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Researchers increasingly explore the consequences of policing for the educational outcomes of minority youth. This study contributes to this literature by asking: First, what are racial/ethnic disparities in long-term exposure to neighborhood policing? Second, how does this exposure affect high school graduation? Third, how much of the ethnoracial gap in high school graduation would remain if neighborhood policing was equalized? To address these questions, we use data from the New York City Department of Education and follow five cohorts of NYC public school students from middle to high school. Our findings reveal starkly different experiences with neighborhood policing across racial/ethnic groups. Using novel methods for time-varying treatment effects, we find that long-term exposure to neighborhood policing has negative effects on high school graduation with important differences across racial/ethnic groups. Using gap- closing estimands, we show that assigning a sample of Black and Latino students to the same level of neighborhood policing as white students would close the Black-white gap in high school graduation by more than one quarter and the Latino-white gap by almost one fifth. Alternatively, we explore interventions where policing is solely a function of violent crime, which close the Black-white gap by as much as one-tenth. Our study advances previous research by focusing on cumulative, long-term exposure to neighborhood policing and by assessing various counterfactual scenarios that inform research and policy. Keywords: Policing, Education, Inequality, Neighborhoods, Racial Disparities
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This content will become publicly available on December 1, 2025
Black adolescents’ motivation to resist the false dichotomy between mathematics achievement and racial identity
Abstract This study investigates the racial-mathematical identity profiles of Black American adolescents. Survey data were collected in five schools across one U.S. urban school district at two time points (spring 2018 [n = 197] and spring 2019 [n = 210]). Based on extant research regarding psychological response patterns to racialized school stress, we investigated the existence of an identity negotiation pattern in which students were motivated to resist negative stereotypes about Black people by achieving well in mathematics. We conducted a latent profile analysis combining students’ self-beliefs across five indicators: racial centrality, racial public regard, mathematics attainment value, mathematics mastery experiences, and resistance motivation. Three distinct racial-mathematical identity profiles emerged: (1) Mathematics Devalued/Ambivalent, (2) Moderately Math Attained, and (3) Resistors. We found associations between profile membership and students’ gender, negative math emotions, and their receipt of cultural and critical mathematics instruction. We also found an association between the identity profiles and school type (academically selective “magnet” schools vs. open-enrollment neighborhood schools), but not in the direction that might be assumed. Moreover, we found that certain school environment factors (i.e., racial stereotyping and cultural and critical mathematics instruction) were significantly different in racially diverse magnet schools than in the neighborhood schools. Overall, our data reveal the existence of a highly motivated Resistor profile among Black students, that is predicted by cultural and critical mathematics instruction but underrepresented within this district’s selective magnet schools.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2133996
- PAR ID:
- 10519420
- Publisher / Repository:
- Nature
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- npj Science of Learning
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2056-7936
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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