Policy Study No. 234, January 1998

School Violence Prevention:
Strategies to Keep Schools Safe (Unabridged)

by Alexander Volokh with Lisa Snell

Part 1

Introduction

"Have you had a rebellion lately, eh, eh?"

-George III (1760-1820) to Eton public school boys

School violence is a serious problem, especially in public schools. Improving the quality of American education is difficult without also addressing school violence, since regardless of how good the teachers or curriculum are, violence makes it difficult for students to learn.

School violence wears many faces. It includes gang activity, locker thefts, bullying and intimidation, gun use, assault—just about anything that produces a victim. Violence is perpetrated against students, teachers, and staff, and ranges from intentional vendettas to accidental killings of bystanders. Often, discussions of school violence are lumped together with discussions of school discipline generally, as both involve questions of how to maintain order in a school.

We divide school violence-prevention methods into three classes—measures related to school management (that is, related to discipline and punishment), measures related to environmental modification (for instance, video cameras, security guards, and uniforms), and educational and curriculum-based measures (for instance, conflict-resolution and gang-prevention programs). All methods have their advantages and disadvantages.

Our research leads us to the following conclusions:

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. As William Modzeleski of the U.S. Department of Education put it, "There is no one program, no silver bullet, so that you can get one program up and say, Here it is if you put this program in your school, you are going to resolve violence." If all schools were the same, in demographically similar neighborhoods, with similar crime rates in the surrounding community, with similar-quality teachers and similarly committed staffs, and similar budgetary constraints, then we could feel safe advocating a common policy for all schools. But schools are self-evidently not like that. The ideal violence-prevention policy will likely be different for each school.

For most anti-violence interventions, evidence of effectiveness is either sparse or mixed. Many programs have been imperfectly monitored or evaluated, so few data on results exist. Those programs that have been monitored work in some cases and not in other cases.

Yet programs that "don't work" in some overall sense may work at individual schools. Every case study of an anti-violence program that works at some school should be an individual cause for rejoicing, even if we wouldn't want to mandate that same program everywhere. Since programs work in some places and not in others, the only reasonable agenda for fighting school violence is to encourage individual schools to experiment and to find what "works" in their particular circumstances.

As in any field, out of the many hot, new solutions, some are real, and some are unsubstantiated fads. Moreover, since school violence research is sparse and mixed and since there are so many variables that it is even difficult to recognize success or failure-the most reliable way of distinguishing between the real and the faddish is to subject individual schools, in their experimentation, to the discipline of competition. Schools choose their anti-violence programs; parents choose their children's schools.

Many traditional anti-violence remedies, mostly those related to discipline and punishment, have been limited at public schools, either legislatively or judicially (through constitutional interpretation). This is not because these methods should not be used at schools at all if parents choose their children's school, they should be able to delegate authority to schools to use discipline measures, up to and including corporal punishment. But these methods have been limited at public schools because the government must provide safeguards against the abuse of its power in circumstances where education is compulsory and attendance at specific schools is mandatory. These safeguards involve notice and hearing requirements and other procedural roadblocks to punishment—all necessary, given the mandatory and monopoly nature of the service, but all making it difficult for schools to effectively choose a disciplinarian approach. These constraints on public schools may be one reason why private schools have less violence than public schools, and it may be one reason to encourage private schools as educational providers.

This paper concludes with a discussion of what some private schools are doing, including the results of our interviews with principals of several Catholic schools. We further suggest that compulsory education laws may be contributing to violence in public schools.

Our general conclusion is to encourage innovation and experimentation in schools through decentralization and deregulation. Incentives matter, so effectively addressing school violence must include some level of parental choice, and an emphasis on private, voluntary, contractual methods rather than compulsory ones.

Part 2

In 1940, public school teachers ranked the top seven disciplinary problems at public schools. Public school teachers ranked the top problems again in 1990. A comparative glance at the two lists, shown in Table 2-1, does not give any actual data regarding the incidence of the problems detailed, but is nonetheless instructive.

As one elementary student eloquently and succinctly put it, "My perfect school would have everything except violence things." "Violence things," or, as most researchers prefer to call it, "school violence," is a broad term, which includes, but is not limited to, assault (with or without weapons), threats of force, bomb threats, sexual assault, bullying or intimidation, arson, extortion, theft, hazing, and gang activity. The Uniform Discipline Reporting System provides a useful list of discipline problems, from the merely annoying to the violent (see Table 2-2).

The total number of crimes committed per year in or near the 85,000 U.S. public schools has been estimated at around 3 million. Many students feel unsafe in schools. A high school student explains, "I dislike having to attend a school where there is so much violence. Our school has a big gang problem. At times I don’t feel I’m safe, which is my constitutional right!" The statement is oblique and not quite accurate, but it’s the thought that counts. Student drawings of the perfect school often include police helicopters and security personnel. "People who fight would be locked up," one student suggests. Many teachers feel the same way. As a middle school teacher put it, "You’re on constant management and police patrol. If you let up your guard for a second, you don’t know what’s going to happen in the room. I try to maintain high standards in my room and I will not allow anything to go on that will infringe on a child’s safety, but I go home drained because you can never rest or relax. You step outside your room for the four-minute passing, you’re on more patrol than you are within your four walls."

Source: Thomas Toch, Ted Gest, and Monika Guttman, "Violence in schools," U.S. News & World Report, vol. 115, no. 18 (November 8, 1993), p. 30, citing data from Congressional Quarterly Researcher.

But horror stories and personal testimonials aside, the one constant in school violence literature is that it is hard to pin down the extent of the problem. We will repeatedly point out that differences in the results of different studies could indicate actual differences in school violence between different groups or in different places, or they could be by-products of different survey designs or question wordings. Different surveys often define victimization slightly differently, and/or refer to a different timeframe ("Have you ever been victimized?", "Have you been victimized at least once within the past year?", "within the past month?"), or interview different populations. We will therefore merely present the main results on the extent of school violence from a few authoritative studies.

Source: The Metropolitan Life Survey of the American Teacher: Violence in America's Public Schools (1993), conducted for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company by Louis Harris and Associates, Inc., pp. 71-72.

According to the National Crime Victimization Survey Report, conducted in 1989 and printed in 1991, about 9 percent of all students were victimized at school at least once during a six-month period (see Table 2-3). For all main groups, the rate of violent victimization hovers around 2 percent, while the rate of property crime hovers around 7–8 percent. These numbers seem to hold, regardless of gender or race. Hispanic students were less likely to be victims of property crimes. Victimization rates are similar in junior high and high schools, though they seem to peak among 13- and 14-year-olds (eighth and ninth graders). Overall crime rates are higher among students who have moved frequently, and seem to weakly increase with increasing income (mainly because of increased property crimes). Victimization rates also seem to be largely independent of whether the student lives in a central city, suburb, or rural area.

On the other hand, according to the MetLife survey, 23 percent of students (30 percent of male students, 16 percent of female students) and 11 percent of teachers have been victimized in or around school. Student reports of whether they were victimized, and of whether they themselves victimized someone, are given in Table 2-4.

