In the unfolding story of American education recovery, one striking narrative has emerged: Several southern states have climbed the national rankings in academic performance more quickly than many others.
While the focus of their success has largely been on literacy laws, rigorous curricula, and accountability systems, an often overlooked — but critical — factor is school discipline, write Daniel Buck and Neetu Arnold with the American Enterprise Institute. Buck and Arnold have compiled recent reporting showing certain southern states’ distinct approach to discipline helps create the stable, orderly learning environments that students need to succeed.
Why discipline matters
Learning is inherently social and interactive, but it also requires focus and continuity of instruction. In classrooms where misbehavior is frequent or tolerated, teachers are forced to divert time away from instruction to manage disruptions, and students lose valuable opportunities to learn. Researchers and educators alike (my family members and myself included!) emphasize that even a single disruptive peer can ripple through a class, reducing overall achievement.
Quantitatively, what matters most for outcomes is not just how often discipline is used but how and why. Understanding how discipline is treated across states — and how that translates into measurable behavior-management outcomes — helps clarify why classroom order may be contributing to academic gains.
Discipline as policy, not exception
Across the United States, school discipline policy is governed by a mix of state statutes and regulations, with notable variation in how suspension and expulsion are permitted or limited. While discipline policies don’t tell the full story on behavior, they correlate with how often students are formally disciplined.
Certain southern states, write Buck and Arnold, take a markedly proactive stance on disciplinary policy — not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental pillar of educational success. Schools “preserve broad discretion to enforce rules early, before small problems become big ones.”
For example, unlike some states where discipline is viewed primarily as a last resort, states like Alabama and Louisiana embed order and discipline into their foundational school regulations, affirming students’ right to learn in non-disruptive environments. Buck and Arnold point out how Alabama’s codes explicitly ensure that classrooms maintain order and non-disruption, and Louisiana law empowers teachers to act early against behaviors that interfere with learning.
Buck and Arnold contrast this approach with the approach in several northeastern and western states, where, according to the authors, discipline is often treated as “a necessary evil, to be limited as much as possible.” For example, California prohibits suspensions for lower-level misbehavior such as willful disobedience, and Massachusetts requires documented attempts at alternative remedies before suspensions can be used. This mindset reflects a broader reluctance to employ exclusionary discipline, even when behaviors disrupt learning, Buck and Arnold argue, and “makes suspension a last resort rather than a baseline tool of classroom management.”
Recent changes to Minnesota’s discipline policies reflect a similar approach. During the 2023 DFL-controlled legislative session, lawmakers prohibited disciplinary dismissals (suspensions and expulsions) for students in grades K-3 except in cases where non-exclusionary methods have been exhausted and an “ongoing serious safety threat” exists. The broad language perhaps gives schools discretion on paper, but it also creates uncertainty and inconsistency in practice.
(The Minnesota Association of Secondary School Principals was one group that testified against the policy, stating that narrowing school district authority to dismiss students for disciplinary reasons could have “significant unintended consequences on individual students, school climate, safety and resources.”)
Stability and learning gains
Policy differences are not merely philosophical. They show up in data: Similar incident rates between states can yield very different rates of expulsions and suspensions depending on policy, suggesting variation in how seriously order is enforced. Buck and Arnold share data for schools reporting “widespread disorder” between the 2019-20 and 2021-22 school years that suggest a number of southern schools managed to keep disorder stable while other regions saw increases. That steadiness in climate — fewer escalations into widespread disorder, at least at the school level — is part of why policymakers credit discipline policies as a co-equal contributor to academic recovery alongside curricular reforms and literacy initiatives.
This perspective reframes discipline away from being merely punitive or controversial, argue Buck and Arnold. Instead, it positions discipline as a prerequisite for meaningful instruction, especially for students who have historically struggled academically. Without clear expectations and consistent consequences, even the strongest instructional methods cannot reach their full potential.
Mississippi offers a useful case study. The state’s early literacy laws, retention and promotion policies, universal literacy screeners, and rigorous curricula have been frequently cited as the primary drivers of its recent achievement gains. Yet Mississippi also maintains a comparatively higher rate of out-of-school suspensions than a number of states, including Minnesota. Over the past decade, not only have Mississippi’s average fourth-grade reading scores improved and are higher than Minnesota’s but achievement has risen among its student subgroups as well.
Mississippi black and Hispanic students not only outperform Minnesota black and Hispanic students in fourth-grade reading but their achievement scores are significantly higher than a decade ago, whereas the average scores for Minnesota black and Hispanic fourth graders are significantly lower than they were 10 years ago. Beyond that, Mississippi black and Hispanic students outperform Minnesota black and Hispanic students in eighth-grade reading. Alabama and Louisiana, two other states with higher out-of-school suspensions than Minnesota, are also part of the southern state achievement growth phenomenon.
Balancing game
While correlation alone does not establish causation, there are patterns here (along with evidence from reforms focused primarily on curtailing suspensions) that suggest certain states’ approaches to discipline may be an underexamined component of the policy environment.
It’s important to acknowledge that the goal should always be to keep students in the classroom so they can have equal opportunities to learn. Educators can avoid unnecessarily removing a student from class while still maintaining order. At the same time, they need support so that one student’s behavior does not unfairly affect the whole class.
The achievement success of certain southern states invites educators and policymakers nationwide to rethink assumptions about discipline — not as a regrettable necessity, but as a foundational element of a school culture conducive to learning.