2021
The Campus Shield program was designed to allow Miami-Dade (FL) County Public Schools to proactively respond to student safety and mental health incidents using multiple data sources and tips, thereby improving school climate. The vision for this data fusion center was it would pull together data streams from various school district sources, local jurisdictions, and state and federal sources to identify potential threats to school safety, including criminal gang activities, weapon-related violence, and mental health issues among students.
WestEd researchers served as the external evaluators on a U.S. National Institute of Justice grant in 2015 to examine the quality of the information generated, how it is being used to improve school safety, and how it impacts student behavioral outcomes. Several challenges were encountered during implementation that limited the project’s original goals.