csba at issue

By Patricia Campie & Anthony Peguero
Improving student safety and academic outcomes in California schools

New study shows the need for community-driven solutions

T

he Research on Lowering Violence in Schools and Communities (ReSOLV) study has released results from its nine-year investigation of the associations between school safety and student outcomes with community and school-based risk and protective factors.

The two goals of the study were to:

  1. Help schools understand how risk and need factors in the community influence student engagement and outcomes in school, while helping community leaders understand how violence prevention efforts in the community may benefit educational outcomes for youth, which in turn can prevent future violence.
  2. Provide insights on building the readiness for individuals, organizations and the broader community to work together to address violence and safety issues using inclusive, equitable and comprehensive strategies that are rooted in evidence of effectiveness.

Researchers hypothesized that schools operate within a broader ecological framework and that risk factors in the community can negatively affect student and school outcomes if schools are not actively working to recognize and mitigate these influences.

illustrations depicting physical safety, social support, and emotional support adding up to school safety
Results from data collected between 2014 and 2022 confirmed this hypothesis. Within school attendance boundaries, the study found that crime and concentrated disadvantage — a collection of census-defined measures of poverty, single parent head of household and other measures — had a negative influence on student and school-level outcomes, including higher chronic absenteeism rates, lower graduation rates, higher suspension rates and lower percentages of students scoring at or above the median on standardized test results for English language arts and math. These results were strongly significant.

The study also found that these community risk factors explained school and student outcomes much better than did measures of the internal school climate, including feelings of safety, relationships, engagement and learning supports. And school climate was universally worse in schools surrounded by the greatest amount of community risk and need.

illustrations depicting, greater crime and concentrated disadvantage equaling lower test scores and higher absenteeism

The study also found that these community risk factors explained school and student outcomes much better than did measures of the internal school climate, including feelings of safety, relationships, engagement and learning supports.

The results from ReSOLV make clear that while it is necessary to improve school climate, instructional quality and provide students, staff and parents with safe and supportive conditions within schools, it is not sufficient to simply “fix schools” in otherwise disadvantaged areas and expect to produce better safety and educational outcomes. In other words, to create safe and supportive learning environments within schools, equal attention must be paid to creating safe and supportive living environments using equitable strategies that engage a broader set of stakeholders.

To this end, ReSOLV has developed an alternative response model for organizing school and community collective action. The model is forthcoming in the Journal of School Violence. The ReSOLV model aims to create more effective and equitable solutions that are specific to each community’s unique context, while providing a unified approach that any community can use to organize, manage and assess the way they are working to address school safety and violence prevention priorities. In theory, the model can be used by communities as an inclusive and proactive tool for democratizing decision making and increasing equity when adopting safety and violence prevention practices.

Dr. Patricia Campie, Ph.D., is a principal researcher at American Institutes for Research. Her research interests involve evidence and evaluation capacity building to prevent violence and armed conflict in the U.S. and abroad.

Dr. Anthony Peguero, Ph.D., is a professor of Criminology & Sociology at Arizona State University. His research interests involve youth violence and school safety. Dr. Peguero is a member of Latina/o/x Criminology and Racial Democracy, Crime, and Justice Network and which hold the goals of advancing research on the intersection of race, crime, equity, and justice.

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