The numbers in the MetLife survey are higher than the numbers in the National Crime Victimization Survey. This is probably due to the fact that the MetLife survey does not limit itself to a six-month period, but instead asks whether a student was ever victimized at school. The data may thus be consistent. It is, in theory, possible that 9 percent of students were attacked in the last six months, and 23 percent have ever been attacked. However, self-reported data has its problems. If only 23 percent of students have ever been victims of a violent act, then how can 24 percent have been kicked, bitten, or hit with a fist, and how can 43 percent have been pushed, shoved, grabbed, or slapped just in the past year? The students may be inconsistent, or rather it may be that many do not consider certain forms of rough behavior to fall under the definition of a "violent act."

Source: Bastian and Taylor, School Crime, p. 1

The National Household Education Survey asked sixth through twelfth graders to report on the incidence of violence during the 1992–93 school year; the information was collected before the end of the school year, from January to April 1993. Seventy-one percent of students in the sixth through twelfth grades know about bullying, physical attack, or robbery at their schools (see Table 2-5). If we break this number down by type, bullying accounts for the greatest share (56 percent), followed by physical attack (43 percent) and robbery (12 percent). Over half of all students have witnessed at least one instance of victimization; a quarter worry about it happening to them. A third have witnessed a physical attack, and a tenth worry about it. As far as actual victimization goes, 12 percent of students have been victimized; 8 percent were bullied, 4 percent were physically attacked, and 1 percent were robbed.

Source: Mary Jo Nolin, Elizabeth Davies, and Kathryn Chandler, Student Victimization at School: Statistics in Brief, National Center for Education Statistics, Report No. NCES-95-204, October 1995, figure 1, p. 2, citing U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Household Education Survey, 1993.

B. Secondary Effects of School Violence

The effect of school violence is broader than actual victimization statistics suggest. Violence, in any setting, is a problem. The problem is compounded when it pertains to schools, because violent behavior and actions take away from the educational process. In their own words—"Some of my classes are really rowdy," said a student from Seattle, "and it’s hard to concentrate." "They just are loud and disrupting the whole class," said a student from Chicago about some of her classmates. "The teacher is not able to teach. This is the real ignorant people."

Moreover, violence affects the behavior of students, who act differently to avoid the threat of violence. Some students take a special route to get to school; some stay away from certain places in the school or on school grounds; some stay away from some school-related events; some deliberately stay in groups; and some sometimes stay home. One South Pasadena [Florida] woman says that when her now college-age son was attending a local high school, he was afraid of getting roughed up in the public school restrooms. The boy regularly sneaked home to go to the bathroom and then went back to school. A Haitian boy from a lower-tier New York high school described how he survived: "I gave them the impression I was somewhat dumb . . . . I set my own trend . . . . Some people would mock me and I would ignore them. Then they would look at me funny . . . . I would act eccentric."

The cost of violence in society at large (i.e., purchases of security systems, carrying of guns, enrollment in self-defense classes, and avoidance of certain streets at certain times) is measured not only by actual harm, but by expenditures to avoid harm, and by the general disruption of people’s lives. Students who spend their time thinking about violence, and rearranging their life to avoid violence, are spending valuable "brain cells," which could otherwise be spent on learning or fun, and are foregoing the pleasure that they would have gotten by frequenting the places that they now avoid.

Many students believe restrooms are unsafe, and some have persistent health problems because they are afraid to use restrooms. In one elementary school, students watched a lot of television because they were afraid of going outside; the fears they report range from being abducted to being caught in a drive-by shooting. Seventeen percent of those surveyed in a November 1994 Starch Roper poll want to change schools, and 7 percent have stayed home or skipped classes because they are afraid of violence. The Justice Department estimated in 1993 that 160,000 children occasionally miss school because of intimidation or fear of bodily harm.

C. Some Unclear Trends

We should neither minimize nor exaggerate the problem of school violence. Violence is not unique to schools, nor did it begin in the postwar era, despite the movie The Blackboard Jungle, which suggested that juvenile delinquency and disruption of classes was a new phenomenon. Misbehavior, violence, and disruption have been recurrent themes in schools for centuries, and school officials have rarely been happy with student behavior. Youth misbehavior is discussed in clay tablets from Sumer written in 2000 B.C. Schoolchildren in 17th-century France were often armed; they dueled, brawled, mutinied, and beat teachers. Schoolmasters feared for their lives, and others were afraid to walk past schools for fear of being attacked. Student mutinies, strikes, and violence were also frequent in English public schools between 1775 and 1836; schoolmasters occasionally sought assistance by the military. In 1797, some boys at Rugby, who had been ordered to pay for damages they had done to a tradesman, responded by blowing up the door of the headmaster’s office, setting fire to his books and to school desks, and withdrawing to an island in a nearby lake. British constables finally took the island through force.

American schools, historically, have also had their share of violence, sex, drugs, and gambling. In colonial times, students mutinied at over 300 district schools every year, chasing off or locking out the teacher. One observer commented in 1837 (a year when nearly 400 schools in Massachusetts were broken up as a result of disciplinary problems), "There is as little disposition on the part of the American children to obey the uncontrollable will of their masters as on the part of their fathers to submit to the mandates of kings." It is hard to trace the evolution of school violence, since reporting procedures have never been consistent. But some analysts are not sure that student misbehavior was worse in the 1970s than it was in the 1890s.

There is some regional evidence and anecdotal evidence that juvenile violence, including school violence, is increasing. Some researchers suggest that juvenile violent crime has tripled since 1960. Studies in individual states, such as Wisconsin and North Carolina, indicate substantial increases in youth violence or school violence. (It is hard to compare such studies, though, since youth violence and school violence, while overlapping, are not exactly the same problem.) Some studies within the school system also find that violence has increased; 82 percent of school districts reported an increase in violence over the previous 5 years, and over 80 percent of officials in the American Federation of Teachers considered teenage violence a bigger problem today than in the past. Anecdotal evidence from students concurs. "I come in," says an Alabama teen, "and I see guys pulling up their shirts showing me guns. And then I go to the movies, and there’s someone on the corner selling weed, and I try to stay away from that stuff." Another teen in the same group: "I think it’s harder today because there’s more stuff to do wrong. They didn’t have as many people killing each other, and people fighting as much, at least I don’t think so from what I’ve heard. There’s just more stuff to get into. There wasn’t as much damage to be done."

But the evidence is mixed on whether school violence has actually been increasing or decreasing. Since few surveys are consistent with one another, any difference in findings can easily be explained by differences in survey format, question wording, surveyed audience, or definitions of violence. The percentage of twelfth graders who reported that they were victimized at school during the previous year seems to have stayed more or less constant since 1980 (see Figure 2-1). Moreover, the Safe School Study of the late 1970s, one of the most important studies of school violence, concluded that while school violence was "considerably more serious than it was 15 years ago," it was "about the same as it was 5 years ago."

