UC Irvine

This dissertation examines various facets of school climate and discipline in three studies. In Study 1, I look at racial disproportionalities in student arrests, particularly with school police presence. This study extends Homer and Fisher’s (2020) work, which finds higher arrest rates and stronger effects of police presence for Black than White students across schools, by investigating school racial compositions and context factors that are associated with the strongest relationships between police presence and higher arrest rates of Black than White students. Results show the largest within-school arrest rate differences between Black and White students in high schools with officers and that schools with lower Black student enrollment percentages show larger Black-White student arrest gaps. In Study 2, I examine the relationship between student discipline receipt and student socioemotional outcomes among elementary school students in a large urban school district from 2016-17 to 2018-19. Results show that students who were disciplined 30 days before they took a socioemotional survey reported lower a sense of belonging at school that was more than half a standard deviation lower than students who were disciplined in the 30 days after they took the survey. In contrast, there were no significant differences in students’ knowledge and perception of rules. Results also suggest that the effect of discipline on students’ sense of belonging may be most acute closer to the disciplinary incident. In Study 3, I examine the relationship between restorative justice practices and student socioemotional outcomes across elementary, middle, and high schools in a large southern California school district. Using school climate survey data on students’ sense of belonging and knowledge and perception of rules, this chapter assesses how such student sentiments change with increasing restorative practice rates in schools. I find evidence that students' sense of belonging and knowledge and perception of rules differ based on school level. These findings suggest that restorative justice practices can show diverging results based on students’ age and developmental stages and that such differences could be taken into account for improved student outcomes.