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Weisburst Research on School Police, Student Success Cited

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An Economist article discussing the effectiveness of school police officers cited research by Assistant Professor of Public Policy Emily Weisburst. In the 1990s, a federal crime bill included funding for “school resource officers,” leading to the widespread presence of police on the nation’s elementary, middle school and high school campuses. The article cited an ACLU report showing that 14 million students attend schools with a police officer on campus but no counselor, nurse, psychologist or social worker. Still, many teachers call for reform rather than removal of the officers, according to an Education Week survey cited in the article. Weisburst’s research assessed student success in Texas school districts that used federal grants to hire resource officers. She found that they experienced a 2.5% decrease in high school graduation rates and a 4% decrease in college enrollment.

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Social Workers Identify Dire Needs as Schools Prepare to Resume Classes Research brief recommends a nationwide rapid-response initiative to coordinate guidance for education in the COVID-19 era

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By Mary Braswell

As school districts nationwide grapple with how and when to safely reopen in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a survey of 1,275 social workers across the United States shows the immensity of the challenge ahead.

The results of the survey, conducted by UCLA and research partners from Loyola University Chicago, Cal State Fullerton and Hebrew University, were published today in a research brief that calls on elected officials and other leaders to act quickly and invest heavily to bolster the nation’s schools.

In addition to concerns about online learning platforms and physical distancing protocols, the school social workers reported that many students and their families are struggling with their most basic needs during the COVID-19 era.

“They’re reporting overwhelming numbers of students who don’t have food, who don’t have stable housing or health services, whose families are suffering,” said the study’s co-author, Ron Avi Astor, a professor of social welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs who also has a faculty appointment at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

“The national dialogue on reopening schools is not focused on this right now, but the social workers are telling us loud and clear that meeting basic human needs for a large number of students is the big issue schools face in the fall.”

“Every school district is reinventing the wheel over and over and over again, and we think it would be wise to have a clear national strategy,” says Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor.

The social workers who responded to the survey work with students from preschool to 12th grade, mostly in low-income and minority communities. Serving on the front lines in the most underserved schools, the social workers are uniquely equipped to identify the students’ social, mental health and physical needs — and to help address them once states and schools enter into a recovery phase, he said.

As one social worker who participated in the study noted, “Creating equitable education isn’t about checking off to-do lists. It’s about getting into the work of getting to know the needs of the community and meeting them where they are.”

The brief calls for the creation of a national rapid-response team including teachers, administrators, medical professionals, counselors, psychologists and social workers to provide guidance for schools as they weigh in-person, online or hybrid learning models.

“Every school district is reinventing the wheel over and over and over again, and we think it would be wise to have a clear national strategy,” Astor said.

The report also recommends that a national technical assistance center be created to help any school adjust its procedures, if needed.

“The reality around this virus is changing day to day,” Astor said. “We can’t just have one plan at the beginning of the year and wait until the end of the next year to find out it didn’t work.”

The policy recommendations call for the hiring of a massive number of social workers, nurses, psychologists and other professionals in the hardest-hit schools, many of which serve low-income and minority students.

“That’s going to cost money. But the teacher can’t do it alone,” said Astor, who added that state and federal investment is needed to expand support staff in schools that have historically been underfunded.

“If our country has trillions of dollars to bail out large wealthy corporations, we also have enough to create a Marshall Plan-like program to rebuild and provide basic supports to the nation’s students, schools and communities,” he said.

The report’s authors noted that their findings come amid calls for systemic change spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement. “The question of how to reopen and reinvest in schools that serve under-resourced communities and students of color has gained prominence and urgency,” they wrote.

In addition to providing resources and support for mental health, food, housing, transportation and medical services, a team of professionals is needed to locate and reengage the large number of students — up to 30%, according to some reports — who rarely showed up once classrooms went virtual this spring, the report found.

The recommendations are aimed at avoiding a “lost generation” of students, Astor said.

“That would be the epitome of social injustice,” he said. “We need a campaign to bring students who dropped out or disengaged due to systemic inaction back into the fold. We need to show that our schools are not just about sitting in the classroom and learning math or other academic subjects — that we care about their well-being as a whole.

“That’s a very important message for our country to send this generation of students and their families.”