Despite the fear of school violence, crime rates are generally much lower in schools than in society at large (see Table 2-6). "I think and know I’m not that safe in school," a middle school student says, "because people come up and say things to you and if you stay quiet they’ll start pushing you around. I really don’t feel safe anywhere but in my house and with my family to protect me." But according to Irwin Hyman of Temple University, schools are one of the safest institutions for children and youth, while homes are more dangerous places to be than is generally thought.

Whether overall school violence is increasing or decreasing, though, the mix of violence seems to have changed, in the direction of more violent crimes. Twenty percent of suburban high school students surveyed by Tulane researchers Joseph Sheley and M. Dwayne Smith endorsed shooting someone "who has stolen something from you," and 8 percent believed that it is all right to shoot a person "who had done something to offend or insult you." Sheley and Smith conclude that "one is struck less by the armament [among today’s teenagers] than by the evident willingness to pull the trigger."

Some researchers in Texas and Wisconsin, discussing conditions under which it is acceptable to hit or kill someone else, discovered reasons like the following: "If someone stared at me weird; if someone bullies me in front of my friends; if someone calls my mother names." This is in addition to reasons like self-defense, or retaliation for violence initiated against oneself or a family member. Many students never even mention reporting violence or murder to the police or school authorities; "if there’s an argument, kids should just settle it after school among themselves." Few students in workshops conducted by these researchers mentioned alternatives to violence, and most ignored a student who said, "it is not O.K. to hit anyone." These children value peer approval, which often involves escalating aggression, and personal and swift revenge.

The breakdown of violence between junior and senior high schools is unclear. At the time of the Safe Schools Study in the late 1970s, junior high schools were substantially more violent than senior high schools. Today, the National Crime Victimization Survey shows about the same percentages of victimization in junior and senior high school (though violence seems slightly higher in junior high). In the MetLife survey, though, high school students were more likely to report being victimized and engaging in violent behavior than junior high school students (see Table 2-7).

Source: Adapted from Irwin A. Hyman, School Discipline and School Violence (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997), Tables 10.2 and 10.3, pp. 312–313. Texas, Chicago, and Los Angeles overall numbers are from 1991. Texas school numbers are from 1993. Chicago and Los Angeles school numbers are from 1992. All Florida numbers are from 1993.

Source: Adapted from Jackson Toby, "The Schools," in Crime, ed. James Q. Wilson and Joan Petersilla (1995), ch. 7, p. 8, citing The Metropolitan Life Survey of the American Teacher: Violence in America's Public Schools (1993), conducted for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company by Louis Harris and Associates, Inc.

According to the National Household Education Survey, perceptions and occurrences of school violence varied significantly according to grade level, but these generally decreased in high school. For instance, more elementary (29 percent) and middle and junior high school students (34 percent) said they worried about becoming victims at school than did senior high school students (20 percent). Seventeen percent of middle or junior high school students reported being personally victimized, compared to 8 percent of senior high school students (see Table 2-8).

Source: Mary Jo Nolin, Elizabeth Davies, and Kathryn Chandler, Student Victimization at School: Statistics in Brief, National Center for Education Statistics, Report No. NCES-95-204, October 1995, table 1, p. 7, citing U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Household Education Survey, 1993.

Breaking actual victimization in that study down by type of victimization, we find that differences in bullying account for most of the difference between junior and senior high schools (see Table 2-9).

Source: Mary Jo Nolin, Elizabeth Davies, and Kathryn Chandler, Student Victimization at School: Statistics in Brief, National Center for Education Statistics, Report No. NCES-95-204, October 1995, table 2, p. 8, citing U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Household Education Survey, 1993.

The breakdown of violence among inner cities, suburbs, and rural areas is also unclear. Inner cities are reputed to be more violent than suburbs or rural areas, but regional and anecdotal evidence indicates that the problem is not limited to inner cities. Sixty-four percent of urban principals said violence increased in their schools from 1988 to 1993; these numbers were 54 percent in suburbs and 43 percent in rural areas. A Texas study reported suburban violence rates that were twice as high as urban violence rates in Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. According to a Roper Starch survey, students in small cities, suburbs, or rural areas are less likely than those in big cities to feel that teen violence is serious in their neighborhood, but they are equally likely to believe that it is a problem at their school. The percentage of students who say they carry a weapon to school is higher in small cities (17 percent) than in rural areas (12 percent), and almost twice as high in small cities as in large cities (9 percent).

D. The Extent of Weapon Possession

According to the national MetLife survey in 1993, teachers, on average, believed that three percent of students regularly carried weapons to school. Students believed, on average, that the average was 13 percent, while law enforcement officials believed it was eight percent. Onetime L.A. Councilman (now L.A. County Supervisor) Zev Yaroslavsky used to say that his daughter Mina, who graduated from North Hollywood High School in 1996, saw guns on campus "all the time." Others believe, however, that either Zev or Mina was exaggerating. But estimates and survey results differ so widely that it is difficult to reliably talk about the extent of weapon possession. Part of the difference is due to differences in survey design and wording; much of the difference stems from differences in the area and population surveyed, and the time period under consideration. Some estimates of weapon carrying are obtained from numbers of weapons confiscated. For instance, the number of weapons seized in Virginia schools rose from 348 in 1992–93 to 373 in 1993–94, and drug seizures also increased during the same period. This rise could indicate increased weapon-carrying (possible, since other measures of violence, such as assaults, also increased), but it could also indicate more effective policing.

Most estimates of weapon-carrying range from 1 to 10 percent, though some estimates in certain areas can be much higher—20 percent in some urban high schools, including New York, and more in some other inner-city areas, and possibly over 50 percent in some lower-tier New York high schools. Studies of male students in inner-city high schools near juvenile correctional facilities found gun ownership rates of 22 percent. Of this sample, 12 percent carried guns all or most of the time, while 23 percent carried a gun "now and then." Estimates of the average number of guns in schools range from 100,000 to 270,000 per day. Many of these weapons are stolen and cheaply available on the street.

Students carry guns both for protection and for self-esteem and peer acceptance. When surveyed, students tend to stress self-esteem and peer acceptance, while law enforcement officials tend to stress protection. (Teachers were divided on this question.) The Department of Justice estimates that about 430,000 students took some weapon to school for protection at least once during a six-month period in 1988–89.

Only 18 percent of gun violence reported for 1992 was related to gangs or drugs; 39 percent related to long-standing arguments, fights over possessions, and relationship (boyfriend-girlfriend) arguments.

Some schools have dealt with the problem of guns in schools through punitive means (by suspending or expelling students for carrying a weapon), by heightening security (e.g., metal detectors), or by educating people on how to react to gun crimes in such a way as to produce a minimum of bloodshed—for instance, lecturing teachers on guns and violence and telling them what to do if a student pulls a gun in class (don’t make any fast moves and follow the student’s orders).

