Recommending Reform: A Critical Race and Critical Policy Analysis of Research Recommendations About School Resource Officers

Abstract

School resources officers (SROs) have increasingly become a staple in United States K–12 schools, and research on their roles and efficacy is prevalent. However, policy recommendations, when left unexamined, may perpetuate majoritarian narratives that harm marginalized students. This project investigates the majoritarian and counternarratives surrounding policy recommendations for SRO programs. Analyzing policy recommendations in 100 peer-reviewed articles, we find that most articles recommend reform or retention of SROs regardless of study findings—recommendations rooted in majoritarian narratives about the necessity and benevolence of SROs. Counternarratives, which view harm done to students as a potential reason to remove SROs entirely or reduce their use in schools, are much less common in the literature.

Improving Researchers’ Capacity to Address Injustice: An Introduction to the Special Issue

“…It also has important implications for the framing of recommendations. For example, as Zabala-Eisshofer et al (2024) argue in their article, it is important to take care when writing policy recommendations that arise from empirical studies. While small changes may offer some immediate improvement in circumstances, they may legitimate an overall policy that perpetuates inequality.…”