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Oatka
April 12, 2000, 10:59 PM
Well, sur-prise, sur-prise! And from the Baltimore Sun, no less, although they couldn't resist a swipe at the end. Must be in the genes.

My guess is now that Maryland has passed the "safety lock" law with the help of panicky soccer-moms, they now feel safe to come out and say it was all B/S.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/content/cover/story?section=cover&pagename=story&storyid=1150310208685

School violence less than thought
Report says fears in shootings' wake are overblown

By Mike Bowler
Sun Staff

A "cloud of fear" has swept the land in the year since the shootings at Columbine High School, obscuring an important fact: Schools - nationally and in Maryland - suffer less violence than ever, and harsh security measures taken by educators have done more harm than good.

These are conclusions reached in a national report - with a focus on Maryland and Massachusetts - released yesterday by a Washington-based policy group.

The report from the Justice Policy Institute contrasts two statistics: A child's chances of being killed at school are one in 2 million. Yet nearly three-quarters of Americans in a recent poll believe that a shooting could happen in their neighborhood school.

Meanwhile, minority and disabled students are bearing the brunt of harsher discipline, though the school shootings that have raised anxiety levels are linked to "America's white suburban or rural communities," the report says.

In Maryland, for example, the report says blacks accounted for 36.6 percent of the student body last year but 54 percent of suspensions. Students in special education made up 13 percent of total enrollment but had a suspension rate of 23.1 percent.

"There's been tremendous overreaction," says Nancy S. Grasmick, Maryland schools superintendent, "and minorities are bearing the brunt of it. Violence won't be stopped by practicing harsh discipline. The kids doing the shootings aren't the ones we're cracking down on."

Jason Ziedenberg, one of the report's authors, says, "We're seeing more and more suspensions for stupid reasons. ... We're doing it so much now that some of those excluded are getting lawyers."

Michele Murphy, director of Schoolhouse Legal Services in Maryland, a children's legal advocacy group, says a student was suspended for having a toy miniature gun in school, another for threatening to shoot a fellow student with a paper clip.

"People are overreacting," Murphy says.
"There's been huge and unnecessary hype," says Grasmick. "Thanks to Columbine, a whole industry has grown up to provide security in schools, and political futures are thriving on this."

Student shootings in Jonesboro, Ark.; Littleton, Colo.; and Mount Morris Township, Mich., came against a backdrop of a long-term and continuing decrease in school crime, according to the report, titled "School House Hype." In 1998, before the April 20 Columbine tragedy, in which 12 students and a teacher were killed, violent deaths in schools declined 40 percent nationally.

During the 1990s, school crimes in general declined nationally, serious violent crimes declined 34 percent and school thefts declined 29 percent. In Maryland, the number of incidents of violence reported in the schools decreased, while crimes such as false alarms and bomb threats increased considerably.

The report cites a University of Maryland research finding that severe measures such as metal detectors, lockdowns, surveillance systems and personal searches make students feel less safe in school.

An irony, says the report, is that harsh security measures are often taken by authorities fearing legal liability in the event of an incident, but lawsuits are increasingly being filed by students claiming to have been illegally suspended or expelled.

"The calls we're getting are not from the parents of kids who took guns to school," says Murphy. "They're from parents of kids who have been suspended for minor infractions."

At Bohemia Manor Middle School in Cecil County, Principal Stephen Asplen and his staff are wearing picture identification badges this year. The school has enhanced its exterior lighting but has not held regular locker or personal searches.

"We had a countywide safe schools committee," Asplen said, "and every school did an inventory. You have to prepare for every exigency," without turning a school into an armed camp, he added.

According to the report, two of Maryland's most populous jurisdictions, Baltimore City and Baltimore County, had lower suspension rates last year than rural Somerset and Dorchester counties, while in four rural or suburban districts - Allegany, Charles, Frederick and Garrett counties - disabled students accounted for more than a third of suspensions.

The report makes three recommendations:
The media, it says, "need to add more context to the coverage of school shootings and youth violence in general."

Educators need to come up with alternatives to the "secure school" approach, using counseling and classroom discussion to "keep students safe without alienating them from adults."

The nation needs to "stop focusing exclusively on kids bringing guns to school and address the more fundamental question of how kids got those guns in the first place."

The proliferation of handguns in America has created a "toxic environment in which young people are 12 times more likely to be killed by gunfire than young people in 25 other industrialized societies," the report says.

