School—Police Partnership Effectiveness in Urban Schools: An Analysis of New York City's Impact Schools Initiative

Abstract

Despite nationwide decreases in school crime and violence, a relatively high and increasing number of students report feeling unsafe at school. In response, some school officials are implementing school—police partnerships, especially in urban areas, as an effort to deter criminal activity and violence in schools. This article examines the initial effect of New York City's Impact Schools Initiative, a punitive-based school—police partnership developed in January 2004 that increases police presence at some of the city's most dangerous public schools. An initial examination of school-level demographic and environmental variables reveals that, despite increased police presence, students enrolled at New York City's impact schools continue to experience higher than average problems linked directly to future criminality, including more student suspensions and lower attendance rates than other New York City Schools. The data also reveal that relative to other New York City public schools, impact schools are more crowded and receive less funding.

Visible School Security Measures and Student Academic Performance, Attendance, and Postsecondary Aspirations

“…Although findings across the two survey sources were not entirely convergent, taken together, they provide no evidence that visible security measures have consistent beneficial effects on adolescents' academic outcomes, and indeed, that certain security utilization patterns may have modest detrimental effects on academic outcomes (even after controlling for a range of other potential confounding variables). Overall, these results are consistent with prior evidence that visible security measures, particularly the presence of security personnel, may be negatively related to adolescents' academic performance and/or attendance (Brady et al 2007). Although this study focused specifically on outcomes related to adolescents' academic outcomes, these results parallel recent findings that indicate visible security measures may also be related to worse student behavior outcomes such as delinquency and victimization (Na and Gottfredson 2013;Tanner-Smith et al 2015) In the administrator-reported survey data, most of the observed detrimental effects on adolescents' academic outcomes were driven by a small group of roughly 100 schools that utilized all three types of security measures.…”

“…Although there has been increased federal funding for school security measures in recent years (The White House 2013), there is a notable lack of rigorous empirical research that has examined the effects of visible security measures on adolescents' academic success (Addington 2009;Fletcher et al 2008;Hankin et al 2011). Among the few studies that have examined how visible school security measures are associated with adolescents' academic success, findings have been inconsistent, including positive effects (Link 2010), negative effects (Brady et al 2007), or no evidence of an effect (Coon 2004;Peguero and Bracy 2015;Rogers 2004). However, most prior research studies have focused on only one type of security measure at a time (e.g., security personnel), have failed to explore possible moderators of any observed effects, and/or used weak correlational research designs that do not permit causal inferences.…”

“…Indeed, the limited research on this topic has largely focused on behavioral outcomes like arrests, weapon charges, and drug use (e.g., Jackson 2002;Na and Gottfredson 2013;Theriot 2009) with surprisingly little focus on adolescents' academic outcomes. One notable exception was a quasi-experimental evaluation of the New York City's Impact Schools program (Brady et al 2007), which found that schools with an increased police presence fared worse than comparison schools on school attendance rates as well as the proportion of students reading at grade level, at grade level for math, taking the SAT, and dropping out of school. However, the authors noted that these negative program effects might have been due to the lack of baseline equivalence between the program and comparison schools, so it is unclear whether these findings accurately depict the effect of school security personnel on adolescents' academic success.…”

School Resource Officers and Exclusionary Discipline in U.S. High Schools: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

“…Second, there had to be clear evidence that at least one SRO (not a non-SRO police officer or private security guard) was present at the school. The models of involvement of non-SRO security personnel in schools are often quite different from those of SROs (see, for example, Brady et al 2007). Third, the report had to provide information for analytical comparison.…”

School Resource Officers

“…Whereas police and security officers in schools were not new phenomenon, school resource officers within schools had become the fastest growing law enforcement field (Brady, Balmer, & Phenix, 2007). School resource officers in schools received training specific to educational settings.…”