E. Congressional Initiatives

Congress has passed a number of laws designed to deal with school violence. These include:

• The Safe Schools Act of 1994, under which the Department of Education makes grants to school districts with high violence rates for educational activities to reduce violence. For fiscal year 1994, about $20 million was appropriated through this program.
• The Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act of 1994, under which the Department of Education makes grants to states to prevent violence in and around schools, and to reduce drug and alcohol use. Allowable activities include violence-prevention and education programs for students, training and technical assistance, and comprehensive violence and drug prevention programs. Fiscal year 1995 appropriations through this program were about $482 million.
• The Family and Community Endeavor Schools Act and the Community Schools Youth Services and Supervision Grant Program of 1994. Under the act, the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services make grants to improve the overall development of at-risk children in poor, high-crime communities. Allowable programs include after-school programs that provide homework assistance and educational, social, and athletic activities. The fiscal year 1995 appropriation for the Family and Community Endeavor Schools Program Act was $11 million, while the Community Schools Youth Services and Supervision Grant Program Act appropriation was $26 million.

This is not an exhaustive list. These congressional initiatives all have a laudable goal—to reduce school violence—but they should be viewed with caution.

These initiatives result from a determination by Congress that some activities are better than others. The grants are mainly targeted to those particular specified activities. The result of these grant programs is to encourage those activities, at the expense of non-approved alternatives. This paper, however, will question the claim of any particular program to produce across-the-board reductions in violence rates. Some programs may produce marginal benefits at best; others may be downright harmful; some programs that do not work well may produce a false sense of security and may forestall the development of other, better options. The thesis of this paper is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and that the correct anti-violence policy is probably different for each school. Congress is in no position to determine what this program is for each school. Nor has Congress determined whether encouraging any school to adopt these particular policies would be beneficial or harmful.

It is often said that Congress’s natural inclination is to "throw money at a problem." Does throwing money at a problem actually do harm? In these cases, it might. Public schools (especially in poor areas, where their clientele, generally unable to afford private school tuition, is essentially captive) have a perverse incentive to exaggerate their violence problem to get more grant money. It is difficult to determine how often this occurs, but what is clear is that when Congress provides a generous grant program, many schools find it foolish to turn away what essentially seems like free money. "Getting a federal grant has become simple," says John Devine: "just start your own conflict-resolution program."

If one’s view is that there is a direct relationship between the amount of money spent and the results in terms of school violence reductions, this is all to the good. However, if the relationship is more complicated, and depends more on the actual nature of the school’s problems, the attitudes of the administration, support from the community, and other factors, the amount of money is not necessarily beneficial. If schools set up programs for no other reason than for extra funding, the programs may end up being downright harmful. Many hastily instituted programs use untrained staff and give the administration a false sense of security. Some schools do best with an inexpensive program, as the experience of some public schools and many private and religious schools suggests. (One of the authors of this paper went to a private, secular school, where tuition was approximately equal to California per-pupil public school expenditure, with no security guards, no metal detectors, and never even one word about violence prevention in any class or in any part of the curriculum.) Some schools that would be best served, for example, by adopting a hard-line disciplinarian approach may be tempted to forego such an approach, in favor of a more expensive, and less effective, violence-prevention curriculum.

F. Relation to Social Trends and to Crime in Society at Large

This paper’s primary thrust is to explore school policies and public policy related to education, to find out what policies can reduce school violence. But one obvious question related to school violence is to what extent this is a school problem. The literature on school violence is rife with complaints that "this is all of society’s problem" and that society is so violent that much school violence is merely expected. In a society where violence is a pervasive part of life, the schools bear less blame for school violence, and in such a society, the schools would probably not be seen as the primary place to stem violence. On the other hand, in a generally peaceful society where schools are violent, schools would both bear more of the blame and be expected to solve the problem to a greater extent.

While we accept that there are many causes of violence, and that general crime-prevention policies have their place in society (and that successful crime-prevention policies will probably also reduce school violence), we concentrate on what schools can do about the problem. We do not expect schools to reduce violence to zero, nor do we expect schools to solve all our problems, but this will not stop us from exploring the effectiveness of different school policies.

What else, then, can explain school violence rates?

First, one must realize the diversity of types of school violence. Some schools are located in violent, economically depressed neighborhoods. In Thomas Jefferson High School, in Brooklyn—where in January 1992, two students were fatally shot by an angry 15-year-old classmate—drug dealers routinely kill one another and innocent bystanders. Some of this violence flows into the school. Over 50 Thomas Jefferson students died in the early 1990s, some in the school itself. But not all school violence happens in violent communities. In 1989, Patrick Purdy, an alcoholic drifter, walked onto the playground of Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, Calif., and without warning began to spray the playground with AK–47 bullets. Five children died and 29 people were wounded. This act, while tragic, is hard to predict or prevent, and the school is not to blame in it.

This is different from everyday school violence, for instance, students beating up a classmate in the restroom, or a student forcing another to give them their lunch money or jewelry. As Rutgers University criminologist Jackson Toby puts it, "everyday school violence is more predictable than the sensational incidents that get widespread media attention, because everyday school violence is caused at least in part by educational policies and procedures governing schools and by how those policies are implemented in individual schools."

The following possible sources of school violence have been suggested:

• Poverty, which lays a foundation of anger and discontent;
• Illegitimacy and the breakdown of families, which lead children to seek the stability and caring environments of gangs;
• Domestic violence and child abuse, which foster learning and behavior problems, frustration, and retaliation;
• Society-wide violence rates and juvenile violence rates, which spill over into the school;
• The drug culture and its violent distribution network, which encourage students to arm themselves;
• Immigration, especially from countries where formal education is less valued;
• Population mobility, which creates an atmosphere of anonymity;
• Discrimination, which exacerbates the frustration and anger of minority students;
• Violent cultural imagery, from TV shows to sympathetic news coverage of militaristic foreign policy, which numbs children to the effects of violence;
• Materialism and advertising, which creates a culture where children are manipulated and feel exploited;
• Competitiveness and high parent expectations, which make children lose the identity and uniqueness of childhood before their time.

These possible explanations (presented in no particular order) run the gamut from the plausible to the ridiculous. But we will let readers decide for themselves which are which. They are outside of the scope of this paper, and we doubt that some of them significantly explain school violence. School violence is complicated and determined by many factors. This does not mean that schools should do nothing, nor does it mean that schools should do everything. Schools cannot mandate love, make poor people rich, break up gangs, or change the composition of TV programming.

Increasing violence rates may or may not indicate a failing school-violence policy; even a successful policy might lead to increased violence, if it is implemented in a community where other factors would otherwise make violence rates increase even faster. Add this to the already sparse set of valid evaluations of school-violence programs, and the conclusion emerges that we should be extremely careful before deciding whether a policy does or does not work.

G. Categorizing Violence-Prevention Programs

This paper categorizes violence-prevention programs in the following way:

• School-management–based programs. These are programs that focus on discipline and student behavior, alternative schools, and cooperative relationships with police and law enforcement.
• Environmental modification. These are programs based on changing student behavior by changing students’ social or physical environment. This includes installing metal detectors and hiring security guards, but also includes larger-scale programs like setting up after-school programs and increasing or decreasing school size.
• Educational and curriculum-based programs. These are programs based on teaching students behavior-management skills and nonviolent conflict resolution.

