In the aftermath of more recent school shootings, governments at the state and federal levels have allocated significant new resources to keep students safe and avert future tragedies. Too often, however, these important resources are used to implement more stringent security measures in schools, including hiring SROs, installing security devices such as metal detectors, and even arming teachers with guns. Although this focus on physical—and visible—safety measures is understandable in the wake of a tragedy, it results in the adoption of approaches to school violence that have not been proven to advance school safety.
Many of the policies enacted in the wake of school shootings have the unintended impact of making many students, particularly students of color, feel much less safe in their schools. These students are often left out of conversations around interventions to school violence and school shootings, yet those same interventions make their education environments less safe. It is therefore important to invest in proven, evidence-based solutions that go beyond providing visual representations of safety to create a genuinely safer school environment. Such approaches include violence prevention programs, teacher trainings, and peer mediation interventions.
This report considers the most violent U.S. public school shootings in recent history and the subsequent investments in stringent security measures to date. It presents evidence as to why this response largely fails to increase school safety. It also examines the corresponding growth in the school security industry, which does not provide evidence-based solutions. Finally, the report offers policy recommendations that encourage investment in strategies to improve school climate and keep students, teachers, and schools safe.
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