The Real School Safety Problem

Schools across the U.S. look very different today than they did a generation ago. Police officers, drug-sniffing dogs, surveillance cameras, and high suspension rates have become commonplace. The Real School Safety Problem uncovers the unintended but far-reaching effects of harsh school discipline climates. Evidence shows that current school security practices may do more harm than good by broadly affecting the entire family, encouraging less civic participation in adulthood, and garnering future financial costs in the form of high rates of arrests, incarceration, and unemployment. This text presents a blueprint for reform that emphasizes problem-solving and accountability while encouraging the need to implement smarter school policies.Ê

Schools across the U.S. look very different today than they did a generation ago. Police officers, drug-sniffing dogs, surveillance cameras, and high suspension rates have become commonplace. The Real School Safety Problem uncovers the unintended but far-reaching effects of harsh school discipline climates. Evidence shows that current school security practices may do more harm than good by broadly affecting the entire family, encouraging less civic participation in adulthood, and garnering future financial costs in the form of high rates of arrests, incarceration, and unemployment. This text presents a blueprint for reform that emphasizes problem-solving and accountability while encouraging the need to implement smarter school policies.

Police officers, armed security guards, surveillance cameras, and metal detectors are common features of the disturbing new landscape at many of today's high schools. You will also find new and harsher disciplinary practices: zero-tolerance policies, random searches with drug-sniffing dogs, and mandatory suspensions, expulsions, and arrests, despite the fact that school crime and violence have been decreasing in the US for the past two decades. While most educators, students, and parents accept these harsh policing and punishment strategies based on the assumption that they keep children safe, Aaron Kupchik argues that we need to think more carefully about how we protect and punish students. In Homeroom Security, Kupchik shows that these policies lead schools to prioritize the rules instead of students, so that students' real problems--often the very reasons for their misbehaviour--get ignored. Based on years of impressive field research, Kupchik demonstrates that the policies we have zealously adopted in schools across the country are the opposite of the strategies that are known to successfully reduce student misbehaviour and violence. As a result, contemporary school discipline is often unhelpful, and can be hurtful to students in ways likely to make schools more violent places. Furthermore, those students who are most at-risk of problems in schools and dropping out are the ones who are most affected by these counterproductive policies. Schools and students can and should be safe, and Homeroom Security offers real strategies for making them so.

Why do so many school antiviolence programs backfire? And why do policymakers keep making the same mistakes? The authors of Responding to School Violence examine the pervasive rise of school security measures since the Columbine shootings, highlighting the unintended consequences of policymaking too often shaped by fear and sensationalism. Probing an array of now ubiquitous tactics and programs¿metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, and more¿the authors show how increasingly punitive schoolhouse dynamics negatively affect student safety and even educational experiences. They also share lessons from past mistakes and identify workable, comprehensive approaches for addressing a recurrent social problem.

Immigration and School Safety utilizes a multidisciplinary approach to expose the complex relationship between immigration and school safety in the United States. It addresses not only individual, intrapersonal, and environmental factors but also distant-level conditions that are relevant to the experiences of immigrant children and connected to school safety. Twenty-five percent of all youth in U.S. schools have at least one immigrant parent, and that percentage is expected to increase to 33 percent by 2040. A wide array of factors, including but not limited to laws, public and political discourses, educational policies, interpersonal relationships, socioeconomic status, English language proficiency, citizenship, legal status, family characteristics, race and ethnicity, generational status, nationality, religion, and gender, contribute to the marginalizing experiences of children of immigrants at school. With the rapid growth of students in immigrant families in U.S. schools, any effort to address school violence and implement school safety policies must consider barriers associated with the unique educational experiences of that segment. This book highlights the often overlooked importance of immigration as a mediating factor in explaining both violence and victimization and provides a blueprint for integrating immigration and criminology theories into evidence-based efforts toward ensuring safety for all students. The authors demonstrate that immigration matters significantly in school violence and safety concerns and illustrate why research that integrates immigration with criminology theories is needed to understand the causes and correlates of school violence. The book will appeal to a wide array of individuals, including academics, educators, policymakers, practitioners, social workers, parents, and stakeholders who are committed to addressing educational disparities and inequities associated with immigration and school safety.

Different areas of inquiry have addressed the tragedy of school shootings and their deeply disruptive impacts upon school culture, classrooms, and student learning in this contemporary moment. Therefore, it is important to bring together interdisciplinary research on the long-term impacts of these events on students, teachers, and communities. In an age where arming classroom teachers is a serious policy initiative, there is a question of how a culture of fear manifests itself in those involved in school systems. There is a need to study these effects and implications in a time where violence and school shootings appear to have become more common than ever before. Hence, there is a need for diverse perspectives in this area of complex and urgent inquiry. Impact of School Shootings on Classroom Culture, Curriculum, and Learning explores the manifestations of the threat of school shootings and the aftermath of such tragic events through an interdisciplinary approach including but not limited to inquiries from educational psychology, sociology, educational philosophy, school leadership, and school culture with a view towards understanding the enduring and obscured effects of school shootings beyond the prevailing emphasis on facility safety and security. While chapters highlight topics such as resilience and recovery, school culture, sociology of schools, leadership and school regulation, and many more areas of interest, this book is ideal for educational leaders and administrators, classroom teachers, counselors, therapists, psychologists, school division trustees, law enforcement, policymakers, researchers, academicians, and students looking for the impacts and aftermath of school shootings on all aspects of education.

Truly international in scope, this Handbook focuses on approaches to discipline, surveillance and social control from around the world, critically examining the strategies and practices schools employ to monitor students and control their behavior. Bringing together leading scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, the chapters scrutinize, analyze and compare schools' practices across the globe, providing a critical review of existing evidence, debates and understandings, while looking forward to address emerging important questions and key policy issues. The chapters are divided into four sections. Part 1 offers accounts of international trends in school discipline, surveillance and punishment; Part 2 examines the merging of school strategies with criminal justice practices; Part 3 focuses on developments in school technological surveillance; and Part 4 concludes by discussing restorative and balanced approaches to school discipline and behavior management. As the first Handbook to draw together these multiple themes into one text, and the first international comparative collection on school discipline, surveillance and social control, it will appeal to scholars across a range of fields including sociology, education, criminology, critical security studies and psychology, providing a unique, timely, and indispensable resource for undergraduate educators and researchers.