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Steep Decline in Day-to-Day School Violence UCLA study of more than 6 million students during an 18-year period finds welcome school safety news amid outburst of mass shootings

Mass shootings at schools in the United States continue to make headlines, terrifying students, parents, educators and communities. Yet groundbreaking new research shows that, during the two decades prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a steep and steady reduction in serious forms of violence, including bullying and weapon-related behaviors, across California’s middle and high school campuses.

The overall improvement in campus climate is welcome news for families concerned about sending their children to a safe environment, and it suggests that eruptions of gun violence should be treated as a separate social and psychological phenomenon, said UCLA scholar Ron Avi Astor, co-author of the study published this week in the World Journal of Pediatrics.

“Each school shooting is a devastating act that terrorizes the nation, and there is a growing sense in the public that little has changed in two decades to make schools safe,” Astor said. “But mass shootings are just one part of this story. Overall, on a day-to-day basis for most students, American schools are safer than they’ve been for many decades.”

Astor is a professor of social welfare and education at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. Using data from the confidential California Healthy Kids Survey, he and co-authors Rami Benbenishty of Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ilan Roziner of the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University analyzed responses from more than 6 million middle and high school students from 2001 to 2019.

“During the 18-year period examined, California secondary schools had massive reductions in all forms of victimization,” including physical threats with or without weapons, verbal and psychological abuse, and property offenses, the authors wrote. Noteworthy findings include:

  • a 56% reduction in physical fights
  • a 70% reduction in reports of carrying a gun onto school grounds, and a 68% reduction in bringing other weapons, such as a knife, to school
  • a 59% reduction in being threatened by a weapon on school grounds
  • and larger declines in victimization reported by Black and Latino students compared to white students

“These findings were evident in more than 95% of California schools, in every county, and not in wealthy suburban schools only,” Astor said.

Over time, students’ sense of safety and belonging at schools rose steadily, the study found. Astor attributed the improvement in campus climate to new policies, stepped-up resources and community efforts prioritizing the development of emotional maturity in youth.

The authors noted that the study covered the period before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools across the country, which may have triggered some mental health issues and outbursts of violence.

“It is important to learn from the policies and interventions that have helped reduce school violence in the last two decades to face these new challenges,” the authors wrote.

The Young and Mighty LPPI

Research centers are born for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, it’s just the right thing for a public research institution like UCLA to do. In the case of the Latino Policy and Politics Institute (formerly Initiative), “it was the single-biggest missing element in the School,” said Gary Segura, who co-founded LPPI soon after he became dean at UCLA Luskin in 2017. “We were a school of public affairs in a state that is 43-44% Latino, and we didn’t have any faculty expertise focused on that area.” Learn more about LPPI, which has attained funding of $13.5 million in just five years of existence,  from its founding director, a current student fellow and an alumna whose time with LPPI has proven crucial to her career.

Sonja Diaz MPP ’10, founding director of LPPI

What are you working on now?

A U.S. Latino data hub will create a portal for the first time of taking government data and disaggregating it by Latino subgroups. So, you’ll get a sense of the differences between Cubans in Florida and Puerto Ricans in Florida. And that, frankly, hasn’t been done across a number of indicators, from housing to the environment to voter registration. The second big project is a summit, and we’re trying to create a programmatic nexus between our scholars, our staff and our different policymaking audiences, lawmakers and researchers who need the support to have a Latino lens. We’re hoping to convene people in Washington, D.C., and establish a national presence for LPPI.

How did your directorship at LPPI come about and what has it meant for you personally?

I was leaving a position with a statewide constitutional officer at a time when we expected a different outcome from our 2016 U.S. presidential election. And it made sense for me to look at UCLA, which is personal to me and my family. My father received a Ph.D. in urban planning here when I was a toddler. Some of his faculty are my colleagues today. And in that way, it’s been one continuous line. What I didn’t expect was to be given the opportunity to marry policy and research. 

Now, after being on this job for a number of years, I am recognizing the impact that we’ve had, not only in the students that have walked through our doors, and even our staff colleagues, but to our community members. It has been mind-blowing. 

Recent successes of note?

