Decrease in Serious Violent Crimes at School

The rate of serious violent crime – rape, sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault – at the nation’s schools fell from six victimizations per 1,000 students in 2003 to four per 1,000 in 2004, according this new report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.
From July 1, 2004 through June 30, 2005, preliminary reports show there were 21 homicides at school. In the most recent school year for which overall homicide data were available (2003 to 2004), homicides to school age children were about 50 times more likely to occur away from school than at school.

Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2006  is posted at the link above.

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School Associated Violence Deaths

The Centers for Disease Control provides a question and answer fact sheet about school violence. Information here includes a link to CDC’s Best Practices for Youth Violence Prevention: A Source Book for Community Action, a publication that looks at the effectiveness of specific violence prevention practices, and a number of other online school violence resources.

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What Do Bystanders Do When Children Are Being Bullied …And Why do they do it?

This Chapin Hall issue brief on a study of sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students that aims to understand children’s behavior when they witness bullying and the reasons why children defend victims, join in the bullying, or avoid involvement. This study was the first to examine the role of social dilemmas in bullying situations. 5 page pdf file.

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How Students Can Break the ‘Code of Silence’

This article reviews the systems used to break the ‘code of silence’ in schools. They include hot lines and e-mail systems. SPEAK-UP is a nationally available resource for anonymously reporting weapon-related threats.

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National Center for Children Exposed to Violence

The mission of the NCCEV is to increase the capacity of individuals and communities to reduce the incidence and impact of violence on children and families. Click on the link above to visit the web site.

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Mobile Classroom Promotes Financial Literacy for Middle School Students

With support from OJJDP, Junior Achievement has launched a mobile, interactive classroom that is being used to educate young people on practical matters of money management. Students are presented with true-to-life scenarios and taught how to establish a budget and make important decisions on money matters.

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Black Students Underachieve to Avoid ‘Acting White’

A majority of gifted and well-performing black students are not reaching their fullest academic potential for fear of being labeled ‘acting white.” Researchers surveyed about 300 teachers and 928 lack students nationally in public schools before concluding that peer pressure and fear of being isolated as traitors to the black race is forcing many bright students to under perform at school.

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Copycat Shootings

Comments from experts about three separate school shootings in a week, the copycat effect, and a “socially toxic environment that glamorizes guns and violence.” James Alan Fox and Deborah Prothrow-Stith are interviewed.

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Evaluation of an Illinois School-Based Probation Program

Jackson County, Illinois was awarded a three-year grant to develop and operate a school-based probation program for juvenile probationers. This program evaluation summary highlights the lessons learned and offers suggestions for jurisdictions interested in implementing a school-based probation program. 4 page pdf file.

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Columbine Records: Essays, Diary Entries, Drawings and Other Documents

Nearly 1,000 pages of essays, diary entries, computer files and other documents released last week include a notebook journal kept by Harris’ father that referred to his son’s disciplinary and psychological problems. The pages are filled with profanity, racial slurs and drawings depicting violence or death.

Overview                     Details

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Freedom Writers

The Freedom Writers idea is a new approach to writing in which there is no formal curriculum or body of research to prove how well it works. It is also so exciting that Paramount Pictures is a making a movie about Erin Gruwell, the teacher who pioneered the idea and watched many of her struggling high school student blossom into college-bound youngsters, eager to write and to succeed.

It’s a simple idea. Teachers get kids to write by writing about their own lives.

Gruwell’s success was followed by a book filled with her students’ essays on alcoholism, gang initiation, racism, homelessness and abuse. The book is named for the Freedom Riders who helped integrate the South.

The Philadelphia Inquirer  has published a three-part series featuring students in that city and their writing as well as video interviews of the students reading their work.

Part I             Part II             Part III               Freedom Writers Web Site

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School Bus Videotape Shows Beating of Boy

Videotape shows a 10-year-old boy being repeatedly punched by two other older boys while the driver continued on her route without stopping. The videotape from a camera on the bus shows two boys taunting and teasing Chester Gala on their way home from a middle school 30 miles north of Detroit, Michigan, then punching him repeatedly.

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Backpack Clubs for Hungry Kids

On Friday afternoons throughout the school year, members of the Backpack clubs at elementary schools across the country gather to fill their backpacks with food for weekend breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Children carry backpacks that look like the typical backpacks in which children carry books and supplies. They keep children from being teased by their classmates for being poor. The food in each backpack costs between $2 and $3, and when filled weighs between seven to 10 pounds. They provide balanced meals for children for the weekend. Some backpack carriers guard their food and hide it. Others share it with their families.

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When Fear Is Part of School

According to a survey released last week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 6% of high school students in the country said they missed at least one day of school the previous month because they felt unsafe a school or on their way to or from school. That is up from 5.4% in the last survey in 2003. This article profiles students who have experienced violence in school and their and their families’ attempts to get them into safe situations.

