This paper examines whether schoolwide free meals affect disciplinary outcomes, focusing on the use of suspensions. Under the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), schools serving sufficiently high-poverty populations may enroll their entire student bodies in free lunch and breakfast programs, extending free meals to some students who would not qualify individually and potentially decreasing the stigma associated with school meals. We leverage the staggered rollout of CEP across states and school discipline measures for the near-universe of public schools to assess how disciplinary infractions change within a school as it becomes eligible for CEP. We conclude that schoolwide free meals reduced suspensions statistically significantly for white male elementary students by approximately 17 percent. Point estimates for other subgroups in elementary schools, and overall, are negative but smaller in magnitude; while treatment effects for black students are statistically insignificant, we also cannot rule out equal treatment effects between black and white students. We lack statistical power to rule large positive or negative effects for middle and high school students. The reductions among white students are somewhat larger in areas with high baseline poverty rates, consistent with universal meals programs serving an unmet need.

中文翻译：

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全校免费膳食和学生纪律：社区资格规定的影响

本文研究了学校范围内的免费进餐是否会影响纪律处分，重点是停学的使用。根据社区资格规定（CEP），服务于高贫困人口的学校可以将其整个学生团体纳入免费午餐和早餐计划，将免费餐点提供给一些没有个人资格的学生，并有可能减少与学校餐点相关的污名。我们利用州和州之间交错的CEP部署和针对几乎公立学校的学校纪律措施来评估学校违反CEP资格时违纪行为的变化。我们得出的结论是，在学校范围内的免费膳食在统计学上显着降低了白人男性小学生的停课时间，减少了约17％。总体上，小学其他亚组的得分估计为负，但幅度较小；虽然对黑人学生的治疗效果在统计学上不显着，但我们也不能排除黑人和白人学生之间的平等治疗效果。我们缺乏统计能力来判定对中学生的正面或负面影响较大。在基线贫困率高的地区，白人学生的减少幅度更大，这与满足未满足需求的全民进餐计划相一致。