While some argue that these efforts are increasingly necessary, others point out that school shootings are rare and fear that more security will backfire making schools less conducive to learning and making it more likely for students of color to be funneled into the criminal justice system.
Now, two new academic studies provide strong evidence that some of those concerns are valid. Both released this week and looking at large groups of students, they are among the first research to directly link more police to worse academic outcomes for students.
In one case, adding police to Texas schools led to declines in high school graduation rates and college enrollment rates. Another found that more police in New York City neighborhoods hurt the test scores of black male students.
The results of both those studies, for us, put numbers to what we already know and what the experiences of young people are, said Maria Fernandez, a senior campaign strategist for the Advancement Project, which advocates for less punitive discipline in schools.
The papers strongly suggest that police are the cause of those negative outcomes, though they arent definitive proof. And they dont tell us anything about whether the police made schools safer overall. Still, they underscore how efforts to do so can have unintended consequences.
Their key finding was that schools with police present reported 3.5 times more arrests as schools without police. However, the majority of reported crimes were for low-level school-related offenses, not for criminal acts.
Because of the police officers overbearing presence in schools, the researchers found that students attending school with SROs had higher mental health struggles and lower graduation rates, and fewer students progressing onto college, the report outlined. ... After looking at data from focus groups with SROs from 16 school districts across Massachusetts, the researchers found considerable evidence that Black and brown students were disproportionately singled out for arrests and criminal citations for offenses that were minor and isolated to school incidents, suggesting that they would be better handled through the schools disciplinary channels directly instead of through local law enforcement, the report detailed.
Moreover, the researchers found this disproportionality was increased when it came to minority students with disabilities.