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North Carolina’s 21st Century School System

North Carolina is engaged in transforming high schools from a model created in the industrial age to a system that makes sense in the 21st century. The state’s plan calls for a network of “early college” high schools that will eventually give every student in the state the chance to get two years of college by the time they graduate. It emphasizes new small, career-themed schools emphasizing subjects like engineering, science or business within larger high schools. The goal is to make sure all students graduate with the skills they need to succeed in college or the workplace

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Teenagers Who Plot Violence Are Being Charged as Terrorists

U.S. public schools in April saw at least a dozen Columbine-like plots foiled. School safety experts have long noted similarities between school shooters and terrorists, urging schools to use a “threat assessment” approach to safety that takes even implied threats seriously. They note almost all the school shooters had thoughts of suicide in common, similar to the dispair experienced by terrorists.

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How to Read to Your Cat

A Brevity reader pointed out that, in the interest of fairness and in regard to the story last week about children reading to dogs, I should also inform you that children can read to their cats! She says her daughter, who struggled to learn to read, loved “Three Stories You Can Read to Your Cat” and she and her sibling read them to the family cats several times. The book is available in paperback, both new and used, online at Amazon, and probably B & N too, although I haven’t looked. 

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Dog-assisted Reading Programs

This article describes a number of programs for kids learning to read in which they read to a dog, the most uncritical audience one could have. The programs work on several levels, building confidence, giving children the opportunity and relax and focus on reading without stress.

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A Successful Program for Disabled Students in Regular Classes

In West Fernando Middle School in Brooksville, Florida kids with severe disabilities are included in general education classrooms. The school has created a network of general education students who know their classmates with special needs, help them learn, and even socialize with them on weekends.  Peers in the program spend an elective period helping 15 disabled students attend regular classes and visit 12 others whose medical problems make inclusion difficult or dangerous. 

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Georgia Revokes Drivers Licenses of Students With High Absentee Rates and Other Disciplinary Problems

Students in Georgia can lose their licenses if they rack up 10 or more unexcused absences in a semester, commit a violence crime, or are arrested for drug, alcohol or weapons possession. Overall, the state revoked 11,422 drivers’ licenses for the 2005-06 academic year. Of those, 8,665 were for excessive absences and 2,757 were for students with other disciplinary problems. The Teenage and Adult Driver Responsibility Act was passed in 1997.

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Parents as Bullies

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel  reports on a series of physical and verbal attacks by parents on kids and staff in Milwaukee schools. In response to the surge of verbally and physically violent incidents involving adults in the school, the Milwaukee Public Schools took the unusual step of creating a “notice of no trespassing” letter principals can send to parents and other adults who have caused problems in the schools.

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Study of Zero Tolerance Policy in Florida Finds Thousands of Students Funneled into Juvenile Detention for Minor Offenses.

The Advancement Project, a NAACP-affiliated group based in Washington, D. C., says that “school districts have spent millions of dollars for school police officers who spend most of their time disciplining students for conduct that should be addressed by school programs, counseling and parental involvement.”

School administrators statewide relied heavily on out-of-school suspensions which rose 14% in 2005 although the student population increased by 8% during the same time. Black students accounted for half of those suspensions and juvenile justice referrals, although they account for 23% of student enrollment statewide.

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SMARTY Bus Teaches Youth After School

The SMARTY (Sharing Mobile After School Resources, Training Youth) Bus program in Sheridan, Wyoming teaches third through sixth graders about everything from drugs to rocket science. The bus visits two day care centers and eight elementary schools, stopping at each site once every two weeks from 3 to 4 p.m.

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Leaving Boys Behind: Public High School Graduation Rates

The Center for Civic Innovation at he Manhattan Institute has just released this report which finds finds a wide disparity in the public high school graduation rates of white and minority students, particularly for boys who are minorities.

• the overall national public high school graduation rate for the class of 2003 was 70 percent.
• 72% of female students graduated.
  65% of male students graduated.
• 59% of African-American females graduated.
  48% of African-American males graduated.
• 58% of Hispanic females graduated.
  49% of Hispanic males graduated.
• Each of the nation’s ten largest public high school districts, which enroll more than 8% of the nation’s public school student population, failed to graduate more than 60% of its students.

26 page pdf file.

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National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities

Services and support offered at this new web site include technical assistance, Enews, research, and information about effective practices to increase school completion rates and decrease dropout rates among students with disabilities.

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Check & Connect – A Model for Engaging Students in School

Check & Connect was developed with input from individuals directly involved with youth at high risk for school failure. The program was originally developed for urban middle school students with learning and behavioral challenges to prevent dropping out. The model is currently being replicated and field tested for youth with and without disabilities in grades K-12 in urban and suburban communities.

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The STAND UP web site provides factual information about each state in the country at this web site and includes information about schools too.
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Prom Season

Salpointe Catholic High School in Tucson, Arizona requires all parents to attend a two-hour forum on substance abuse prevention before their kids are allowed to attend the prom or a winter formal. The course is based on the “Community of Concern” program developed over the past eight years by parents and officials at a Catholic high school outside Washington, D.C.

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School Violence Hot Line

Amid suspicion that school administrators are underreporting incidents of violence, the New York state Education Department plans a hot line on which people can report stabbings, rapes, robberies and other lesser assaults in their local schools. The hot line plan is part of a larger effort to overhaul what officials admit is a seriously flawed system for determining whether a given school is unsafe.

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Childhood Obesity

Childhood Obesity is the theme of the latest issue of the online journal The Future of Children. In addition to the journal articles, an executive summary and a policy brief, Fighting Obesity in the Public Schools,  are also available for download.

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