There is great variation in the types of programs instituted at different schools (see Table 2-10). Among the more than 750 programs implemented were alternative schools or programs for disruptive students (66 percent), conflict-resolution and peer-mediation training (61 percent), and safe havens for students (10 percent).

Unfortunately, evaluation of these programs has been slim. The Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, after a survey of such programs, remarked that "it is impossible to state with conviction which types of violence prevention programs or intervention strategies reviewed are the most effective." Few violence prevention programs even collect evaluation data. In many programs, data collection is limited to measuring the attitudes of program participants, or measuring the number of services provided. Most programs, in fact, only aim at changing attitudes or social skills, though the relationship between these and actual violent behavior has not been firmly established. This has important implications for education policy. All evidence—or, rather, the lack thereof—points toward adopting a policy that does not mandate one sort of program across the board. Even where evidence exists, it is often inconclusive, and for good reason—programs will work in some places, but not in others, because schools and students are different.

Source: National School Boards Association (NSBA)

We have found no evidence that any one anti-violence program works best. Instead, we have found the truism validated that a one-size-fits-all policy fits no one. The best way to reduce school violence—separating the programs that work from those that work less well, or are the results of the latest academic fads—seems to be to encourage different schools to innovate and try out different approaches, conduct proper evaluations and make the information available to parents as a marketing tool, and to subject schools to the discipline of competition to enhance both parental options and accountability.

Part 3

The first set of methods we address for dealing with school violence goes under the general term of "school management." These methods include everything related to discipline and punishment administered at the school site—the rules and regulations by which the school is managed, and the consequences of violating these rules.

"Love is a boy, by poets styl’d; Then spare the rod and spoil the child," Samuel Butler wrote in 1664 in his poem Hudibras. The belief in discipline and punishment as an effective way to mold moral beings is, of course, older than the 17th century. "Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it from him," the book of Proverbs tells us. The notion is, besides, intuitively plausible, and has produced tolerably good effects over the centuries.

While discipline and punishment have been—and continue to be—quite unpopular among academics, especially in the last 30 or so years, the practice itself is making a bit of a comeback. Educators on the front lines, parents, and politicians have observed the increase in violence at public schools since the 1960s, have observed the contemporary decrease in the belief in and use of discipline and punishment to maintain order, and have wondered whether there is not somewhat of a connection between the two.

Still, the civil-rights revolution, while not as fervent as it once was, has left its mark on public schools, in the form of various due process restrictions that often make it hard to actually punish troublemakers in meaningful ways. While this may be bad news from the point of view of public school administrators interested in adopting punitive measures, it is also a necessary consequence of compulsory education and mandated attendance at specific schools. When the government provides a service, it is also obligated to provide the service fairly, and assure safeguards against abuses of power. Private schools are provided voluntarily, using private money, and are chosen, and so are not subject to due process restrictions; private schools can, by and large, contract with whomever they like on whatever terms they like. But due process considerations must be considered for all government services—whether it be the disbursing of Social Security checks, the awarding of driver’s licenses, or the choosing of contractors. The fact that education is compulsory and that attendance at a particular school is assigned makes the burden on the government all the greater. It is not by accident that public schools have a hard time suspending and expelling students. The alternative—government-run schools that punish left and right and expel students frivolously—would be even worse. This may also be one of many reasons why public schools generally have a worse record of violence than private schools.

A. Discipline and Punishment

1. The student civil-rights revolution—in the academy and the courts

Discipline is somewhat unpopular in the academic literature; according to critics, punishment (even the nonphysical kind) can damage relationships, create resentment, compel rather than encourage obedience, and may promote school absenteeism, dropping out, school vandalism, and anxiety. Some anti-discipline educational analysts, following Dewey, are reluctant to endorse imposing teacher values on students, and would limit teachers to the role of bringing out students’ natural curiosity which, it is claimed, would make disciplinary problems moot. Some are informed by a world-view that sees schools as primarily agents of state compulsion, and students as essentially benign and kept down by hegemonic middle-class values, non-multicultural curricula, boring classes, and rote learning—and that sees the ideal education as one that questions the status quo and strives to reduce inequality in society. Much educational literature downplays student-initiated violence, or avoids it altogether, and in any event generally does not bring up the possibility of disapprovingly confronting the student during an act of misbehavior. Anti-disciplinarian language can occasionally be rather strident; many education experts disliked the film Lean on Me, which portrayed a tough, disciplinarian principal, because they thought it sent an overly simplistic message about the efficacy of discipline and expulsion to reduce violence and increase student achievement. "Its popularity shows how badly the public can be deceived when offered easy solutions to its fears of teenagers, blacks, Hispanics, drugs, and crime," wrote one professor. "In fact, the public support [Joe] Clark has gained for his tough-guy antics may well demonstrate the fragility of democracy."

A number of disciplinary methods are subject to legal limits. These include suspension, expulsion, and corporal punishment. Public embarrassment has been successfully challenged in court. So has grade reduction, once used routinely as retaliation for disciplinary infractions; some courts have treated grades as a constitutionally protected "property interest." Dress codes and locker searches have been challenged as well. (These are discussed later in the paper.) School officials are also potentially liable for civil damages. Administrators are now increasingly wary of disciplining students.

Punishment is often challenged for constitutional reasons, to avoid government abuse, and also because a major mission of schools is said to be social adjustment. Disabled students are a special case, which is addressed in a following section. It is also sometimes said (not a little bit patronizingly) that enforcing standards of conduct would have a disparate impact on minorities. (Though, as Al Shanker noted, "Actually it would: They would benefit disproportionately.") Courts are likely to side with the student they see than with the other, orderly students, whom they do not see. And many cases do not even get into court, because principals are reluctant to participate in what they know will likely be a losing cause, and in any event will give them a bad reputation and will be highly expensive.

The student civil-rights revolution of the 1970s, after which the relationship between the school and the student was increasingly mediated by the courts—which usually sided with unruly students and assumed bad faith on the part of teachers—created obvious problems for school disciplinarians. When Hawaii implemented new regulations to deal with the due process requirements newly established in Goss v. Lopez (1975), principals were unanimously dissatisfied. First, because of the evidence, notice, and hearing requirements for long-term suspensions, principals downgraded serious offenses to deal with them more quickly and with informal hearings. Second, because principals could not impose many short suspensions in a single semester if the suspensions cumulatively amounted to more than ten days, students who had already served ten days could misbehave with impunity. And third, the requirement to provide "alternative education" for students expelled or suspended for more than ten days was prohibitively expensive.

Even critics of this extension of civil rights, such as Jackson Toby and John Hood, admit that autocratic excesses, worthy of curbing, occurred under the old system. But if discipline is really effective in stemming violence, which many believe, limitations on punishment may partly explain schools’ difficulties. Thus, part of the increase in violence at public schools may have occurred for excellent reason. We should note that such civil-rights problems are largely nonexistent for private schools. The primary reason for this phenomenon is the fact that private schools are entirely chosen, and parents can delegate their own legitimate disciplinary authority to whomever they like. Therefore, by contracting with parents, private schools have much greater latitude in setting disciplinary policy.

