Sean Darling-Hammond University of California, Berkeley
Eric Ho University of California, Los Angeles “No Matter How You Slice It, Black Students are Punished More: The Persistence And Pervasiveness of Discipline Disparities" AERA Open, Volume 10, November 2024.
The recipients of the 2026 Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award are Sean Darling-Hammond and Eric Ho for their article, “No Matter How You Slice It, Black Students are Punished More: The Persistence And Pervasiveness of Discipline Disparities,” published in AERA Open. This article summarizes a series of complex analyses of national data on exclusionary discipline. The authors leverage new methods of measuring discipline disparities. Their findings provide compelling evidence that, no matter how the data are examined, Black students continue to be overrepresented among those punished, despite multiple federal initiatives intended to address this issue. The article concludes with important policy and practice recommendations to reduce the widespread and enduring racial disparities in discipline.
The Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award is presented annually in recognition of the most outstanding article published in an AERA journal. The elements of an outstanding article include: (1) significance of the contribution to advancing knowledge, (2) methodological sophistication and rigor, and (3) uniqueness in terms of problem specification or approach. Articles published in any one of the following AERA journals are eligible for consideration: AERA Open, American Educational Research Journal (AERJ), Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis (EEPA), Educational Researcher (ER), or Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics (JEBS), except those articles that emanate from AERA public lectures. The selection committee considers all research articles published from October 1 of a given year to September 30 of the next year, preceding the year in which the award is conferred. The award is granted based on substantial merit, as determined by the selection committee.
The nomination deadline for the 2026 AERA Awards has now passed. Award winners will be announced in early 2026 prior to the AERA Annual Meeting.