School Safety

Physical Plant and Security

The retrofitting of school plants to increase security provided an immediate response to mass school shootings in the 1990s. Schools made major investments in security technology, from video cameras to weapons detectors. Law enforcement and security officials reevaluated school grounds and erected fences. Today, most schools restrict visitors to a single entrance, and all other doors have refitted hardware to prevent access but allow emergency egress.

School security studies reveal that school staff's visibility provides the largest deterrent to crime. With large school plants, schools hire their own security personnel or form partnerships with local law enforcement. Even with these measures, research shows that the status of teachers' relationships with students forms the primary predictor of school safety.

Discipline and Classroom Management

Teachers' ability to create positive relationships with students provides the cornerstone for all other studentadult relationships and strongly influences student-tostudent interactions in schools. Large class sizes and high student-teacher ratios challenge teachers' ability to ascertain and address every pupil's expressed and unexpressed needs. In addition, novice teachers report a limited repertoire in dealing with diverse student populations' instructional and behavioral issues. Inappropriate student behavior further erodes limited instructional time. Some teachers refuse to address student behavioral problems because they view teaching as restricted to dissemination of content knowledge and separated from development of students' social skills.

As a result, teacher organizations have negotiated for and won exemptions from student supervision in hallways, restrooms, playgrounds, and lunchrooms, leaving such venues to oversight by paraprofessionals or volunteers. Some research shows that students interpret such division of labor as a hierarchy of power, and, in turn, show differential responses to the interventions of certified educators and noncertified school support personnel.

From the 1970s on, education entrepreneurs have developed a variety of programs and packages for teachers to adopt in maintaining classroom deportment. Many of these programs depend on the tenets of behaviorism providing tangible rewards and sanctions for individual student or group deportment. Most of these programs do not adequately address diversity among pupils; that is, a classroom system may work for the majority of students, but rewards may not be adequately desirable for every student, and conversely, sanctions may not be substantial deterrents for all students. Often, the small number of students who resist these behavioral programs may be among those who are most disruptive. Their failure to conform to behavioral programs may aggravate teacherstudent and student-student rifts. Most teachers refer such problems to the school disciplinarian, typically the principal, or to special programs. Too often removing the particular student allows the instructional environment to flourish for the teacher and remaining students, but that student's educational and social needs may be exacerbated rather than remedied.

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