2. Order and authority

While discipline is unpopular in academic circles, some educators see discipline "as a kindness on the part of teachers, a necessary part of growing up, as necessary to personal growth," in the words of Stephen Wallis, an assistant principal at Howard High School in Howard County, Md. We suspect that even most critics of discipline still, at heart, believe in discipline. Even in a school with their choice of exemplary preventive programs, some violent crime may occur; if so, there must be some way of dealing with it—in the same way that dealing with "root causes" of crime in no way precludes maintaining a police force and prison system. To say that schools should not rely primarily on punitive discipline does not mean that there should be no punitive discipline at all. The success of any non-punitive measures requires, as a foundation, that students who are likely to be violent know that they will be made to answer for their misbehavior. The strictness of the discipline and the severity of the punishment, of course, is a matter on which reasonable people may disagree.

It is widely agreed that schools are a breeding ground for moral and societal norms. "Children will spend seven hours a day, 35 hours a week, nine months out of the year for 12 years of their life in school. Therefore, the schools are the last and, in too many cases, the only institution remaining to develop productive and just members of society." When schools develop good values in students, violence is prevented; bullying and other destructive behaviors set up competing moral value systems that schools should resist.

It follows that if schools truly want to promote orderly conduct, one way to do so may be to instill in students the moral value of orderly conduct and obedience to one’s superiors, in particular teachers and administrators. According to school violence researcher Jackson Toby, the prevalence of disorder—and its offspring, violence—is directly related to how much respect students have for authority figures in the school. Such respect acts as an informal control on behavior; typically, formal controls, like metal detectors, are only instituted when violence has already become a major problem—that is, when the informal controls have broken down.

Disorder occurs when many students do not recognize the legitimacy of school rules and violate them often, and when many students defy the authority of the enforcers of these rules, that is, teachers and staff. Disorder can take the form of students arriving late, students wandering the halls, or even graffiti and litter. All of these invite students to test the limits further; in fact, testing the rules becomes part of the fun. Students who are not stopped when they wear hats, litter, carry forbidden beepers, or write on walls, soon challenge more important rules, like "Thou shalt not assault other students." John Devine calls such a situation—where the school disciplinary structure yields whenever it is pushed—the "marshmallow effect."

In the extreme, street culture ("You gotta hurt them and hurt them first") takes over. The Safe School study described one such urban school, Carver Junior High School, where the students had taken over: "Each individual teacher, in effect, was on his or her own, and the extent to which the teachers were able to control their own classrooms determined not only their own success but also their own safety. Teachers would lock themselves and their classes into their rooms, opening the doors only for class changes and to eject unruly students. Students who were put out of class were supposed to report to the principal’s office but in fact roamed the halls at will. The school’s corridors, the gym, the playground, and the bathrooms were essentially under the control of the students. The principal and his assistants, who were also elderly, remained in the administrative offices throughout the day and responded only when problems actually were brought to them by the teachers."

Once, teachers did act as peacekeepers, actively enforcing discipline both in and out of class. This role of teachers has continuously decreased in recent decades. Partly, the change in teachers’ roles results from the erosion of the notion of discipline generally. When many of students’ actions no longer carry real consequences, teachers lose moral authority, are less likely to be able to control their classes, and are more likely to be ineffective and demoralized. The loss of moral authority, as well as the resulting teacher burnout and absenteeism, can be seen as a cause of disorder and violence. But the change in teachers’ roles is also an effect of disorder and violence. Interfering with disorderly conduct has become potentially more dangerous for teachers. The Safe School survey reported that 28 percent of teachers in large cities hesitated to confront misbehaving students at least once in the month before the survey. (This number was 18 percent in smaller cities, 11 percent in suburban schools, and 7 percent in rural schools.) Teachers’ unions have discouraged teachers from trying to enforce discipline and have pushed for greater reliance, in certain violent, inner-city schools, on security measures such as guards and metal detectors. John Devine, director of the School Partnership Program at the New York University School of Education, and author of Maximum Security, says that teachers are now given the impression that "dealing with violence and aggressive students is a subspecialty that they had better not get involved with because they are neither trained in this area nor given that specific responsibility."

The disciplinary measures described in this section should be viewed in light of the general concept of order. Punishment—whether suspension, corporal punishment, or anything else—is often seen as ineffective and creating resentment, but punishment does not exist in a vacuum. Punishment can be imposed within a climate where children respect authority figures and see the rules, and their corresponding punishments, as basically fair. Then, punishment can be credibly threatened and will carry moral force, as corporal punishment does in some families. On the other hand, if informal controls have broken down and any discipline is considered akin to police brutality, force may provoke retaliation from students, even when there are security guards, and from their parents. The Safe School report tells of an inner-city high school principal who, in a fire drill, tried to direct a student down a flight of stairs by grabbing his arm from behind and pushing him. The student "turned and hit the principal in the eye, breaking his glasses and bruising his face around the eye." The teachers in the school and the principal himself decided in retrospect that he had violated a cardinal rule: Don’t put hands on students.

3. The variety of forms of discipline

Jackson Toby tells of a school, described in the Safe School study, which, unlike most of the schools described in the study, was orderly. The school was in an all-black, run-down neighborhood in a large city, with high unemployment and a history of riots. The study describes the disciplinary procedures at that school:

This formula worked partly because the school’s students were young and because the school, being small, was more tightly knit than if it had been larger. But its disciplinary policy also depended on three factors: monitoring students’ behavior, identifying rule violations when they occur, and punishing misbehavior. The precise form of punishment is less important than the expression of strong disapproval.

Of course, this is not the only form of school discipline. Some districts rely more on the law enforcement system. In 1983, the Anaheim Union High School District (AUHSD) established an incident reporting system called School Management and Resource Teams (SMART), which encompasses 26,000 students. It is funded through the school district and the National Institute of Justice. SMART is a school management program that lets administrators know easily, through a computerized data collection system, how many policy violations, offenses, and crimes were committed in each school. SMART teams analyze data from the system and try to develop solutions to discipline problems.

About a third of AUHSD students have limited English proficiency, and about a third eat lunch at reduced price or for free. AUHSD began experiencing drug, crime, and gang problems in the late 1970s, and gang activity increased significantly from 1985 to 1994. In 1985, AUHSD communities had 8 gangs with about 179 members; today there are over 50 gangs with about 2,100 members. AUHSD has already adopted a number of anti-crime strategies, including a zero-tolerance policy for gangs, weapons, and drugs; an antigang dress code and closed-campus policy; and non-uniformed community volunteers as security guards. Two police officers work full-time on gang prevention in the district. In an innovative move, AUHSD has placed mobile homes on several campuses, where retired people live rent-free in exchange for helping deter after-hours vandalism.