Read the policy brief and technical report authored by Michael S. Kelly of Loyola University Chicago, Ron Avi Astor of UCLA, Rami Benbenishty of Hebrew University, Gordon Capp of Cal State Fullerton and Kate R. Watson of UCLA.

 

Astor Weighs In on Violence Against Teachers

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Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor co-authored an article in the Conversation discussing the findings of an American Psychological Association task force investigation of violence against teachers. The task force surveyed about 3,000 teachers across the country in 2010 to gauge the scope of the issue. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that only 9% of U.S. teachers recounted being threatened with injury, 80% of those surveyed by the APA said they had personally experienced some form of violence or abuse in the past year. The article noted that the discrepancy in statistics could be attributed to teachers choosing not to report incidents of violence out of fear of jeopardizing their jobs. The task force is now focusing on whether the way schools are managed and their overall cultures contribute to the conditions that lead to teacher assaults.

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Astor Wins Fulbright Award for Study in Israel

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Professor Ron Avi Astor, who holds a joint appointment with UCLA Luskin Social Welfare and the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award to Israel, where he will study the country’s successful, systemic approach to addressing school safety issues. As a Fulbright Senior Scholar, Astor will conduct research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for his project, “Addressing School Safety at the National Scale, for Each School, and Sustained Over Time: A Two-Decade Historical and Empirical Case Study on the Israeli System of School Safety.” His four-month study tour will begin in March. Astor’s research examines the role of the physical, social-organizational and cultural contexts in schools related to different kinds of bullying and violence. Israel, he said, has adopted policies and practices that have reduced victimization levels and become an example for many other countries and states. The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program. The program’s U.S. Scholar awards are made on the basis of academic and professional achievement, as well as a record of leadership and service. Established in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the program is funded by the U.S. State Department and supported by governments and host institutions in more than 160 countries.

Astor on Schools’ Obligation to Create a Caring Environment

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Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor, an authority on school safety, spoke with media outlets including CBS News, NBC4 News and KNX1070 in the wake of the deadly shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita. Astor recently presented a report to Congress on reducing weapons in schools, based on data collected from California high schools. Among the findings was a startling statistic: Students at nearly 90% of high schools surveyed said they had seen weapons on campus. Astor said early intervention when warning signs appear is key, and schools must create a caring environment that encourages staff and students to come forward. “If we can actually get schools to see that this is their job, this is what they do, this is not just a prevention for shooting, this makes a better society, then we think we’ll see a massive reduction” in the most severe acts of violence on campus, Astor told NBC4.

Listen to Astor’s podcast on reducing weapons in schools.

View the CBS report
View the NBC4 report

 

Astor on Unreported Violence in Canadian Schools

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Ron Avi Astor, professor of social welfare, spoke to CBC News and its radio component The Current about unreported school violence in Canadian schools. Only half of the provinces and territories in Canada clearly define school violence and require schools to report violent behavior, and only four report those numbers to government ministries. “That’s not a real system for the country,” Astor argued. In countries where the media and politicians shame schools for high violence rates, underreporting or no reporting occurs, he said. Astor found that in the last 20 to 30 years of research, child reports of violence in school are what keeps the schools’ reporting honest. “If you can’t trust the data and you have zeroes on there, you really can’t allocate resources — not just money, but social workers, psychologists and counselors,” he said.

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Listen to the podcast

 

Astor on Schools’ Role in Preventing Gun Violence

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Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor spoke to Education Week about the role schools can play in preventing gun violence. Some states have enacted “red flag laws,” which allow authorities to restrict people’s access to weapons if they are deemed a threat to themselves or others. Many school safety researchers say such laws should be considered just one part of a broader effort that includes improving school climate, enacting tougher federal gun laws, providing support staffing for students, and putting federal dollars toward research into the causes of gun violence. Astor said schools should also encourage students to share reports of troubling behavior — to view violence prevention as a collective responsibility — and to tackle issues such as racism, hatred and violence at an early age. “The purpose of a school becomes to have a better society,” Astor said. “I think the schools have to re-own that whole piece.”

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School Safety Expert Ron Avi Astor to Join UCLA Luskin Faculty The newly named Marjorie Crump Endowed Professor of Social Welfare will bring expertise in topics such as school violence, bullying and positive well-being

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By Stan Paul

Ron Avi Astor, an internationally recognized expert on school safety and violence, will join the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs faculty during the 2019-20 academic year.