Two things happened in ’20-21 that I think were so important for LPPI, but also for the Latino community writ large. The first was our work to advance full representation of Latino politicians to an important body, which is the U.S. Senate. And that was cemented with Gov. [Gavin] Newsom’s appointment of now-Sen. Alex Padilla, the first Latino in over 170 years to occupy that office.

The second thing, and this was happening at the same time, was providing a data lens to the COVID vaccine policy in the state of California that, in many ways, had disenfranchised youthful racial minorities, including Latinos, in the face of the evisceration of Latino households during COVID-19. And our work with over 40 community organizations, based on our data analysis, really changed course for the state and made it so it wasn’t just wealthy and older Californians who had access to the vaccine, but the hardest-hit communities that were working on the front lines.

Bryanna Ruiz Fernandez, an LPPI student fellow who majored in political science and minored in public affairs and Chicano/a studies and who will join the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a policy fellow after graduation

Talk about yourself, your role at LPPI and your future plans.

I am a proud product of immigrants. I come from a mixed-status household. We are from a border town, El Centro, California. I actually grew up in Mexico for part of my childhood, until I was around 8 years old. And then we immigrated to the United States. Spanish is actually my language of birth. And my mom, just recently, I was able to sponsor her for residency, for her green card.

She just became a U.S. resident, and it was a huge deal for the family because of the laws that can be discriminatory and negatively impact one’s life. 

And my dad is in the process. 

I understand immigration policy firsthand, and when it’s not properly researched by people with firsthand experience or who are culturally competent, what kind of impact it can have on communities of color, like my family.

I feel very fortunate to have been a fellow for LPPI for, basically, my entire undergraduate career.

In the classroom, I was learning methods and these broad concepts, but I didn’t really understand, especially as a first-generation college student, how that applies to the real world.

As a fellow, I was able to work with UCLA faculty. I was able to see firsthand how they conduct research, how they write reports. And on the other hand, I was also able to see how that research needs to be amplified. Because if we’re doing research and no one knows about it, then what impact is it actually having?

woman with short hair smiles broadly

MPP and MSW alumna Gabriela Solis Torres

Gabriela Solis Torres, MPP and MSW ’19, a founding student fellow at LPPI who now works as a project leader for the Harvard Kennedy School’s Government Performance Lab in Houston, Texas

Please explain your work.

We’re a research and technical assistance organization that provides support to governments who are pursuing ways to combat some of the most complex social challenges. That’s things like trying to reform the criminal justice system or the child welfare system, or trying to address homelessness.

A lot of things have changed because of the pandemic. But a big change in my work came after the murder of George Floyd. Harris County, where Houston is, and a lot of other jurisdictions across the United States started thinking about what their policing looks like and really started exploring, I think, more seriously the alternatives to their emergency response approach.

And now I’m leading our portfolio for alternatives. I provide technical assistance to five jurisdictions across the United States that are implementing alternatives such as sending unarmed teams to 9-1-1 calls. 

Did your experience with LPPI have a direct relationship to what you do now?

For me, I think it really opened my worldview. I came into the Luskin School from a direct service background. I was a case manager doing outreach with folks who were homeless in Venice and Venice Beach, and I thought I wanted to be a clinician. I was going to school to study social work and learn to do therapy.

But I was thinking too much of the macro, always complaining about the rules and the limitations. And I was advised to get a public policy degree. And I didn’t really know anything about public policy. I think being at Luskin and then participating in LPPI really changed my worldview and my whole career track completely.

I like working directly with governments. I grew up in East Los Angeles. I’m first in my family to go to college and have a professional job. My dad used to work in a factory. My mom was a stay-at-home mother. And I had no access to professional spaces. 

Another thing has to do with access. I had never really talked to anyone who was an official, and LPPI was my first exposure to people who had a lot of power or influence. 

I remember when I first came to UCLA Luskin and received the Monica Salinas Fellowship, which was created by a successful marriage and family therapist, and I got to have dinner at their house. And that was, like, so fancy! It was the first time I’d ever been in a space like that. And it was very cool because she was also a Latina and was very supportive of the work. 

Then, with LPPI, I would help organize panels or events, which meant having to manage details with elected officials or work with very high-level stakeholders. It helped me develop confidence that is applied to my job.

Every day now, I work with mayors, city managers, the director of an emergency communications center. Those experiences at UCLA were very pivotal in assuring me,
“I know how to communicate. I know how to write. I know what I’m talking about.”

