Bruce Morris and Donna Wells, Editors

Are Our Schools Really Safe?

The tragedies have their own horrifying facts and characteristics. The response remains the same. Each time there is a school shooting, the national media descends on the site and, for weeks following, America watches the event replayed over and over. We hear talking heads speak of “the all-too-familiar routine.” Television talk shows focus on teens and violence. Radio waves are filled with debates over the accessibility of handguns, violence in the media, the current teen culture, and child-rearing habits. Surveys are conducted assessing violence, appropriate school safety measures, and parental fears.

The recent series of high-profile student shooters began over five years ago in Moses Lake, Washington in February 1996, when 14-year-old Barry Loukaitis opened fire in his algebra class, killing two students and one teacher. This event was followed over a relatively short time (slightly more than three years) by similar incidents in Bethel, Alaska; Pearl, Mississippi; West Paducah, Kentucky; Jonesboro, Arkansas; Edinboro, Pennsylvania; Springfield, Oregon; and Littleton, Colorado.

Each seemingly senseless, incomprehensible event wreaked havoc and hysteria in an American community. All left students, parents, teachers, administrators, officials and citizens struggling for answers and action. Most experts agree that the killings at Columbine High School in April 1999, caused a sea change in America’s attitude. Students and parents no longer viewed schools as safe havens. Safety became a paramount educational concern. Havens for learning were not seen as harbors of well-being.

Following Columbine, there have been other high-profile shootings in Georgia, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Michigan, Florida, and California. These events have led to intense scrutiny of student behaviors, school policies, and parental abilities. They have also resulted in a broad range of studies from non-traditional, non-educational players, including the FBI, the Secret Service, the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, and the Surgeon General.

In Virginia, no school homicides have been reported for several years and violent crime is rare. Following a shooting at a Richmond high school in 1999, Governor Gilmore established the 4-Safe-VA program to promote safety awareness and crime prevention in our schools. Presently, the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) and the Department of Education (DOE) provide school safety training on a variety of important topics. Additionally, DOE is required to collect school crime and violence data annually from each school in the Commonwealth. The Department also requires school safety audits and crisis management plans for individual schools. Policy-makers may wish to consider whether detailed crime and safety data should be published and available on the DOE web site, much as annual crime data is available on the Virginia State Police web site and in the annual Crime in Virginia report.

There is no dearth of information concerning school safety, but the key for the Commonwealth’s policy-makers is to look beyond the headlines and assess the most critical crime issues facing students in Virginia’s schools. Equally important is comparing the level of crime-related threat with other safety risks, and then developing policy and legislation accordingly.

Many continue to argue that our students face significant threats of violence at school. The Hamilton-Fish National Institute on School and Community Violence at George Washington University reported in September 2000 that there are “100 times more guns in the hands of children attending American schools than principles (sic) have been reporting to Congress.” Institute researchers estimate that nearly 300,000 high school students carry guns to school every month. These estimates are based on student surveys, which, according to Paul Kingery, executive director of the Institute, provide a more accurate reflection of reality than official statistics kept by schools.

Similar results were reported by the non-profit Josephson Institute of Ethics (based in Marina del Ray, California) in survey results the group released in March 2001. Their study, based on a survey of 15,000 middle and high school students, concluded that 47 percent of high school students have easy access to guns and more than 20 percent of high school boys have taken a weapon to school in the past year. Additionally, 22 percent of middle schools students indicated they had access to firearms.

This bleak outlook was echoed by David M. Satcher, in his Surgeon General’s report released earlier this year. According to the report, “Headlines proclaim that the epidemic of youth violence that began in the early 1980s is over, but the reality behind this seemingly good news is far more complex and unsettling…youth violence is an ongoing, startlingly pervasive problem.”

In early 2000, Parents Magazine and the I Am Your Child Foundation conducted a national poll to assess parents’ safety concerns. The results of the survey reflect the mood of the country. Nearly one-third of parents with children 12 or younger said that violence is the one thing they worry about the most ­ more than they worry about the quality of education, drug use, social pressures, values or health. Additionally, over one-third of all parents said they know a child capable of violence. More interestingly, over one-quarter (27 percent) said they worry a great deal that their own child will commit a violent act.

