The Dangerous Illusion of School Safety

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 4:15 pm - Gold 1
  In Roundtable Session: The role of Policy and Law in Shaping Solutions to Problem of Practice in Schooling

Abstract

This Articles explores a paradoxical yet potent mechanism of contemporary racial segregation within majority-minority-schools: the nature of perceived, rather than actual, threats of disruption and violence posed by students. When schools respond to perceived threats, they compromise, instead of enhancing, school safety for students. And when racial inequality is driven by mechanisms of policing, students are left to navigate racially-isolated environments in which they are viewed as threats. In such settings, the promise of equal educational opportunity remains elusive. Nonetheless, this Article unsettles the prevailing justifications for policing as a key measure of school safety. It offers one of the first mixed-methods empirical analyses of how the policing of perceived threats undermine school safety by intensifying segregation and its racially-segregative effect.

Author

• Terry Allen, Ph.D., J.D., USC Gould School of Law