Is the employment of school resource officers in high schools associated with Black girls’ discipline outcomes?

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years, the media has highlighted the disrespectful and sometimes violent manner in which SROs respond to Black girls’ behaviors. Few studies question how SROs in schools might influence traditional school discipline outcomes such as suspensions for a double minoritized group (race and gender) such as Black girls. Leaning on the Black feminist framework of Intersectionality and QuantCrit and using the most recent data from the Office of Civil Rights (2017–2018) the present study examined if there was an association between a SRO’s employment in a school and Black girls’ risk of receiving an in-school or out-of-school suspension. The findings indicate that for Black girls, their exposure to an SRO was greatest at urban schools and schools with a racially/ethnically diverse student demographic, and the presence of an SRO was associated with an increase in out-of-school and in-school suspensions for Black girls.