Discipline

Conventional wisdom suggests that suspensions are primarily a problem in high schools. However, the advent in the late 1990s of zero-tolerance discipline policies in Chicago Public Schools had a surprising effect: a steep increase in the number of elementary student suspensions.

Between 1996 and 2003, elementary school suspensions rose from 34 per 1,000 students to 64. Meanwhile, as the district began in the early 2000s to push high schools to find alternatives to suspension, high school suspensions fell slightly, from 117 per 1,000 students to 94...