As I embarked on my 6-week Laidlaw Research session, I did not expect to make the changes to my project that I ultimately did.  Initially, I was determined to examine the school-to-prison pipeline nationwide and investigate how schools perpetuate harm through their disciplinary practices. When seeking data with the assistance of my mentor, Professor Rajiv Sethi, I recognized the importance of specificity and transparency. This understanding led me to make the decision to centralize my research, focusing on disciplinary practices within the state of Virginia. 

Though Virginia is where I am originally from, I gravitated towards the state due to its extensive diversity, whether that be socioeconomic, population density, political affiliation, racial/ethnic makeup, and many more traits that mold the region into a melting pot. In addition, I came across a statistic reported by the Center for Public Integrity in 2015, stating that Virginia led the nation in referring students to law enforcement at a rate three times the national average. After reading this information, I wanted to further explore why in which Virginia schools had these drastic outcomes. 

The choice to concentrate my study was just the start of a journey to locate data that would provide insight into my various inquiries about school disciplinary action. I looked to the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) for data and was able to find reports on disciplinary occurrences across all counties, as well as on per-pupil expenditure, with the goal of conducting a comparative analysis on how funding can contribute to disproportionate disciplinary practices. Now, I am deep in the process of organizing data in Excel and am excited to see what comes next!