Impact of School Police Reform on Student Safety and School Experiences, California, 2017-2022 (ICPSR 39454)

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Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose

The purpose of this study was to document and disseminate rigorous research on the impact of school police reform on student safety, behavior, and well-being. The goal of the study was to fill a critical gap in the current empirical literature on school police as documented by National Institute of Justice's (NIJ) 2022 report to Congress on school policing programs, specifically the recommendation that "funded research should focus on better understanding what impacts the removal of police from schools might have on students, schools, and communities at large."

The study had four objectives. The first objective was to document school police policy changes across the top 100 school districts in California by school enrollment. The second objective was to apply rigorous quasi-experimental methods to evaluate the impact of school police policy changes resulting in the removal of school police on student safety, behavior, and well-being and disciplinary outcomes. The third objective was to contextualize the findings through a purposeful sampling of school district and police leadership to document the reasons for local policy changes related to school police and the perceived impact of the reform on the school district community. The fourth and final objective was to disseminate the findings from the study to a broad set of stakeholders through several mediums (e.g., webinars, briefs, blogs, journals, conferences) to ensure findings are useful and accessible to professional and academic audiences.

Study Design View help for Study Design

This study included an impact study and an implementation study. The impact study applied quasi-experimental techniques to assess the effects of school police policy changes, focusing on student safety, behavior, well-being, and discipline. The qualitative implementation study supplemented the impact study, using a case study approach within two districts that differed in their implementation of policy changes resulting in police removal from schools.

Impact and Exploratory Study

Researchers sampled the top 100 school districts in California, based on student enrollment, and limited the sample to traditional grades 6/7-8 middle schools and grades 9-12 high schools. The top 100 districts in the state represented over 50 percent of the total student enrollment in the state and allowed the research team to focus on a similar initial sample of school districts. The sample was limited to traditional middle and high schools given the prevalence of student safety and disciplinary incidents and presence of school police are greatest among these schools relative to elementary schools. Within this initial sample, WestEd matched schools where district school police policy changes resulted in removing school police with schools in districts where school police were not removed based on school and student characteristics using Euclidean distance matching. The quasi-experimental design (QED) examined changes in student outcomes between the baseline 2018-19 and 2021-22 school years.

The research team utilized a list compiled by Education Week to identify school districts that ended their contracts with school police officers or disbanded their own police department during the 2019-20 or 2020-21 school years. They then conducted an environmental scan and combed through news articles and district websites as well as called and emailed school and district staff to finalize the treatment and comparison groups. This resulted in seven treatment districts, 79 potential comparison districts, and eight districts that were excluded from the study. The eight school districts were removed from the study because: (a) the school districts removed school police but then restored them during study's time period (i.e., the 2019-20, 2020-21, and 2021-22 school years); (b) Los Angeles Unified School District and San Diego Unified School District were excluded from the study because, as the two largest districts in California, they are anomalies and would be difficult to find matched comparison schools for outside of these districts; or (c) the school district never implemented school police.

Using this initial list of school districts to potentially include in the study, the study team worked to identify the study's sample of schools. The two inclusion criteria were, schools were traditional middle or high schools, and the schools had school enrollment and outcome data from the baseline and outcome years. As a result, 394 schools (60 treatment schools from 6 treatment districts and 334 potential comparison schools from 40 districts) were included in matching process.

Implementation Study

The implementation study employed interviews to gather examples from the field and insights into the districts' experiences following policy decisions regarding school police. To select districts to interview, WestEd calculated for each of the treatment and comparison schools their average change scores for each of the impact study's outcomes. Then for each of the outcome measures, WestEd identified the top five schools with the largest change scores in the favorable direction (e.g., biggest decreases in violence victimization) and the top five schools with the largest change scores in the adverse direction (e.g., biggest decreases in caring staff-student relationships). WestEd identified an initial set of treatment and comparison districts with schools that demonstrated both favorable and adverse changes as the initial group of districts to conduct outreach for the interviews. This sampling approach ensured that selection of treatment and comparison districts for the implementation study was not biased.

From fall 2024 to winter 2025, WestEd reached out to school and district staff from treatment and comparison districts via email and phone calls to invite their participation in interviews. WestEd identified these staff by searching district websites for staff who worked in the areas of school safety, student discipline, restorative justice, and student support services. The virtual interviews ranged from 30 to 60 minutes and were conducted between October 2024 to February 2025. At the end of each interview, WestEd asked the interviewee if they had any recommendations for additional district staff who could potentially speak about the study's topic areas.

Sample View help for Sample

The quasi-experimental design study sampled from the top 100 school districts across California, by student enrollment, and limited the school sample to traditional grades 6-8 middle schools and 9-12 high schools. For the implementation study, the research team contacted district staff from five school districts (2 treatment districts and 3 comparison districts). After multiple outreach attempts, staff from two school districts (one treatment and one comparison district) agreed to participate in interviews. The final interview sample included two comparison district staff and six treatment district staff.

Time Method View help for Time Method

Universe View help for Universe

District and school administrators and high school students in California

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Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables

The study is a combination of public and restricted release, which included both qualitative and quantitative data.

DS1 is the quantitative data that will be released publicly, and contained 15 variables with numeric responses. DS1 included descriptive variables such as whether schools retained or removed school police, the baseline of percentages of students suspended from in the year 2018-2019, school stability rate, and the baseline percentage of African Americans in schools between 2018-2019. Additionally, there were no demographic variables in the dataset.

The Interview Data (DS2) was observer notes with direct quotes from participants.

Presence of Common Scales View help for Presence of Common Scales

The study used the California School Climate, Health, and Learning Surveys' (CalSCHLS) California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) to examine the following constructs:

safety (violence victimization scale and harassment/bullying victimization scale)

behavior (substance use scale and delinquency scale)

well-being (school connectedness scale, caring staff-student relationships scale, student meaningful participation scale, and academic motivation scale).

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Original Release Date View help for Original Release Date

2026-07-16

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