School Discipline Policies: Uneven Policy Implementation and Unequal Outcomes.

How do educators respond at the local level to institutional processes of change and what are the implications for such responses? This article offers a case study examining how educators within one Ontario school board understand and implement Progressive Discipline policy, the official approach to student discipline. The objective of this research is to describe various responses policy implementation, specifically the transition from tightly coupled to loosely coupled school discipline policies, and the consequences for such responses for students and teachers. In doing so, this article contributes to organizational scholarship by examining how the combination of micro-level processes and macro-level environmental constraints shape inequality in outcomes. Findings reveal that schooling efforts to shift from tightly coupled to loosely coupled policy has created unequal student disciplinary outcomes based on the influence of: educator interpretations and preconceptions of policy, and the institutional context of policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]