A hierarchical approach to examine long-term consequences of educational security policies

Citation

Kapa, Ryan Robert (2018). A hierarchical approach to examine long-term consequences of educational security policies.

Abstract

In response to escalating concerns of school safety over recent decades, educational leaders are under pressure to decipher and implement a rapidly growing number of educational security policies in P-12 schools. Exclusionary discipline and hardened methods, such as surveillance, have been increasingly popular approaches for reducing the occurrences of misbehavior, violence, and crime by students. Within the extant scholarship, however, research findings indicate students suffer from the widespread adoption of such school criminalization methods. These negative experiences manifest in a myriad of ways, including disproportionate rates of suspension and expulsion for minority students, a loss of students' rights, and decreased parental involvement. While researchers have investigated some negative outcomes, there is a lack of empirical evidence generated from a complex analytic approach concerning educational security policies and educational attainment. Researchers have examined some long-term consequences of school criminalization, such as an increased involvement with the criminal justice system. Inquiry, however, should ascertain its relationship with occupational prestige and fiscal realization. To examine this gap in the current scholarship, I employ Hirschfield's theory of school criminalization to examine the association between educational security policies at the individual- and school-level and educational attainment, occupational prestige, and fiscal realization. I analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to explore the association between school criminalization at the individual- and school-levels. I utilized multilevel modeling to assess these relationships. Findings report experiences at the individual-level, related to suspension and expulsion, and at the school-level, related to school resource officers, student identification badges, and bars and/or locked doors were negatively associated with long-term educational gains. In relation to occupational and fiscal realization, only experiences with school criminalization at the individual-level were associated with the outcome variables occupational prestige and fiscal realization. Recommendations from these findings for policy makers, practitioners, and researchers are detailed. I acknowledge limitations of the present study, and propose foci for future investigation.

URL

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1524205424220039

Keyword(s)

Educational security policies, multilevel modeling

Reference Type

Thesis/Dissertation

Author(s)

Kapa, Ryan Robert

Series Author(s)

Gimbert, Belinda

Year Published

2018

Pages

202

Publisher

Ohio State University

Reference ID

8390