Violence in
schools
is increasing, particularly against teachers. It needs to stop. That the perpetrators are predominately black does not change that. Schools must offer a safe environment, with necessary security personnel, and must have the proper authority to maintain it.
That means not just more security personnel but also harsher punishments for students who are
violent
. Peaceable students and teachers in the most
disadvantaged neighborhoods
have the most to gain from safe learning environments.
ANOTHER STEP TO BECOMING THE PARENT PARTY
Mass shootings dominate headlines but are much less common than other violence in schools, and in a
recent nationwide RAND poll
, mass shootings were at the bottom of the list of teachers’ safety concerns. Bullying is the top concern, followed by fights, then drugs.
Separately, the
Institute of Education Sciences found
that 36% of schools report increased student verbal abuse of teachers since COVID, and 48% reported increased acts of disrespect.
Most alarmingly, an
American Psychological Association poll
found that 22% of educational staff, including instructional aides and school resource officers, report being physically assaulted by students. The same poll found that 49% of teachers said they wanted to quit or switch schools.
“I have been physically assaulted multiple times by students in the building and they know that not only is there no one to stop them, but there will be no consequences either,” one teacher told the APA. “I ended up in the hospital the last time it happened.”
Not all teachers feel unsafe. According to RAND, schools that take steps to make their environments more secure have teachers who feel — surprise! — more secure. The two most popular safety measures include permanent security staff in the school and alarms that directly connect to the police. Teachers with these measures were 20% more likely to report a positive school climate than teachers without them.
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Only 5% of teachers said security measures worsened their schools’ climate. These results were not changed demographics or geographic locale, RAND found. No matter where a school was or who was in it, teachers reported a better environment when they knew they could easily call police and permanent security staff were on site.
Then-President Barack Obama did great damage when he threatened schools with civil rights lawsuits if data showed certain demographic groups were more likely to face disciplinary action. It was essentially a hall pass for black students, who account for a disproportionate amount of bad behavior. The subsequent retreat from school safety endangered students and teachers. Teachers unions, both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, have been no help. They
ignored the voices of their front-line members
, instead choosing to virtue-signal on politics to the rest of their ideologically captured coalition.
