Dive Brief:

• A recent analysis of the latest Civil Rights Data Collection survey by the Council of Economic Advisors takes a closer look at the finding that 1.6 million students attend schools with police but no counselors, Education Week reports.
• According to the data, black and Latino students are more likely to attend schools where this is the case, and Latino students are more likely than their black and white peers to attend schools that don’t have a police officer or a counselor, while white students are most likely to go to schools that have counselors and no police.
• A White House blog post connects these statistics with data about how black and Latino students are among those disproportionately meted out exclusionary discipline, which, in turn, places them at a greater likelihood of coming into contact with the criminal justice system.

Dive Insight:

The presence of resource officers in schools has drawn a fair amount of criticism in recent years, fueled by video evidence of excessive force by these officers in classrooms and research that connects their presence with the school-to-prison pipeline. While the racial and ethnic disparities present in the distribution of school resource officers is not surprising, it is sure to cause some level of self-reflection as schools continue to re-think disciplinary policies that have a disproportionate impact on certain populations.

The Obama administration in September released new recommendations to guide school partnerships with police departments that station officers in school buildings. One of the recommendations is to send school-based officers through training about implicit bias and child development. Another is to formalize the partnership with written expectations and accountability plans.