School Discipline and Security: Maintaining Safety and Legitimacy

University Of Delaware, Newark DE

Investigators

Abstract

Aaron Kupchik School Discipline and Security: Maintaining Safety and Legitimacy In recent years, schools across the U.S. have adopted a variety of strategies in their efforts to prevent crime. Many school systems have brought full-time police officers (usually called School Resource Officers) onto campuses; others have combined this new security presence with zero-tolerance punishment policies. Yet neither researchers nor educators have investigated the process by which schools enforce their safety policies. We do not know whether students perceive this new brand of school discipline and security as legitimate and fair, if they feel protected or alienated by increasingly aggressive security regimes, or if these reactions influence how students bond to their schools. Furthermore, we do not know how the process of maintaining discipline and security varies across different groups of students. Improving the efficiency, fairness, and effectiveness of crime prevention in schools requires that we address these issues. The proposed research project, School Discipline and Security: Maintaining Safety and Legitimacy, investigates how school discipline and security are exercised in contemporary high schools, and how students and staff experience this security regime. In particular, the project asks the following questions: 1) To what extent do students and staff perceive school discipline and security to be fair?, 2) Do student perceptions of school discipline vary by race/ethnicity and socio-economic status?, and 3) Does the process of maintaining school safety alienate students from participating in school activities? The project entails a three-part data collection strategy in order to compare school discipline and security in schools where a majority of students are white and middle-class, to schools where a majority of students are non-white and lower-class. Comparisons will be made both across demographically diverse schools, and across groups of students within each school. Part one includes observations of student-staff interactions (including student-police officer, student-administrator, and student-teacher). Part two includes interviews with a sample of 100 students, parents, teachers, school administrators, and school security staff. Part three includes a survey of approximately 2,000 high school students. All research will be completed in two schools within Maricopa County, Arizona, and two schools within New Castle County, Delaware. Data will be analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. This project addresses theoretically important yet unresolved issues and debates about how youth are policed and punished. It offers an opportunity to test theories about procedural justice, which argue that how rules are enforced may be more important in shaping perceptions of fairness than what the rules are. Additionally, though prior studies demonstrate that racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to be disciplined in school than white students, it is unclear how recently emerging school security practices are enforced across demographically diverse schools, or whether they are experienced differently across students within schools. Further, this project promises to have a broad and beneficial practical impact. As prior research shows, students are more likely to follow school rules if they believe these rules are legitimate and fairly enforced; by studying how students perceive school rules, this project can contribute directly to schools efforts to maintain fair, and consequentially safe, learning environments. Additionally, since the project will compare school discipline and security across majority white, middle-class areas and majority non-white, lower-class areas, the results can be used to improve how disadvantaged students are treated within schools (and thus possibly reducing dropout rates among minority youth). Furthermore, the research will provide new opportunities to train and mentor graduate students.