A Group Randomized Trial of School-Based Teen Courts to Address the School to Prison Pipeline,Reduce Aggression and Violence,and Enhance School Safety in Middle and High School Students

ABSTRACT

This study evaluated the efficacy of School-Based Teen Courts (SBTCs) using a rigorous experimental trial with 24 middle- and high-schools randomly selected to receive SBTCs (n= 12) or to business-as-usual without any SBTC program (n = 12). Analyses examined school-level longitudinal growth models and individual-level pretest-posttest comparisons on school climate, student problems, and suspension rates. Longitudinal growth models revealed that SBTCs were significantly associated with positive changes in school satisfaction and reductions in delinquent friends for high school students, but showed no significant changes on other outcomes. Short-term suspensions decreased more than twice as much in SBTC schools versus comparison schools. There was a 47% reduction in bullying victimization in SBTC schools relative to a 22% reduction in comparison schools. These findings suggest that SBTCs have the potential to positively impact youth development.     

School Principals’ Perceptions of Crime Risk and Academic Climate: Links to School Safety Practices

ABSTRACT

Little is known about principals’ perceptions and their links to how school safety practices operate. Using data from School Survey on Crime and Safety from 2,009 public schools in the US, the current study examines the extent to which principals/administrators’ perceptions of academic climate and crime risk are related to school practices regarding safety and discipline. Results show that principals’ perceptions directly relate to school safety practices when controlling for school characteristics, and also explain how selected school characteristics relate to safety practices.Overall, the present study highlights the importance of principals’ perceptions of crime risk and academic climate in school safety practices. Policy implications and potential limitations of the study are discussed.     

School Disorder and Student Achievement

Abstract

The study develops a school safety and student achievement model, incorporating the concepts of student background, school structure, school culture, school disorder, and student academic achievement, and fits it to 613 elementary schools in New York City, using Structural Equations Modeling technique. The model fits the data well based on both Chi-square test statistic and goodness of fit indexes. The model accounts for 71% of school variance in student achievement. The study confirms that student background is associated with student behavior and student learning. School disorder affects student achievement negatively directly and indirectly mediated by student attendance. The study suggests that policy initiative could be implemented to improve school climate, therefore reduce school disorder and improve student achievement.     

Including All Staff in an Alternative School's Effort to Reduce Violence

ABSTRACT

Interview data from non-teaching staff at Garfield alternative school revealed how the entire staff-including custodians, secretaries, and hall monitors-contributed to the success of the school's violence prevention efforts. The school functioned democratically: non-teaching staff attended violence prevention workshops offered to all staff; the non-teaching staff's opinions about students' behavior were constantly solicited by teachers and administrators. By employing the skills and cultural competence of all staff members, the school's administrators encouraged democratic, non-hierarchical behavior among the staff in order to reduce violence in the students' lives. The authors recommend studies be conducted at other schools to expand our knowledge of the ways non-teaching staff may enhance a whole school approach to violence prevention.     

Principal Perceptions of School Safety

Abstract

In a climate of continued national concern over school safety, school personnel are faced with a flood of statistics and advice about the prevalence of youth violence, and recommended responses. In the spring of 2000, a school safety survey (Sprague, Colvin, & Irvin, 1995) was sent to all public school principals in Oregon to assess their perceptions of risk and protective factors affecting school safety. We also asked questions about school safety concerns and intervention programs. We compared the results of the present survey with those found from administering the same survey in 1995. Results indicate that protective factors were rated higher than risk factors in 1995 and 2000. Bullying and harassment, poverty, and transiency were top rated risk factors in 2000 and these were different from results found in 1995. Principals rated response to conflict, suicide prevention, and staff training as top protective factors in 2000 and these also differed from the 1995 ratings. Regarding priorities for change, principals rated improvement of the academic program as their highest priority, followed by school safety and discipline improvement. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for local and state-level policy planning in education and government. We also address limitations of the current study and directions for future research.     

School Violence: The Role of Parental and Community Involvement

This study utilizes the School Survey on Crime and Safety to identify variables that predict lower levels of violence from four domains: school security, school climate, parental involvement, and community involvement. Negative binomial regression was performed and the findings indicate that statistically significant results come from all four domains. When modifying the sample to include only schools that offer some form of parental involvement opportunities, schools with greater parental volunteering and participation in subject area events experience reduced levels of violence. Implications from this analysis include developing creative methods for greater parental input in school activities.     

