Community or School Climate: What Matters For Student Safety and Academic Outcomes?

• In Event: Types of Places: Schools, Parks and Unique Hot Spots

Abstract

In this study, we examine how the ecology of risk and protective factors within communities and schools influence the safety and educational outcomes of students. On the one hand, community violence researchers often highlight concentrated disadvantage, crime, and arrests as the root causes of violence within schools. On the other hand, school violence researchers focus on school organizational functioning and climate as the key factors associated within violence within schools. There is limited research, however, about how community need, assets, and spaces that are structurally vulnerable are contributing to school climate and in turn associated student outcomes. Specifically, we use six years of community and school data (SYs 2014–2020) from the Los Angeles, California (LAUSD) Local District South Region to understand and assess the community factors that influence a school’s ability to sustain a safe and supportive school climate for their students. While we find that neighborhood assets, needs, and risks mediate school climate and student outcomes, including safety, there are important contextual nuances that attend study findings. We discuss these results and implications for integrating community context analysis into school safety research and practice.

Authors

• Patricia Campie, The Genoa Group

• Anthony Peguero, Arizona State University

• Roger Jarjoura, American Institutes for Research