A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Assaults on Children by Police in School Settings

• In Event: Structural Racism and School Discipline: Replicating the Racialized Hierarchy Through Coercion and Control

Abstract

In a project known as the #AssaultAt Map, the Advancement Project and the Alliance for Educational Justice have collected and mapped publicly reported incidents of school police assaults on students during the period 2007 to 2022: Over 200 such incidents have been categorized. To this point, the incidents have been treated as qualitative narratives, each telling the story of a specific reported assault. In 2022, we began a quantitative analysis, in conjunction with the University Alliance for Educational Justice at Indiana University, of the incidents in the data base. Each case was coded for region and demographics where the assault took place, the type of assault, characteristics of the student being assaulted and of the school police involved in the assault, consequences to the assaultee and assaulter, and media coverage of the event. This presentation will focus on both the quantitative and qualitative findings of the project, indicating that, far from keeping schools safe, SROs and other police in schools present a threat to students, in particular students of color.

Explicit links to the general focus of the session and 2023 theme: Naming injustice is complex. A purely quantitative emphasis can be bloodless, and open to the critique that the data “do not represent the situation in my school.” On the other hand, a focus only on narrative begs the question whether individual cases are truly generalizable. By approaching this unique data set from a mixed method perspective, these data provide the opportunity to more precisely call out the clear and consistent harms created by the presence of school police, increasing the urgency of freeing schools from the discriminatory effects of this form of coercive disciplining.

Authors

• Tyler Whittenberg, Advancement Project
  Presenting Author

• Angela Groves, Advancement Project
  Presenting Author

• Britany Beauchesne, Indiana University
  Presenting Author

• Russell J. Skiba, Indiana University
  Presenting Author