How did you get involved with LPPI?

I found out that Sonja was opening the shop, and I just went to talk to her in her office. There was no formality. This thing is happening, let’s go. And I think I was the first or second person she hired. 

What I really appreciated from working with her was the true openness to being collaborators, making me feel like my opinion was important, that she actually cared about it. 

Myself, and Sonja, and the other student fellows were a team. And we got real. It was a growth environment where everyone was expected to step up. If you didn’t know something, your mentality was: “I’ll learn how to do it.” 

We understood that we were in a startup environment. … I have very fond memories of that time and just feeling like I was helping to set up something that was big. And I take pride that LPPI is where it is now.

Astor on Parental Concerns for Child Safety in Israeli Schools

A study co-authored by Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor about perceptions of child safety in Israel’s schools was featured on several international new outlets, including YNET News. Astor and his research partners analyzed 2,165 responses from a nationwide survey of the parents of children between kindergarten and 12th grade. The study, which assessed parents’ and children’s sense of protection in Israeli schools, found that only 10.6% of parents “feel their children are very safe in the educational institution.” According to the survey results, 40% of children were victims of physical harm at least once and several reported verbal harassment and social media shaming. The research team also highlighted parent dissatisfaction with educational institutions’ handling of violence.


Ong Finds Digital Divide in Remote Learning Access

Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the education news site The 74 about students with limited internet and technology access who are falling behind in remote classes. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also cited a UCLA report authored by Ong, which found that nearly one in three American households had limited computer or internet access this fall. Students of color, students with disabilities, students learning English and students from low-income households are more likely to fall on the “wrong side of the digital divide,” making it harder to access classes, engage with peers, and complete and upload assignments. “You can think about all of these things that by themselves may not seem absolutely fatal, but collectively it has this cumulative effect that eventually leaves certain students behind,” Ong explained. While the report does not focus on the effects of limited access, Ong noted that the implications are clear and concerning.


Despite Improved Access, Digital Divide Persists for Minority, Low-Income Students UCLA research shows battle for educational equity has shifted into a new space

By John McDonald

While students’ access to computers and the internet improved during the pandemic-affected and largely remote fall school term, a clear digital divide persists, especially among Black, Latino and low-income students, according to a new report by the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge.

“It appears that the lack of access has become less severe this fall than it was last spring, as schools have made adjustments to support remote learning,” said Paul Ong, the center’s director and an author of the report. “But it is also clear that a lack of access and real and troubling divide remains.”

This digital divide, the authors say, translates into students missing lessons, being unable to access materials and struggling to complete assignments — all of which have significant implications for long-term learning and success later in life.

The researchers used data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey to provide a current look at household access to computers and the internet. Their findings show that the rate of limited digital access for households fell from a high of 42% during the panic and chaos of school closures last spring to about 31% this fall.

But the data also make clear that during the fall term, racial and economic inequality has remained significant, with African American and Latino households being 1.3 to 1.4 times as likely as white households to experience limited accessibility. Low-income households are most impacted by digital unavailability, with more than 2 in 5 having limited access to a computer or the internet.

In addition, since mid-October, the rate of digital inaccessibility has increased slowly but unmistakably. The researchers are concerned that the divide may worsen amid the current surge in COVID-19 infections and resulting restrictions.

“This new research details a persistent and troubling digital divide among students, with far-reaching implications for educational access and equitable opportunities,” said Tina Christie, the Wasserman Dean of the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies, which co-published the report with the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

“The pandemic has brought into focus the intimate connection between education and technological connectivity and, with it, the connection between connectivity and social justice,” Christie said. “The battleground for educational equity has now, and perhaps forever, shifted into a new space.”

According to Ong, a UCLA Luskin research professor, persistent digital inequality threatens to widen disparities in achievement as minority and low-income children become adults, contributing to an intergenerational reproduction of inequality.

“The disparities in limited technological resources for virtual learning are not just today’s education crisis,” Ong said. “Falling behind increases the achievement gap, which has long-term social and economic implications. To avoid this tragedy, we must act immediately and decisively to close the digital divide.”

COVID-19 and the Digital Divide in Virtual Learning, fall 2020, is a publication of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. The research brief was published in collaboration with the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. Read the full research brief.

