DOI: 10.3886/icpsr37892
title: Improving School Safety in the District of Columbia: Evaluating the Safe School Certification Program, 2016-2020
title: Archival Version

description: From 2016 through 2020, Child Trends, in partnership with the D.C. Office of Human Rights and the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education, and with funding from the National Institute of Justice's Comprehensive School Safety Initiative, implemented and evaluated the Safe School Certification (SSC) Program, a three-year technical assistance model to support schools in strengthening organizational capacity across eight elements key to improving school climate: leadership, data, buy-in, policy and policy enforcement, student engagement, family and community engagement, training, and programs and practices. To help support schools' efforts, and to evaluate SSC's effectiveness, survey data were collected annually from students, parents, instructional staff, and non-instructional staff at participating schools using the U.S. Department of Education's School Climate Survey (EDSCLS), which was adapted to include measures of sexual orientation and gender identity, grit, and personal experiences of bullying and fights. Additionally, observations using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System - Secondary (CLASS-S) were conducted in a random sample of five classrooms in each participating school each year. Finally, as part of the implementation evaluation, interviews were conducted with the technical assistance providers, points of contact or leadership at participating schools, the SSC developer, and the manager of the Certification Advisory Board (CAB), which provided feedback to schools over the course of implementation through reviews of compiled workbooks.
description: The purpose of this study is to determine whether the Safe School Certification Program's organizational capacity building approach can foster a positive school climate (defined as the collective quality of individuals' experiences at school) in a secondary educational institution as a means to lower rates of minor (bullying) and major (fighting) school violence.
description: Each school within the "enhanced supports" condition was assigned one of two dedicated technical assistance specialists (TAS). In turn, each school was asked to identify a point of contact (POC) to work with the TAS throughout the project. Although the TAS frequently reached out to all enhanced support schools, schools' engagement varied, with some schools connecting with their TAS on a daily or weekly basis and others making little to no contact over the course of the project. Generally, however, the assigned TAS worked with their schools to convene a Core Leadership Team (CLT) and a Student Leadership Team (SLT), identify their current capacity around each element of the Safe School Certification (SSC) framework, review and interpret data, and facilitate decision-making to make progress on the framework. Ultimately, a school was responsible for identifying and implementing practices to address each of the SSC elements. SSC is designed such that schools should ideally complete their work on the first checkpoint consisting of three elements (leadership, data, buy-in) during the first year, work on the second checkpoint consisting of the final five elements (policy, student engagement, family and community engagement, training, and programs) in the second year, and work on sustainability in the third and final year. However, schools moved at their own pace through the process. The D.C. Office of Human Rights (OHR) convened a group of local stakeholders to serve as the Community Advisory Board (CAB). When schools submitted a workbook, Child Trends redacted potential identifying information (e.g., school and personnel names, addresses, mascots) and provided the de-identified workbook to the CAB for blinded review. The CAB provided written feedback and scored schools' workbooks based on a rubric describing each element's desired states on a scale of 0-2, with 2 indicating that a school has fully engaged on that element. The CAB deemed schools to have "passed" a checkpoint if schools scored at least 70% of the total potential points (11 out of 16 for checkpoint 1 and 28 out of 40 for checkpoint 2). After passing a checkpoint, schools were eligible to apply for grant funding, administered by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), to help support their evidence-informed programs and practices aligned to the SSC framework.
description: Variables in the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) datasets pertain to classroom-level performance and subjects taught. Variables in the Department of Education School Climate Survey (EDSCLS) datasets pertain to respondent demographics (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) and opinions on school safety and performance at the individual level (students, parents, and staff).
description: Two versions of poststratification weights for the Department of Education School Climate Survey Student Analytical Sample and Year 1 Data were constructed. These weights are based on the inverse probability that a student responded to the survey based on their race/ethnicity and the size of their grade-level according to publicly available aggregate data for each school. With the weights, results are generalizable to the schools and grades surveyed. The first weight variable, <b>PSWT</b> in the Student Analytical Sample, should be used when analyzing data for all four years. The second weight variable, also named <b>PSWT</b>, was constructed to be used with the Year 1 Data only.
description: Response Rates: Not available.
description: Presence of Common Scales: Grit scales and scale scores are present in the Department of Education School Climate Survey datasets.
description: School-level sampling consisted of a selection of 26 public and charter middle and high schools (13 intervention/treatment and 13 control) within the District of Columbia. Classroom-level data was collected from a random sample of 5 classrooms from each participating school. Individual-level data was derived from individuals affiliated with each participating school (student, parents, and staff). Students were selected based on time and resource constraints, and those specifically in the Analytical Sample were limited to grades 7 to 9 (done so to avoid the potential of having the same students at multiple waves).
description: Datasets: DS0: Study-Level Files DS1: Classroom Assessment Scoring System Year 1 Data DS2: Classroom Assessment Scoring System Year 2 Data DS3: Classroom Assessment Scoring System Year 3 Data DS4: Classroom Assessment Scoring System Year 4 Data DS5: Department of Education School Climate Survey Student Raw Data DS6: Department of Education School Climate Survey Student Analytical Sample DS7: Department of Education School Climate Survey Student Restorative Justice Data DS8: Department of Education School Climate Survey Parent Data DS9: Department of Education School Climate Survey Instructional Staff Data DS10: Department of Education School Climate Survey Non-Instructional Staff Data DS11: Department of Education School Climate Survey Year 1 Data
description: Secondary educational institutions in the District of Columbia and relevant individuals (students, parents, and staff). Smallest Geographic Unit: None
description: coded on-site observation; telephone interview; web-based survey