Office Disciplinary Referral Patterns of American Indian Students from Elementary School through High School.

* The compulsory education years of a child's life are important for social, emotional, and academic development (Baker, 2006; Ladd, Kochenderfer, & Coleman, 1996) and provide the experiences that will set the stage for the rest of that child's life (Lubinski, Benbow, Webb, & Bleske-Rechek, 2006). School is not only where students learn basic academic skills and knowledge but also where they are taught to interact appropriately with adults and their peers. It is also where they are taught to advocate for themselves and where they are introduced to discipline and justice (and often injustice), possibly for the first time outside of their own homes. All of these experiences, whether positive or negative, may influence students' short-term and long-term success in school, their interactions outside of school, and their adult lives (Lubinski et al., 2006).Students who are frequently disciplined face exclusion from the classroom environment (Wallace, Goodkind, Wallace, & Bachman, 2008), and according to the Office of Civil Rights (2013), throughout the United States there were more than three million suspensions and more than 100,000 expulsions in 1 year alone. These types of exclusionary consequences can place students at a great disadvantage in comparison with their peers, as they are often linked to negative life outcomes, such as entry into the criminal justice system (Rocque & Pasternoster, 2011).A convenient and widely used tool for the assessment of disciplinary characteristics within schools has been the office disciplinary referral (ODR; McIntosh, Campbell, Russell Carter, & Zumbo, 2009). McIntosh et al. (2009) provide a thorough definition, as well as the strengths and limitations, of ODRs and the disciplinary referral process. Essentially, an ODR is the printed or electronic form used to record student behavior. It provides school personnel with the systematic means for documenting and assessing student behavior (Sugai, Sprague, Horner, & Walker, 2000). For decades, ODR data have been analyzed from elementary schools (e.g., Skiba et al., 2011), middle schools (e.g., Skiba et al., 2011), and high schools (e.g., Wallace et al., 2008). Several researchers have also studied patterns across all three school types (e.g., Kaufman et al., 2010). Researchers have found that several groups have been overrepresented in school disciplinary actions for generations, most notably students who are male, students who are African American, and students in special education (Vincent, Sprague, & Tobin, 2012). Previous ODR-based disciplinary pattern research has paid particular attention to African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic/ Latino students. Although some researchers have also included disciplinary findings for American Indian students, their proportions in the populations are substantially low, and American Indian students in particular often are not the focus of the research.American Indian ResearchThe 15th-century introduction of European settlers, to what is now the United States, led to a substantial reduction in the American Indian population, initially due to disease, ethnic cleansing, and the effects of slavery (Oberg, 2010). Later, the 19th-century westward expansion brought legally sponsored forced removal of American Indians from lands east of the Mississippi River to those west of the Mississippi River. The promotion of staunch ideals, such as Manifest Destiny, and historical events, such as the Trail of Tears, placed American Indians in further danger. Mass removal made them susceptible to disease, exhaustion, starvation, and violence, leading to an additional decline in the American Indian population (Oberg, 2010). The American Indian and Alaska Native population now comprise just 1.7% of the total US population, with the majority located in clusters spread throughout the portion of the United States west of the Mississippi River (US Census Bureau, 2010). Research can be difficult to conduct for these small populations. …