Ensuring Supportive Educational Environments for Marginalized Students

Students of color and students with disabilities account for growing shares of U.S. public school enrollment. The performance of public education thus hinges increasingly on how well we serve these marginalized students, who often feel less support in school and have lower quality educational experiences than their peers. This dissertation uses quantitative methods to understand the educational environments of students of color and students with disabilities, including who teaches them, what schools they attend, and how policies shape their day-to-day experiences. The first chapter focuses on sustaining a more racially and ethnically diverse teacher workforce, a promising support for children of color. The second chapter analyzes the effects of a 2017 ban on corporal punishment for students with disabilities in Louisiana. The third chapter aims to understand how discipline and test score disparities affect Black parents’ school preferences and expectations of school racial climate. Each chapter uses different methods (descriptive, quasi-experimental, and experimental) and examines different units of analysis (teachers, schools, and parents), but they are unified by a substantive focus on the environments of marginalized students.