Suspended in context : school discipline, STEM course-taking, and school racial/ethnic composition

STEM curricula and school disciplinary regimes are both key foundations of the transition to adulthood, and they may be connected within school contexts in ways that reflect and exacerbate the intergenerational transmission of inequality. This study examines such connections with particular attention to student race/ethnicity and the racial/ethnic composition of high schools. Bivariate probit analyses of the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 and the Civil Rights Data Collection of 2012 revealed that being suspended prior to high school was associated with truncated trajectories of advanced math course-taking by the end of high school while taking Algebra I or above in grade 9 was associated with avoiding suspension across the high school career. Although the proportion of disciplinary cases who were same racial/ethnic peers was associated with the math coursework of boys, various aspects of school racial/ethnic composition did not moderate the associations between suspension and math coursework over time for boys or girls. These results confirm the value of studying the interplay of formal and informal processes of schooling in addition to each on their own.