Paradoxically, according to the Department of Justice, juvenile crime, like adult crime, is at its lowest point in 34 years. And, violent school-related deaths last year fell 40 percent from the previous year. Similarly, youth victimization rates continue to decline.

Mike Males, senior researcher at the Justice Policy Institute and author of Kids & Guns: How Politicians, Experts and the Press Fabricate Fear of Youth, contests the study results cited above and believes that “behavior-risk surveys are out of control. If such surveys are valid, every American teenager should be dead five times over.” Males argues that youth surveys are “loose cannons” prone to bias and exaggeration. For example, although the Hamilton-Fish Institute reports that 300,000 students take guns to school each month, just one percent of student murders occurs on campus, according to Males’ work.

The annual U.S. Department of Education report supports Males’ point of view. The Department’s most recent figures reveal that 1.3 percent of the murders of school-age children took place in schools.

In many ways, current attitudes and prevailing opinions conflict with reality. According to national data, our children today are safer than they have been in the past three decades. The FBI records indicate that serious crime was down in 1999 (the last full year for which statistics are available) seven percent from the previous year. This represents the eighth straight annual decline and includes an eight percent reduction in murder and robbery. In the first six months of 2000, crime rates continued to drop and are at their lowest point in over thirty years. Victimization rates for both serious and property crimes among adolescents have declined significantly since 1993. The percentage of students who report fighting at school has remained relatively constant and the overall percentage of students being victimized at school has dropped.

If it is true that more than 300,000 high school students take a firearm to school every month, it is at least significant that, according to the U.S. DOE reporting requirements of the Gun Free Schools Act, just 3,523 students were expelled in 1998-99 for possessing a firearm on school property. And in 1997-98, of the 2,752 youth murders, 35 occurred on school property. Even though children spend a significant portion of their day at school, other serious crimes also occur less frequently on campus. Of the 802,900 serious offenses (murder, rape, robbery and sexual or aggravated assault) against adolescents, less than one-third of them (252,700) took place at school.

U.S. DOE records indicate that in 1997-98, nine students in a thousand were victims of serious, non-fatal crimes (rape, robbery, sexual or aggravated assault) at school. In comparison, 20 percent of violent crimes against juveniles occur between 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. At school, overwhelmingly, the predominant crime is larceny. Even away from school, over half of all crimes against students are thefts. In 1996, for example, there were 2.1 million in-school thefts and 1.6 million out-of-school thefts involving victims ages 12 to 18. During the same year, students ages 12 ­ 18 were the victims of approximately 225,000 serious (non-fatal) campus crimes, compared to 671,000 serious (non-fatal) crimes away from school.

Of course, all crimes, fatal and non-fatal, have a negative, emotional and enduring impact on schools and communities. Obviously, murder is the most serious and sensational of crimes that may affect us; however, non-fatal offenses against our children can be, and often are, traumatizing also. It can be argued that the overwhelming, almost hysterical concern over murder in school and the proliferation of policy that has resulted is misdirected, at least if based on statistics.

Although the understandable tendency is to focus on the issue that garners media attention and capitalizes on parental fears, homicide is not the primary cause of death for juveniles, in or out of school. Rather, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of adolescent death in Virginia, and the nation, far out-stripping other causes.

In 1998, over one-third (36 percent) of all deaths of 16 to 19 year-olds were crash-related. Nationally, 5,606 teens died from crash-related injuries. Statistically, 16 year-old drivers have crash rates that are three times higher than 17 year-olds and five times higher than 18 year-olds. Approximately 60 percent of teen vehicle fatalities occur between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m.

Because most students learn to drive through public school driver education programs and because many crashes occur as students drive to and from school-related functions, this school safety issue cannot be ignored. The 2001 Virginia General Assembly recognized the seriousness of this problem and took significant steps to reduce adolescent vehicular deaths and injuries. They raised the age from 15 to 15 1ž2 to get a learner’s permit and from 16 to 16 and three months to get a license. Also, 16 year-old drivers are limited to one passenger under age 18, and 17 year-olds to three passengers (excluding family members). Drivers under 18 are prohibited from driving between midnight and 4:00 a.m. unless they are working, attending a school-sponsored activity, or accompanied by a parent.