Involving Students in School Violence Prevention

Abstract

Why are some students not willing to tell adults about a possibly violent situation in their school? In this study, 1,100 students in the Mid-South were surveyed on their knowledge of, and willingness to tell about, a possibly violent situation, their involvement in behaviors that are related to school violence, and their school's climate. About 1/3 of students knew of a potentially violent situation, and about 3/4 were willing to tell an adult. However, students who were involved in antecedents to violence and/or who had an unfavorable view of their school were much less likely to tell an adult about such situations. Efforts to prevent school violence should be designed with these factors in mind.     

School Violence Prevention

Abstract

Objective: This study was designed to describe the level of violence in three high schools and to test the effects of universal and targeted strategies to reduce this violence.

Design:A repeated measures design with two baseline scores and two intervention scores was used during a two year period. Two rural high schools served as control schools with a single intervention high school.

Participants: All freshmen at the three high schools completed a self-report measure of school violence; 420 completed the study at the end of their sophomore year.

Method: Multiple universal and targeted interventions to prevent school violence were used for slightly more than one year. Scores on student Victimization and Perpetration, gathered one year apart, were compared using a pre-test post-test model.

Findings: Student reports of perpetration at the intervention school were significantly lower than the combined scores at the control school. Students, teachers, and administrators reported improved awareness, knowledge, and skills to implement violence prevention programs.

Conclusions: A comprehensive program that includes university and high school partnerships has the capability to reduce school violence during a short period. Despite limitations to the study, continued use of research partnerships to decrease school violence is war-ranted.     

Examining the Role of School Resource Officers on School Safety and Crisis Response Teams

School resource officers (SROs) are being increasingly employed in schools to respond to incidents of school violence and to help address safety concerns among students and staff. While previous research on school safety and crisis teams has examined the role of school mental health professionals’ and administrators, fewer studies have evaluated the role of the SRO. The current study examined differences between SROs, school administrators, and school mental health professionals (i.e., school psychologists, school counselors, social workers) regarding experiences with crisis events, as well as perceived effectiveness of crisis prevention and response strategies. The most common crisis events across professionals included student assaults, drug offenses, and mandated child abuse and neglect reporting. While SROs and school mental health professionals had similar ratings of school safety strategies, school administrators had less effective appraisals of crisis response plans and crisis postvention activities. Implications for practice and future directions for research are reviewed.     

Creating a Culture of Tolerance in Schools

Abstract

The purposes of this article are to establish the relationships be tween prejudice or intolerance and hate-motivated school violence; to describe the aspects of school climate or culture that foster prejudice, stereotyping, and scapegoating; and, to provide examples of interventions educators might use, both individually and systemically, to create a school culture of tolerance and re spect for individual and group differences as a means for preventing bias motivated violent incidents.     

Restructuring the Ecology of the School as an Approach to Prevention During School Transitions

Summary

Normative school transitions are often accompanied by deterioration in students' socio-emotional, behavioral and academic adjustment, and poorer outcomes in later adolescence and young adulthood. The current paper describes a preventive intervention for students experiencing normative transitions into middle grade schools and junior and senior high schools-the School Transitional Environment Project (STEP). The program is based on a transactional-ecological model of preventive intervention that employs a school restructuring and transformation approach in order to prevent the deleterious effects of school transitions and create school environments that are developmentally enhancing. Core features of STEP seek to change the ecological characteristics of the school setting in ways that: (a) reduce the adaptational demands of coping with flux and complexity in new school settings; (b) increase access to and the provision of important emotional and academic/instrumental support and guidance from school staff and other students; and (c) increase the students' sense of connectedness and belonging within the school. The present paper reviews findings from prior trials of the School Environment Transition Project, and presents the results of two additional STEP studies. The first reports on a long-term follow-up of STEP students who received the project in a large, urban high school that served students whose families were largely on public assistance. Results of this study revealed approximately 50% reductions in drop-out rates and significant positive effects on school performance and attendance patterns. The second study reports on an extension of STEP to junior high schools and middle grade students. Consistent with earlier studies, during the transition year, students in STEP schools reported more positive experiences in school environment dimensions that STEP sought to impact, and better adjustment outcomes than non-STEP students across academic, socio-emotional, and behavioral domains.     

