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

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.

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.

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.

"Decades of urban disinvestment and poverty have made educational attainment for Black youth more vital than at any time in recent history. Yet, in their pursuit of quality education, many Black families are burdened by challenging barriers, most notably, school punishment"--

School of Errors establishes another voice in the discussion of how to promote safe schools. It challenges the unchecked expansion of school fortification and questions the realized benefit of inter-agency collaboration during a sentinel event. This book offers an alternative to traumatizing simulations by providing clear options for improving school safety by the empirically-proven effective measures of leakage detection (preventive) and sensemaking (reactive). School of Errors restores the scientific method to school safety and clears a path through the media rhetoric fogging this vital topic.

This book provides practical strategies for teaching conflict resolution skills that help prevent bullying and violence for a safe and peaceful school environment.