Date of Award

Summer 2022

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Educational Leadership and Policies

First Advisor

Spencer Platt

Abstract

The school policing literature has two major themes: (a) the negative safety outcomes of school safety (Gottfredson et al., 2020) and (b) the central role that school police play in placing Black students into the school-to-prison-nexus (Morris, 2016; Turner & Beneke, 2020). The study of school police roles, how school police interact with educators, and the safety effects of school police presence is important. Just as important is knowing the mental health effects of physical and nonphysical school policing behaviors on Black students. This dissertation sought to fill this gap in part by studying the relationship between school police behaviors and the depressive symptoms experienced by Black students by using Wave 15 data from the Fragile Families & Child Wellbeing Study. Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2 were (H1a) that physical school policing behaviors would lead to depressive symptoms in Black students, and (H2a) that nonphysical school policing behaviors would lead to depressive symptoms in Black students Though notable relationships were found with these two hypotheses, there was not enough evidence to provide statistically significant results that supported Hypotheses 1a, 1b, 2a, and 2b. Additionally, these results did not provide statistically significant results that aligned with racial battle fatigue theory (Smith et al., 2016), because the results were statistically nonsignificant. In my discussion section, I speak to parents and educators. I also speak about the results in terms of educational histories and white fear. Finally, I conclude by discussing the results in terms of the Spring Valley High School policing assault in 2015.

Rights

© 2022, Collin Perryman

Download

Share

COinS