The school safety issue also involves a necessary analysis of application of resources. Given the low probability, but high consequence of homicide in our schools in comparison to lower consequences but higher probability of lesser offenses, what is the proper allocation of concern and action to make our schools as safe as possible? Does the “broken windows” metaphor advanced by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling to advocate crime prevention more than a decade ago apply to the instant debate?

Increasingly, education and safety professionals believe that bullying poses a significant safety risk to our students. Traditionally, researchers estimated that approximately 15 percent of children are the victims of regular bullying behavior. Similarly, studies suggested that 15 percent of students are bullies. Recent surveys indicate that as many as one in three students in grades six through 10 are involved in moderate or frequent bullying behavior, as victims, perpetrators, or both. That means that one-third of our student population is directly affected by a considerable safety risk.

The challenge is to insure that safety measures instituted within schools accurately fit the actual problems being experienced by students. According to William Modzeleski, director of the U.S. Department of Education’s safe and drug-free schools office, there has been an over-reaction to the high-profile campus murders which has resulted in extreme responses that use up limited funds and address a symptom, rather than the cure. Modzeleski suggests that policy-makers, educators, and safety experts should take a more comprehensive approach to safety and focus resources on prevention through programs such as mentoring and anti-bullying curricula.

An application of the “broken windows” philosophy would have us address in a more deliberate fashion seemingly minor infractions before we suffer the consequences of more tragic events that may have grown from overlooked and unattended conditions.

Standard definitions are critical to accurate assessment. For example, a recent survey published in the Journal of the American Medical Association uses a definition of bullying that encompasses physical or psychological harassment of one child by another who is viewed as stronger or more powerful. According to that definition, bullying behavior includes physical harm or threats, teasing, name-calling, the spreading of rumors, or the taking of personal belongings. But, other researchers suggest that the definition of bullying should include hard stares and other gestures more difficult to quantify.

Other states are considering codifying policies against bullying. In the wake of Columbine, the state of Colorado passed a law requiring school districts to adopt policies against bullying and provide yearly progress reports to the state. The media’s impact is reflected in parental concerns. According to a Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll conducted in March 2001, 45 percent of parents with children in grades K-12, still fear for their physical safety. This, in spite of the fact that 77 percent of the parents indicated that their children do not express any worry or concern about feeling unsafe at school.

Student behavior reflects student perception. According to an ABC News poll, also conducted in March 2001, 92 percent of high school students feel somewhat or very safe at school. When asked if they had heard a fellow student threaten to kill someone, about one in three had, but only a quarter of those took it seriously enough to report it. To increase reporting, some schools are offering monetary rewards. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, for example, students are paid $50 per threat of violence tip; however, most schools promote such reporting as public service and good communication.

There is increasing scrutiny on the negative effects of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). It is far more difficult to suspend or expel students protected by the Act, yet, at-risk students often fall within the protected population.

In the wake of the most recent school shooting, national media referred to the event and circumstances as an “all too common occurrence,” and “the all too familiar routine,” at least suggesting that parental fears about the safety of our children at school are well-grounded. Although school homicides have raised our awareness of and have resulted in more safety-conscious policies and practices, we must balance finite resources against validated problems and needs in order to direct resources to the actual problems.

Policy-makers have effectively addressed potential high-profile situations through training, enhanced policies and practices, and partnerships between law enforcement officers and educators. They have also begun to address the number one cause of adolescent fatalities. The key is to look past the headlines and the emotions, and focus on accurate analysis of data so that additional responses will address immediate needs in a consistent and deliberate manner.

If we accept the growing body of evidence that bullying poses a significant safety risk to children today, then we must find innovative and effective ways to change such behavior. Bullying and fatal crashes are not new; perhaps our approach to school and youth safety should be.

Click here for a summary of recent Virginia Legislative history of “School as a Reflection of Community.”

Associated Press, “Survey: Students Have Gun Access,” New York Times, April 1, 2001.

DMV Safety: Young Drivers: Facts & Statistics, Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.

Males, Mike A. Kids & Guns: How Politicians, Experts and the Press Fabricate Fear of Youth, Common Courage Press, 2001.

www.edweek.com

www.hamfish.org

www.publicagenda.org

www.surgeongeneral.gov

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