The SMART program evolved out of AUHSD efforts, dating from the late 1970s, to identify, categorize, log, and deal with campus incidents. In 1983, the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, and the U.S. Department of Education jointly funded SMART as a pilot in AUHSD and two other sites. SMART consists of a safety and security audit of district policies and practices affecting drugs, crime, discipline, and safety; sets up a computerized incident profiling system (IPS); establishes teams of students, parents, teachers, staff, law enforcement, and administrators who meet monthly to analyze the data, devise actions, and monitor results; and coordinates activities among different government agencies.

IPS data include rule violations like a failure to serve detention, and law violations like robbery, sex offenses, drug or weapons possession, assaults, and property crimes. SMART teams compile and analyze IPS data to identify and characterize discipline problems, and to assess the consequences of actions taken; they identify areas and times when the most disruption occurs, and also pinpoint problem students. SMART teams then produce and monitor a plan concentrating on one topic at a time, for instance locker thefts. A district SMART team follows a similar process when analyzing districtwide information. AUHSD has also developed ways to deal with particular students or systemic problems, including peer tutoring, alcohol- and drug-prevention programs, crisis intervention, and conflict-resolution training.

District statistics show that incidents on campuses have decreased gradually, while community crime has increased. In schools, 55 percent of the 37 main categories of incidents have declined since 1993 (and only 9 categories increased); police activity on campus dropped 51 percent from spring 1993 to 1994, and the total costs of incidents dropped 66 percent from fall 1991 to 1993. Categories that declined include assaults, battery, robbery, possession of destructive devices, property crimes, forgery, tardiness, weapons, failure to serve detention, throwing objects, threats/intimidation, profanity, tobacco, and off-campus incidents. Another evaluation found that school board members, the superintendent, and staff strongly supported and encouraged the SMART program; that AUHSD officials developed a depth of understanding and experience well beyond the core elements of SMART; and, most importantly, that schools using SMART had less problems with graffiti, fighting, failure to attend detention, and defiance of authority.

These two systems—in the anonymous school from the Safe Schools study, and in the AUHSD—are quite different. One relies on informal methods of moral suasion, to stop incidents from happening in the first place, and to punish them severely by "making a fuss" if they do happen, even if the violation itself is not inherently serious. The other relies on computers and law enforcement, and seems highly technical. Certainly, AUHSD officials have said that developing the SMART computer system, with its data files, reports, and computer-scannable forms, has had its share of troubles. And SMART costs money; major ongoing expenses for 18 sites during 1993-94 totaled about $37,000. This includes site coordinator stipends ($16,000), materials and supplies ($4,000), and a part-time program specialist ($17,000). On the other hand, success is its own justification. AUHSD officials believe SMART has succeeded because it adopted a systematic, problem-solving approach to crime and discipline problems; focused on local control; used mostly existing resources, with minimal additional funding; developed positive working relationships among educators, parents, students, local leaders, and community agencies; and focused on "school problems, not problem schools."

B. Some Disciplinary Methods

1. Behavior and discipline codes

One way of setting norms of behavior is to adopt a written policy clearly prohibiting certain activities, like bringing weapons or harassing other students. "Zero-tolerance" laws, discussed in the next section, also prohibit a range of activities, from drugs to beepers.

The discipline code movement began in the 1970s, when policy makers decided that schools should be guided by behavior codes, embodying a reasonably uniform set of rules and penalties, to bring consistency and order to schools’ reactions to misbehavior. In the 1980s, state departments of education were encouraged to develop model discipline codes. Behavior codes typically come with enforcement mechanisms attached, or they are toothless. In a district in Idaho, students who misbehave on the school bus can lose their riding privileges. The code, drafted by parents, bus drivers, administrators, and students, bans profane language, fighting, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, or weapons. Zero-tolerance laws often mandate suspension or expulsion as a penalty.

Some teachers unions, such as the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), have endorsed developing such codes of student conduct. "Unless you have order . . . not much learning will go on," according to former AFT president, the late Albert Shanker. In 1993, the Texas branch of AFT, the TFT, launched a campaign calling for zero tolerance for certain kinds of violent and disruptive behavior, which ultimately led to the passage of the Texas Safe Schools Act in 1995. The law requires districts to remove violent students from regular classrooms and put them in alternative educational settings; it allows teachers to remove consistently disruptive students from their classes; and it prohibits administrators from automatically returning that student. The law also set up an appeal committee to guard against abuses of the law by teachers.

A TFT study found that since the law was adopted, the number of teachers reporting threats of violence to students was down by 6 percent, the number reporting threats of violence to themselves was down by 33 percent, the number reporting assaults by students on other students was down by 10 percent, and the number saying that they had been assaulted in the past year was down by 35 percent. The numbers are still high—59 percent of teachers still report threats of physical violence to students, and 47 percent report assaults by students on other students—but the trend is downward, even with only 35 percent enforcement by school districts.

While behavior codes are popular, there is little evidence that they have markedly decreased misbehavior; school disruptions and violence did not decrease and emphasis on rules and punishment increased. Moreover, in their reaching after consistency, the codes may, in some cases, sacrifice fair treatment. Irwin Hyman tells the story of an inner-city high school student, Kisha, with no prior history of disciplinary infractions, who was suspended from school in the mid-1980s for defacing school property. Her offense consisted of covering up the words "Kisha is a slut" in the girls’ restroom with a marker—arguably not the sort of offense the writers of the discipline code had in mind, though perhaps a punishable offense nonetheless. The assistant principal, however, took a legalistic attitude toward the discipline code, and said, "Rules are rules and they are not made to be broken. You broke the rules, and you are suspended for three days." Two days were added to the suspension when Kisha told the principal, "Go ahead and suspend me for the whole year. I have had enough of you and your stupid rules."

The mixed evidence on behavior codes suggests that strict policies need not be adopted on the state level. They can just as well be adopted school by school, and in fact this may be preferable, since schools differ and a blanket zero-tolerance policy, especially for some of the smaller disruptions, may or may not be appropriate, given a particular school’s student body.

2. Suspension and expulsion

Suspension or expulsion is a common way of addressing behaviors that fall under the many "zero-tolerance" laws in different states. With the passage of the Gun-Free Schools Act in October 1994, states were required to implement an expulsion policy for any student who brings a weapon to school. Compliance with this mandate allows states to continue getting federal funds under the Elementary and Secondary School Act of 1965. Zero-tolerance policies in different states are summarized in Appendix 2–1, and rules on pagers and cellular phones are summarized in Table 3-1.

Unfortunately, data are scant on the effectiveness of increasing suspensions (or expulsions, which can be thought of as simply very long-term suspensions). Intuition suggests, however, that at least in the school itself, removing a disruptive student from a school will have the salutary effect of removing a source of disruption to other students. In-school suspensions may be more effective than out-of-school suspensions, because students who do not care about school may see out-of-school suspensions as week-long holidays. But how much does suspension change the behavior of such students? "Suspension does not work. Students don’t care whether they are suspended or not," noted one respondent to a National School Boards Association survey.