Originally published on Apr 12 2000
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Go to the site and check out the sidebar:
"Justice Policy Institute/Children's Law Center -- School House Hype: Two Years Later"

MANY articles on this subject. (Wonder why it took 'em so long?) wink wink, nudge nudge.



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The New World Order has a Third Reich odor.

Art Eatman
April 12, 2000, 11:55 PM
Did you pick up on the squib, "There's been huge and unnecessary hype," says Grasmick. "Thanks to Columbine, a whole industry has grown up to provide security in schools, and political futures are thriving on this."

It's not just "political futures"; it's MONEY! Consider how an entire "cottage industry" has sprung up out of those making a living from Security, Psychology, and Medicine.

It was known even before Columbine that school violence was decreasing. However, facts have never slowed the media down any, when there is some rare but highly visible tragedy: "How does it FEEL?" is the order of the day.

Compassion and Feeling Pain is far more important than facts, in this wonderful world of jiggy...

As usual, Art

Jeff Thomas
April 13, 2000, 12:40 AM
I, for one, am shocked ... absolutely shocked that our media would mislead us ... ;)

Actually, these days, they should begin awarding Pulitzer prizes to those rare, apparently extinct reporters that actually get their facts straight regarding firearms. After they break that new ground, they could even begin recognizing journalists that report news stories without grinding their editorial ax ...

Nah. It'll never happen.

Tom Matiska
April 13, 2000, 11:44 AM
There was a similar article in the 26 Mar Wilkes Barre Times Leader (www.leader.net)about how the Wilkes Barre School District had inflated (lied) about the amount of school violence in order to qualify for Federal grants. It is yet another example of how when the govt aims to sovle a problem by throwing money at it, they usually miss.

-The District's report included 3 off campus murders that had the square root of nothing at all to do with school violence. No school related murders actually occurred

-The district (7400 students) reported an unbelievable 1000 suspensions for violence last year(97-98, they are still cooking the 98-99 numbers).

-it reported 214 incidents of violence in 96-97 (two gun related) and 137 (zero gun related) in 97-98. (doesn't sound like a "gun" problem to me)

-The drop from 214 to 137 is at odds with claims in the same report of an increase in violence, and the 136 incidents in 97-98 don't explain the claims of 1000 suspensions that year.

-There were 11 arrests in 96-97 and only 6 in 97-98. (less than a 5% arrest rate if claims of hundreds of violent incidents are to be believed)

-School director Jeff Namey defended the exaggerations becaue he felt it necessary qualify for Federal funding(end justifies the means, "fer the children" yada yada yada)

The article is in their archive section now and will cost $1.95 to retrieve.

Tom, Pa

Donny
April 13, 2000, 12:00 PM
And when, may I ask, as a taxpayer and responsibile adult, is someone going to be charged with fraudulent use of a financial instrument? You know, like all the medical fraud against MediCare by some "unscrupulous" doctors out there.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>There was a similar article in the 26 Mar Wilkes Barre Times Leader (www.leader.net)about how the Wilkes Barre School District had inflated (lied) about the amount of school violence in order to qualify for Federal grants. It is yet another example of how when the govt aims to sovle a problem by throwing money at it, they usually miss.
[/quote]

To do this, and then admit it, openly shows either severe brain damage, or a brazen ego of almost unheard of size. Except of course, our Traitor in Chief.

Another case of where honesty, and integrity DOESN'T PAY OFF.

Best Regards,
Don

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The most foolish mistake we could make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms; history shows that all conquerers who have allowed their subjected people to carry arms have prepared their own fall.
Adolf Hitler

Herodotus
April 15, 2000, 09:26 AM
I remember, shortly after the Jonesboro, Ark. school shooting incident, watching a psychologist explain on a talk show that school shootings are in fact so rare that it is not possible to make any kind of valid statistical study of their occurance and that, because the perpetuators are juveniles, it is not possible for psychologists to personally work with them to try to devine the perpetator's actual mental processes.
These are truely aberant and very random occurances for which no one actually has any objective solution. What we see being offered is all snake oil proposed for ulterior motives. People have no real solution, but are quick to use the incidents for their own purposes. Its sickening to watch.
The same psychologist (forget his name) implored the media not to make a sensationalized media feeding frenzy out of this event, for fear, given the age group in question, of encouraging copy cat crimes. In this he was also surely right. It is tragic to see the consequences.