Abstract

Excerpted From: Michael Heise, Racial Isolation, School Police, and the “School-to-Prison Pipeline”: An Empirical Perspective on the Enduring Salience of “Tipping Points”, 71 Buffalo Law Review 163 (April, 2023) (137 Footnotes) (Full Document)

Two trends help shape the nation's public K-12 landscape. First, even though more than sixty-five years have passed since the Supreme Court's Brown decision in 1954, racial isolation in public schools, especially “intensive” racial isolation, not only persists but, of late, continues to rise. School racial isolation levels continue to rise despite widespread general agreement about the potential educational harms that attach to non-white students attending racially isolated schools. These educational harms to students are especially acute in those schools where racial isolation and socioeconomic deficits interact.

A second trend, and one independent of (though adjacent to) increased school racial isolation levels, involves a steadily increasing law enforcement officer presence, commonly referred to as either school resource officers or, more simply, police officers (“SRO/police”) in the nation's public K-12 schools. An increased SRO/police presence in schools consistently correlates with schools' increased rate of reporting to law enforcement agencies incident to student misconduct. Schools' increased propensity to formally engage law enforcement in student disciplinary matters, in turn, helps fuel a well-documented school-to-prison pipeline.

The emergence of a (growing) school-to-prison pipeline matters for an array of reasons. One negative spillover cost involves students' enhanced exposure to the criminal justice system that may flow from changes to a school's student disciplinary reporting practices. This is particularly likely for students attending schools seeking to functionally outsource responsibility for student discipline to law enforcement agencies. Making matters worse is that school referrals of student disciplinary incidents to law enforcement-- particularly lower-level, non-violent student incidents traditionally handled “in-house”--often set in motion a series of legal events that can culminate in ways that deleteriously impact students' lives going forward. Given the gravity of such costs to students, their families, schools, and communities, another line of research focuses on how these costs distribute across various student subgroups.

What the research literature does not consider, however, is whether and, if so, how these two trends intersect. This Article contributes to the research base by exploring whether school racial isolation itself contributes to a growing school-to-prison pipeline problem. More specifically, this Article considers whether variation in school racial isolation levels informs a well-documented relation between increases in a school's SRO/police presence and increases in the school's likelihood of engaging law enforcement agencies in student disciplinary matters. Overall, the weight of the findings from this study (with one important exception) implies that school racial isolation levels do not figure prominently in explaining systematic variation in how a school's law enforcement presence interacts with the school's reporting rates. Thus, leaving aside an array of other problems associated with school racial isolation, results from this study suggest that, in general, variation in school racial isolation levels does not exacerbate a school-to-prison pipeline problem.

While results from this study suggest that variation in school racial isolation does not fuel a school-to-prison pipeline problem in general, one important exception exists and this exception warrants careful attention. Specifically, the results also make clear that in schools where the nonwhite student presence ranges from 11% to 50% the magnitude of a school's SRO/police presence systematically informs the school's propensity to turn to law enforcement in the student disciplinary context. This particular school racial isolation band (11% to 50% non-white) is notable for two reasons. First, it includes schools whose student demographic composition evidences a consequential level of racial (and ethnic) heterogeneity. Second, the percent of nonwhite students in these schools does not exceed 50%. That is to say, none of the schools in this particular racial isolation band are “majority-minority.”

What might help explain this particular school racial isolation band's salience for a school's propensity to engage law enforcement agencies for student disciplinary matters? While obvious explanations are scant, insights from the “tipping point” research literature provide important theoretical and practical clues. For example, one may find in schools that are racially heterogeneous but have not yet “tipped” into majority-minority (that is, majority non-white) status comparatively higher levels of student racial tension and school discord. This possibility is especially likely in schools with either unstable or especially dynamic student demographic profiles. Such schools may be especially inclined to respond to tensions and discord--and, concurrently, look for ways to help dampen school demographic changes trending toward a real or perceived tipping point--by more aggressively and pervasively engaging SRO/police and law enforcement agencies in student disciplinary matters.

[. . .]

The nation's public K-12 schools continue to trend toward increased racial and economic isolation. Many school desegregation advocates point to various educational ills and diminished opportunities exacerbated in racially isolated schools, especially for schools that are overwhelmingly nonwhite. Costs to students are often compounded when a school's racial isolation interacts with a concentration of students from low-income households.

Concurrent with public K-12 schools becoming increasingly racially and economically isolated is a growing SRO/police presence in public schools. For example, during the 2009-10 school year, 36% of public schools reported a regular SRO/police presence in their schools. By the 2017- 18 school year, more than half (54%) of schools reported a regular SRO/police presence. This ever-increasing SRO/police presence in schools is important as research has consistently found that a SRO/police presence in schools and the magnitude of that presence correspond with the school's propensity to report student discipline matters to law enforcement agencies. And increased school reporting of student disciplinary matters to law enforcement agencies, in turn, helps fuel a school-to-prison-pipeline. The individual-, familial-, and community-level costs generated by students' increased exposure to the criminal justice system are obvious.

Far less obvious, however, and largely ignored in the academic literatures, is whether school racial isolation level variation itself informs how a school's SRO/police presence functions. Results from this study point in two slightly divergent directions. On one hand, the weight of results in Tables 3 and 4 can be plausibly understood to suggest that variation in the magnitude of schools' SRO/police presence, on balance, does not systematically inform schools' law enforcement report rates across the four models. If so, then among the array of educational ills that school desegregation advocates suggest flow from school racial isolation, the negative consequences attributable to a school's SRO/police presence do not generally appear to be among the list of ills attributable to school racial isolation.

On the other hand, however, results for Model 2 hint at something systematically different for those schools where the non-white student percentage ranges from 11% to 50%, as increases in a school's SRO/police presence correspond with concurrent increases in the school's law enforcement report rate. Thus, for this particular school racial isolation band, the magnitude of a school's SRO/police presence matters as it bears on a school's likelihood of reporting student misconduct incidents to law enforcement agencies. To be clear, results from this study do not necessarily imply that this cost can be properly ascribed to an increase in any particular school's racial isolation level. Rather, the results suggest that for only this particular school racial isolation band did the magnitude of a school's SRO/police presence systematically matter for school law enforcement reporting.

Why did schools where the non-white student presence ranged from 11% to 50% behave differently when it came to their SRO/police presence? One possible explanation levers school tipping point research. The school tipping point literature implies that one would expect to find comparatively higher levels of racial tension and school-level discord in a school where the non-white student percentage trends toward or hovers somewhere near--though just below--the school's tipping point. To better manage such tensions and discord and, concurrently, to help dampen school demographic changes trending toward a school's tipping point, these schools, with assistance from their SRO/police, were comparatively more inclined to engage law enforcement agencies in student discipline matters. Results from Tables 3 and 4 are not inconsistent with this explanation and identify one additional cost attributable to the ever-changing racial composition of the nation's K-12 public schools. While results from this study suggest that variation in school racial isolation does not fuel a school-to-prison pipeline problem in general, the one important exception--plausibly attributable to concerns about tipping points--identifies another way in which a school's racial composition can matter.

William G. McRoberts Professor in the Empirical Study of Law, Cornell Law School.