Intersectional Identities, School Resources, and Law Enforcement: A Study of Discipline Disparity in Public High Schools

This study utilizes the 2017-2018 Civil Rights Data Collection to explore referrals to law enforcement of public high school students with intersectional identities (racial/ethnic, gender, dis/ability status). We ran negative binomial regressions via Stata 17.0 to predict risk by intersectional identities and utilized covariates including psychological supports, counselors, social workers, security guards, law enforcement officers, Title I status, and school size. Results indicate that school-based law enforcement officers predicted higher law enforcement referrals for Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaskan Native male students with and without disabilities. Psychological supports, however, predicted lower law enforcement referrals for Black males and American Indian/Alaskan Native male students with and without dis/abilities. As the nation addresses systemic racism in the public school system, the experiences of students with intersecting identities must be better understood.