Collection and the Stanford Education Data Archive, also found a similar relationship between the white-Hispanic discipline and achievement gaps. But they attribute that connection to other community factors, such as income and educational levels.

Read the full article about the discipline gap and the achievement gap by Linda Jacobson at Education Dive.