Contact: John McDonald
jmcdonald@gseis.ucla.edu

Digital Divide Among U.S. Schoolchildren Is Deepening, Report Finds

A new report by the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin measures the digital divide in American schools, which threatens to undermine the educational achievement of low-income and minority students for years to come. Disparities in access to computers and adequate internet service predate COVID-19 but have deepened since the pandemic’s outbreak, the study found. The analysis used data from the U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey covering the latter part of the 2019-2020 school year, when schools were forced to halt in-person learning. All groups experienced some challenges in providing adequate computer access and internet service for children’s educational purposes, but the difficulties were greatest in Hispanic, Black, low-income and younger households, according to the study. It also found a link between the lack of access to technology and the parents’ level of educational attainment. Researchers are currently assessing data from the start of the 2020-2021 school year to identify lingering disparities. The study, conducted in collaboration with the public interest research group Ong & Associates, aims to guide educators and policymakers in formulating effective programs to ensure a fair and equitable school system. “It is essential for elected officials and business leaders to act now to address the potential long-term social and economic effects of this health crisis,” the report’s authors said. “This is true especially given the added challenge the pandemic places on minority, low-income, less educated and young families trying to educate their children to succeed in the new information age.”


 

Park on New Research on Heat, Learning and the Racial Gap

The New York Times spoke to R. Jisung Park,, associate director of economic research at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, about new research showing that hotter temperatures widen the racial achievement gap in U.S. schools. Park’s study found that students performed worse on standardized tests for every additional day of 80 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, suggesting a fundamental link between heat exposure and reduced learning. While those detrimental effects were observed across 58 countries, the U.S. data revealed a surprisingly pronounced effect on Black and Hispanic students, the study found. Park, an assistant professor of public policy, said the gap seemed to reflect the fact that minority students are less likely to have air-conditioning at school and at home. Being exposed to higher temperatures throughout the school year appears to take a cumulative toll, he said. “It’s like a thousand little cuts to your ability to focus and concentrate and learn,” Park said.

Reber on Desperate Need for School Relief Bill

Associate Professor of Public Policy Sarah Reber was featured in a Politics! Politics! Politics! podcast about the need for a COVID-19 relief bill to support schools. The most important requirement for the safe reopening of schools is getting the pandemic under control to reduce community spread, Reber said. However, schools also urgently need a federal aid package to cover the shortfall in revenue facing state governments as well as the additional costs of socially distanced or remote learning. School districts will need to pay for additional equipment for remote instruction as well as increased staffing and additional training to ensure high quality of instruction, she said. The pandemic is “shining new light on pre-existing inequalities,” she said, and districts must be creative in how they provide remote instruction. Without a large, flexible federal aid package, “there won’t be a solution for schools to operate,” Reber said. The podcast segment featuring Reber begins at minute 1:02:05.


Park on Schools, Extreme Heat, Racial Equity

A Guardian story on the harmful impact of extreme heat on communities of color cited research by Assistant Professor of Public Policy R. Jisung Park. Data from the Union of Concerned Scientists shows that U.S. counties with large Black and Latino populations experience a disproportionately high number of days with temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the article said. Research by Park, an environmental economist at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, focuses on the effect of extreme heat on students’ ability to learn. His analysis of data from 10 million U.S. students over 15 years found that minority and low-income students who attend schools that lack air conditioning are particularly vulnerable. “Adapting to climate change is a matter of racial and economic justice, especially in schools,” said Park, who also discussed his research in an interview with America Adapts, beginning at minute 3:18.

Reber Calls for Federal Funding to Support Reopening Schools

Associate Professor of Public Policy Sarah Reber co-authored an opinion piece in the Hill urging Congress to quickly pass a major funding package to enable schools to resume in-person instruction. As fall approaches, many health experts are calling for schools to reopen to support student learning and mental health and allow parents to return to work. With decreased funding from state tax revenue, school districts must rely on federal funding to cover the costs of new technology and infrastructure to ensure teacher and student health and safety. Reber and co-author Nora Gordon of Georgetown University recommended a relief plan that distributes funds to states based on their levels of child poverty and child population. “To avoid the dangers of social isolation for the well-being of children, schools need another federal relief package that is big enough, flexible enough and soon enough to allow them to open this fall,” they wrote.