The use of suspension and expulsion is often controversial. In Fairfax County, Va., a 1993 "mob assault" policy, that requires principals to recommend expulsion for all students who participate in a group attack (regardless of who threw a punch or used a weapon), has been criticized both for racial bias and for the possibility that it will be used to unfairly target spectators. At West Potomac High School, several parents of children who were expelled after a mob assault say their children were the victims of overzealous administrators who assumed their children were part of the attack because of their race. Critics of the policy cited significant increases of the expulsion recommendation rates for blacks, Asians, and Hispanics, over the past several years, while rates for white students dropped. On the other hand, gangs in Fairfax County tend to be made up of racial minorities. "The people being caught are the people committing the crimes," according to police lieutenant Lee Williams, who is also black and a parent of two boys in Fairfax schools.

Zero-tolerance laws—whether for drugs, weapons, or inappropriate behavior—have also spawned their share of absurd horror stories. In Fairborn, Ohio, 13-year-old honor student Erica Taylor was suspended for ten days and recommended for expulsion for taking Midol, an over-the-counter menstrual-cramp reliever. (The girl who gave it to her was given nine days.) An 11-year-old girl in South Carolina was suspended and arrested for taking a kitchen knife to school so she could cut her chicken. (Officials only found out about the knife because the girl asked her teacher whether she could use it.) A kindergartner in Virginia was suspended for bringing a beeper to school. A six-year-old from North Carolina was expelled in 1996 for violating the school’s sexual harassment code by kissing a female classmate.

Source: Education Commission of the States, Denver, CO, 1996.

The courts have also weighed in on the matter of suspension and expulsion. A range of disciplinary measures, including expulsion, has been successfully challenged in court. In Goss v. Lopez (1975), the Supreme Court ruled that students have the right to receive oral or written notice of the charges against them, an explanation of the evidence, and a chance to tell their story. Under current suspension-and-expulsion law, short-term suspensions do not require a formal hearing, but longer suspensions, or expulsions, involve more formal procedures. This is as it should be; students punished in a public school ought to have at least as much protection as motorists who are given speeding tickets. Different constraints apply at a private school; since attendance at a private school is entirely voluntary, it is appropriate that suspension and expulsion procedures be as strict or as lax as agreed on in the contract between the school and the parents.

Procedural limitations make administrators more hesitant to suspend or expel, even when doing so would enhance the quality of education for the other students, and even when administrators might be theoretically able to support their case in a hearing but are unwilling to do so because of the time and expense involved. Another downside is that in reaction to such procedural requirements, public schools adopt bright-line rules, such as zero-tolerance policies, that lead to sadly amusing horror stories like the ones cited above.

3. Criminal penalties

Much school violence—such as theft, assault, on-campus possession of guns and drugs, setting fires—is also criminal in the "real world." Many schools have avoided the use of the police, preferring to rely on their own, internal, disciplinary procedures. But schools are now more likely to treat whatever is a crime outside school as a crime in school, and less likely to decide that "no one was really hurt." They are making greater use of law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Schools are working together with court officials, probation officers, and other professionals, where court officials give administrators information on convicted criminals returning to school, and probation officers are invited to monitor their charges on campus. About ten states have approved or proposed laws to increase the exchange of information about violent students between school districts and law-enforcement agencies.

In 1993, Colorado established a separate penal system for juvenile weapons offenders and made some juvenile records public. Also in 1993, California required that when violent students are moved to new schools under a second-chance program, their records be shared with their new teachers. This action was in response to an incident where a student nearly killed his eighth-grade history teacher. In Connecticut, two special prosecutors were assigned to address a surge of violence in Hartford schools. One commentator has even gone so far as to suggest the use of asset forfeiture laws for prosecution of gang, drug, and weapons activities. This proposal also involves working with local realtors and public housing authorities to establish drug-free lease clauses, written so as to specifically ban drug trafficking and providing for the forfeiture of public housing leases if the lessee is involved in drug trade or use.

In Missouri, on the first day of school in 1995, students were warned that children who commit a crime can be tried as adults. The state’s tough new juvenile-crime law requires schools to inform students about the provisions of the law. "Your juvenile record can follow you forever," a brochure given to students notes. "You risk losing the respect and trust of other people." The law also requires police to fingerprint and photograph juveniles accused of felonies, and for the first time opens juvenile-court proceedings to media and public scrutiny. In St. Louis, a task force investigating violence in the city’s schools suggested that assaults on teachers be regarded as an automatic felony, similar to assaults on police officers.

Putting children into the criminal justice system has its advantages; if the school’s budget is tight, it may benefit from sending wrongdoers into a system that was explicitly designed to deal with such occurrences. It also accords with many people’s moral convictions to treat criminals as criminals, regardless of whether they were in school or not. (It also accords with many people’s moral sensibilities to treat juvenile criminals as adults.)

A major problem is that the juvenile-justice system is not very effective. Schools are less and less able to get help from the juvenile courts, which are more and more concerned with student defendants’ rights. In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled, in In re Gault (1967) that children could only go to juvenile prisons if they had done something that they could be imprisoned for. Formal hearings, involving attorneys, became increasingly common for serious offenses. Some states, like New York and New Jersey, restricted the discretion of juvenile court judges, prohibiting sending a child to prison for "status offenses," like truancy or certain forms of delinquency, which would not be criminal if done by adults.

Juvenile courts often only intervene after serious violence occurs. According to a recent study of juvenile courts, less than one-third of youths accused of violent acts stay in custody; the rest are put on probation or set free. Only 3 percent are tried in adult courts, and even those are often given light punishments, as judges, who routinely see older, more dangerous defendants, are more likely to put children on probation. Thus, Jackson Toby of Rutgers University concludes, "for its own very good reasons, the juvenile justice system does not help the schools appreciably in dealing with disorder."

4. Corporal punishment

Table 3–2 reports the number of paddlings in 1992, in states that allow corporal punishment. In 1995, 27 states prohibited corporal punishment, and 11 states, by local rules, banned corporal punishment for most public-school students. While Catholic schools used to be well-known for using corporal punishment, most Catholic schools today forbid the practice. In 1995, yearly paddlings were estimated at about 750,000. Some states, particularly in the South and Southwest, have recently tried to reinstitute the practice.

The value of corporal punishment as a deterrent to school violence is disputed. Critics charge that "violence breeds violence"; corporal punishment teaches children that violence is an acceptable way to compel behavior, and makes them more likely to be violent themselves. Corporal punishment is often misdirected—while most violence is in higher grades, much corporal punishment occurs at primary and intermediate levels, and is more rarely used against bigger students who might retaliate. Corporal punishment, instead of being used as a last resort, is often used as a first punishment for nonviolent and minor misbehaviors. Some studies have found that eliminating corporal punishment in a school does not increase misbehavior. Corporal punishment can also, depending on its frequency, duration, and intensity, induce post-traumatic stress disorder in its victims, and the victims themselves may show an increase in absenteeism, apathy, and vandalism. At least one critic has brought up the possible sexual implications to the hitting of teenage girls by male principals.