Astor will hold the title of Marjorie Crump Endowed Professor of Social Welfare at UCLA Luskin, said Dean Gary Segura. The Southern California native comes to UCLA after a long research and teaching appointment at the University of Michigan and, more recently, at USC.

Astor’s work examines various aspects of the role of physical, social-organizational and cultural contexts related to violence in schools in California and the United States, as well as around the globe — including schools in Kosovo, Cameroon, Israel, Chile and Asia. His expertise includes school safety, sexual harassment, bullying and victimization, as well as fighting in school, emotional abuse, school social work and military social work. He also focuses on ways to create welcoming environments, using the voices of students, faculty, administrators and parents to improve school and district climates.

“Dr. Astor’s work has been recognized as outstanding by the leading research organizations in both social work, psychology and education,” said chair Laura Abrams, professor of Social Welfare. “He will bring with him an incredible research portfolio, along with excellence in teaching and mentoring, which will be of great benefit to our Social Welfare program, to Luskin, and to UCLA as a whole.”

Abrams continued, “Professor Astor is one of the foremost experts in the world on how to cultivate safe and nurturing schools for children around the globe,” adding that Astor’s work addresses major societal questions such as how to ensure that schools function as a positive mechanism for children even in the context of unsafe neighborhood violence. “This research is critical as schools play a major role in shaping key child outcomes.”

Astor, who grew up attended schools in the San Fernando Valley, earned his doctorate in human development/school psychology from UC Berkeley and holds master’s degrees in social welfare and community organization.

Astor sees connections between research and practice regarding bullying. “I don’t separate practice out from the research and policy I do,” said Astor of his unique combination of degrees, especially his MSW. “It’s actually kind of a core philosophical, spiritual and empirical center of everything I do.”

His studies in social work meld well with his graduate study in community organization, Astor said. “The idea is that you needed both — I knew that early on I had the sense you needed this larger ecological system, you couldn’t just be focusing on individuals. … You had to be looking at the multiple links of the social ecology and how they all interacted.

“I’m one of those hybrids almost wherever I go,” added Astor, who has published in a wide array of professional journals and is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, American Educational Research Association and Society for Social Work Research. He is also a member of the prestigious American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, and the National Academy of Education.

“I know the fields like to separate practice, research and theory, but to me they’re continuous. That’s another reason why I’m publishing in these various areas because there’s more fluidity,” Astor said. “So, the MSW is critical to my whole way of ecological thinking.”

His latest book, “Bullying, School Violence, and Climate in Evolving Contexts: Culture, Organization, and Time,” which he co-authored with Rami Benbenishty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was published in January by Oxford University Press. Astor said that although this book is theoretical and empirical, “most of those ideas comes from being on the ground and having the MSW and having ecological theory and seeing how empowerment in communities that actually work form our interventions and theory.” Astor’s other recent books were based on best practices for school professionals that dovetail with the more scientific version published this year.

Astor has a state teaching credential and comes from a family of school educators. As a practitioner, he has spent time in schools and communities over a span of decades. He said that his experiences in schools and being “on the ground” has informed him about gaps in theory, policy and practice.

Astor said his approach does not just look at how to fix problems but focuses more broadly on how social work, education, public health, policy and psychology can come together to discover “what are the healthiest kinds of settings we could have our children grow up in, and what would be the most optimal, welcoming, caring places we would aspire to.”

Astor is also interested in learning more from schools that have had track records of outstanding work on how their positive practices can translate to other schools that seem to share similar risk factors.

“Those remarkable schools where the students, principals, teachers, parents and community are working in tandem are really fun to learn from because they change how we might provide supports or service to students. They also change our theory and our ways of thinking,” Astor said. Teachers, principals and parent/student groups may have better solutions than university professors and researchers — “often we find these stellar individuals and groups have generated creative approaches to solve problems in their communities, schools or school districts — and we can learn so much from them.”

Astor explained that he is not just looking to fix problems but looking to create communities and settings where these problems, if everything is set up right, don’t occur in the first place.

“It’s really only about prevention. It’s really more an image of what kind of society we want to live in, what kind of optimal democracy do we want to create,” he said. “It’s really about creating the kinds of environments that make human beings thrive.”