Study by the American Psychological Association

2. What has been the impact of ZT on students of color and students with disabilities?
Part of the appeal of zero tolerance policies has been that, by removing subjective
influences or contextual factors from disciplinary decisions, such policies would be
expected to be fairer to students traditionally over-represented in school disciplinary
consequences. The evidence, however, does not support such an assumption. Rather, the
disproportionate discipline of students of color continues to be a concern and may be
increasing; over-representation in suspension and expulsion has been found consistently
for African American students and less consistently for Latino students. The evidence
shows that such disproportionality is not due entirely to economic disadvantage, nor is
there any data supporting the assumption that African American students exhibit higher
rates of disruption or violence that would warrant higher rates of discipline. Rather,
African American students may be disciplined more severely for less serious or more
subjective reasons. Emerging professional opinion and qualitative research findings
suggest that the disproportionate discipline of students of color may be due to lack of
teacher preparation in classroom management or cultural competence. Although there are
less data available, students with disabilities, especially those with emotional and
behavioral disorders, appear to be suspended and expelled at rates disproportionate to
their representation in the population. There is insufficient data available as yet to draw
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any conclusions about the causes of disciplinary disproportionality for students with
disabilities.
3. To what extent are zero tolerance policies developmentally appropriate as a
psychological intervention, taking into account the developmental level of children and
youth?
In this section, the task force considered evidence relating to the developmental
capacities of youth that are relevant to the use of punishment in school, focusing on
research on adolescent development. Research relevant to juvenile offending has found
extensive evidence of developmental immaturity. Particularly before the age of 15,
adolescents appear to display psychosocial immaturity in at least four areas: poor
resistance to peer influence, attitudes toward and perception of risk, future orientation,
and impulse control. The case for psychosocial immaturity during adolescence is also
supported by evidence from developmental neuroscience indicating that the brain
structures of adolescents are less well-developed than previously thought. Developmental
neuroscientists believe that if a particular structure of the brain is still immature, then the
functions that it governs will also show immaturity; that is, adolescents may be expected
to take greater risks and reason less adequately about the consequences of their behavior.
Finally a growing body of developmental research indicates that certain characteristics of
secondary schools often are at odds with the developmental challenges of adolescence,
which include the need for close peer relationships, autonomy, support from adults other
than one’s parents, identity negotiation, and academic self-efficacy. Used inappropriately,
zero tolerance policies can exacerbate both the normative challenges of early adolescence
and the potential mismatch between the adolescent’s developmental stage and the
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Zero Tolerance Task Force Report 8
structure of secondary schools. There is no doubt that many incidents that result in
disciplinary infractions at the secondary level are due to poor judgment on the part of the
adolescent involved. But if that judgment is the result of developmental or neurological
immaturity, and if the resulting behavior does not pose a threat to safety, it is reasonable
to weigh the importance of a particular consequence against the long-term negative
consequences of zero tolerance policies, especially when such lapses in judgment appear
to be developmentally normative.
4. How has zero tolerance affected the relationship between education and the juvenile
justice system?
There is evidence that the introduction of zero tolerance policies has affected the
delicate balance between the educational and juvenile justice systems. Zero tolerance
policies appear to have increased the use and reliance in schools on strategies such as
security technology, security personnel, and profiling. Although there have been
increased calls for the use of school security technology and school resource officers in
the wake of publicized incidents of school homicide in the late 1990s, there is as yet
virtually no empirical data examining the extent to which such programs result in safer
schools or more satisfactory school climate. Although such approaches may be useful as
part of a comprehensive approach to preventing school violence, more data on their
efficacy is urgently needed so that schools can know whether these methods, which tend
to be more resource-intensive, are of sufficient benefit in promoting safe schools. Zero
tolerance may have also increased the use of profiling, a method of prospectively
identifying students who may be at-risk of violence or disruption by comparison to
profiles of others who have engaged in such behavior in the past.