Maryland’s ban on school suspensions in K-2: Improvement but more work left to be done

By Ashley Grant, Johns Hopkins University

Many school districts now aim to eliminate or at least reduce the use of exclusionary discipline, but is a top-down statewide ban an effective way to accomplish this? A working paper from Jane Lincove and colleagues reviewed statewide data from Maryland for K-2 students from 2014-2019 in an attempt to answer this question after a suspension ban in 2017. The authors used multiple analyses of these data over time to determine whether the ban changed trajectories for students.

The authors found that the statewide ban decreased the usage of out-of-school suspensions by about 60% compared to what was expected based on prior trends, both overall and among key subgroups (including Black, male, economically disadvantaged, and special education students). Importantly, this reduction did not result in adverse effects, such as an increased reliance on in-school suspensions or a rise in violent events.

Despite these overall positive results, the article highlighted several areas where the policy was less successful. The reduction in suspensions was limited to the grades directly affected by the policy (K-2)  and did not significantly impact suspension trends in other grades in the same schools (grades 3-5). Additionally, the suspension ban had no measurable  impact on student attendance.