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| Our Complete Blog & Roll List | School Violence & Prevention | Gang Violence | Personal Security Training |
 School Safety - Take a Guess: Before we start throwing statistics into the air, let's ask a few questions. How safe do you want your children to be? How safe do you think America's schools are? How safe are your children going to or coming home from school?a) Completely safe - <1% chance of harm per school year. b) Almost completely safe - 1 - 5% chance of being hurt. c) Mostly safe - a 5 -10% chance of getting hurt. d) Something less than mostly safe - 10% or worse, per year. Those are arbitrary measurements, very subjective - and you're certainly free to adjust them now to what you think they should be or how they should be defined. Remember that first question though, "How safe do you want your children to be?" Prepare for... Statistics. 2005-06 Statistics:In 2005-06, per the National Center for Education Statistics' 2008 Digest of Education Statistics (link opens 10Mb pdf file in new window) some 78% of schools reported a violent incident. This refers to Table 158 which breaks everything down in terms of % of schools and absolute number of incidents. I'll summarize the violent crime with weapons here:
Additionally, however, 7.2% of schools reported at least one incidence of a student with firearms or explosives (12,000 incidents). Another 42.8% of schools reported students carrying knives or sharp objects (90,000 incidents). 2006-07 Statistics: We can match this with information from 2007, assembled by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention finding that 5.9% of students carried a weapon (e.g. gun, knife, etc.) on school property during the 30 days of its survey; 7.8% of high school students reported having been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property at least once. As well, 12.4% of students had been in a physical fight on school property at least once.  There are approximately 55 million students between the grades of pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. The statistics above only relate to grades 7 - 12. I know this is not scientific, but to guess that children are roughly evenly distributed across these grades is not much of a stretch - meaning about 43-46% of those 55 million students are 7th - 12th graders...roughly, so we're looking at 23.7 - 25.3 million students. If so:* 2,900,000 - 3,130,000 students were in a fight on school grounds in 2007. * About 1,400,000 - 1,500,000 students carried a weapon to school in 2007. Ah...but Statistics can lie! Indeed they can. Both ways. These are statistics from the Federal Government - which depending upon your view can either seriously understate the problem or seriously overstate the problem. It's not our intention here to convince you either way, our own studies are incomplete. Moreover, it is necessary to watch the trends over time, over several years, and to keep an eye on additional new indicators and contributing influences. Unfortunately, there are numerous very unfavorable trends and influences... Gang Violence: If you'd like, check out our mini-blog on Gang Violence for additional information, but we will summarize some key portions here. The FBI estimates that there are about 900,000 gang members, nationwide on the streets, with another 147,000 in prison or jail. Bear in mind that the prison population in the US reached 2.3 million with another 1.5 million under state or federal supervision - 3.8 million offenders, over 1% of the population. Per the National Drug Intelligence Center, "Gangs are present in every state and U.S. territory and some particularly violent urban gangs have expanded from inner cities to suburban and some rural areas. Gangs increasingly represent a threat to many smaller communities, and they control most retail-level drug distribution nationally. Gangs are also increasing their involvement in wholesale-level drug distribution." In another report, "As of 1995, gang problems had been reported for all 50 States and the District of Columbia, for about 700 counties, and for about 1,500 cities and towns... States accounting for 100 percent of the population of the United States, cities and towns accounting for 50 percent of the total municipal population, and counties accounting for almost 80 percent of the all-county population reported the existence of youth gang problems." Gang activity can take place anywhere and everywhere - and that's based upon a 1995 report. Today, with the ongoing financial crisis in the United States and around the world, government budget cuts are forcing early releases of thousands of criminals. Federal courts in 2009 have mandated for California to reduce its prison population by 36,000 to 57,000 inmates over the next two to three years. Illinois announced today prisoners for budget purposes, too. Note 41 of 50 states have serious budget issues; 15 states with deficits exceeding 18% of annual tax revenues. Solutions: Again, as noted in the Gang Violence mini-blog, there are no single miracle solutions out there. There are eight layers of response to preventing violence in schools, but as we ascend the levels they increasingly turn from prevention to punishment and legislation. 1. Parents 2. Teachers 3. Neighborhoods 4. School Systems 5. Police 6. Courts 7. Prison 8. Government We have options to go after the root causes or address the symptoms. There is the 80/20 rule, also known as Paretto's Principle, which states that the majority of problems are the result of a minority of causes. Systems like Six Sigma and other process improvement systems are very good methods that can be adapted and applied to defining the primary root causes - which if resolved should apply to resolving the majority of problems. Once we reach the point where the Police, Courts, Prisons or Government needs to be involved, we are far beyond addressing the root problems. The root problems are best addressed first by parents, teachers and neighborhoods; and really school systems are the catalyst for organization on the basis of the resources available to them. Increasingly, we will NOT be able to rely upon State or Federal Government to provide the kind of mental health and prevention programs needed. This is clear simply by looking at the economy, unemployment, taxes, and state budget deficits, not to mention Federal deficits. The government does not have the money to support everything. It is up to the local level to pick up the slack or face a steady, if not more rapid, worsening of conditions. Pressure is applying from the bottom up, too. Parents are facing mounting pressures with work, bills, taxes, and a simply want to see some good news for once, working harder for less, many are turning off from the responsibilities of parenthood because they are at their capacity. What is needed is for people to start working together to share their load better. People need to stop minding their own business a little less. Get organized and share the load - of watching, listening, talking, spending time with children, and providing them guidance. This is the issue, this is what is not being done enough. What we intend to do here is develop as extensive of a list of resources you can turn to, that you can use and pass along to others. If you work with youth or crime prevention programs, we would very much like to add you to our blog roll and resource index. We will engage to give your resource a review and as we get more established, arrange interviews, too. Our mission is to help save lives - with safety tools like bulletproof backpacks, but also acquiring, organizing and increasing access to information you need and can use to keep your children safe. We welcome your input and you can write me (Mark) at MWDabbs (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll respond usually within 24 hours. |
CDC - Stopping School Violence
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