E-Sites For Safe Schools

ABSTRACT

A substantial body of research indicates that positive school culture benchmarks are integrally tied to the success of school reform and change in general. Additionally, an emerging body of research suggests a similar role for school culture in effective implementation of school violence prevention and intervention efforts. However, little research is available that specifically focuses on the elements of school culture that promote the successful implementation of bullying intervention programs aimed at reducing the most prevalent form of school violence. Therefore, this case study attempted to identify the school culture characteristics that supported or interfered with implementation of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program from the viewpoint of school staff key informants in a junior high school in its second year of program implementation. Data were collected primarily from open-ended, semi-structured interviews along with informal observations and analysis of school documents. Themes emerging from the interviews were examined in relation to the findings from the observations and documents. School culture characteristics that supported implementation included a sense of family, warmth, collaboration, and connections among staff and between staff and students, combined with a central focus on learning as the primary mission of the school. Identified barriers to implementation included the local community served by the district that was slow to change and accept differences. Outcomes suggest that, beyond ensuring fidelity of implementing the core components of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, examining the characteristics of a school's culture that promote or impede implementation efforts might further ensure its success and integration.     

K-12 Teachers' Perceptions of School Policy and Fear of School Violence

Abstract

Since the 1990s, schools have focused their attention on policies designed to improve school safety. Most researches on school violence policies have concentrated on the needs of students and administrators. This study investigated the impact of school violence policies on K-l 2 teachers' fear. Using self-report data from 447 K-12 teachers from a large southeastern school district and multilevel path analysis, this study showed that K-12 teachers' perceptions of school policies impacted their fear of school violence. Further, ecological factors had a direct relationship with teacher fear. Policy implications from these findings are discussed.     

School Violence Interventions in the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative

Abstract

The Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative was designed to encourage collaboration among school districts and local community service providers in the provision of behavioral health prevention and early intervention efforts. These efforts would address the physical safety of students as well as provide mental health, violence prevention, and social skills services. One local SS/HS Initiative brought together community and school collaborators in an ambitious agenda that included 14 distinct programs that addressed the needs of over 110,000 students in a large school district. The purpose of the current paper is to report the results of the evaluation of two of the programs designed to reduce violent and disruptive behavior in schools. The programs include a school-based anger management program and a community-based, alternative-to-suspension program. Working in cooperation with program staff and the school district, quasi-experimental designs were used to measure change over time for students. The two studies demonstrate the application of multiple methodologies in evaluating the effectiveness of prevention and early intervention efforts with the aim of providing data to support program improvement and sustainability.     

Data Quality in Student Risk Behavior Surveys and Administrator Training

SUMMARY

This study examined the influence of survey validity screening on the results from three group-administered school surveys administered to samples totaling approximately 5500 students in 19 schools. The estimated levels of risk behaviors, antisocial behaviors, and victim experiences were substantially reduced when respondents who gave multiple inconsistent or extreme responses to other survey items were screened out of the data. The researchers also observed that the percentage of students giving inconsistent and illogically extreme responses was greater among those surveys given by an untrained administrator, raising the hypothesis that administrator training could be a critical factor in obtaining more consistent and trustworthy survey data. These results indicate that it may be important to train school staff in survey administration and to screen surveys for validity in order to improve the accuracy of student self-report surveys.     

Authoritative school climate and suspension rates in middle schools: Implications for reducing the racial disparity in school discipline

The overuse of school suspensions has been linked to a host of negative outcomes, including racial disparities in discipline. School climate initiatives have shown promise in reducing these disparities. The present study used the Authoritative School Climate Survey—which measures disciplinary structure and student support as key measures of school climate—to investigate an association between teacher and student perceptions of school climate and suspension rates in a statewide sample of middle schools. Regression analyses controlling for school-level poverty and school size found that elements of authoritative climate, particularly structure, distinguish high- and low-suspending schools. Schools with high levels of student- and teacher-reported structure had lower overall suspension rates and a lower gap between Black and White suspension rates. These findings can be used to guide school climate initiatives to reduce racial disparities in school discipline.     

Characteristics of School Violence and the Value of Family-School Therapeutic Alliances

Abstract

This article discusses the problem of school violence and the fear about school safety that have been reinforced by extensive news media coverage of the recent series of school shooting incidents. Various factors associated with school violence are addressed, including sociocultural influences on adolescents that pose a challenge to counselors and therapists working with this clientele. In order to reduce violence and aggression in schools and to ease concerns about safety, steps must be taken not only by schools but also by parents and communities. Families can play an important protective role in minimizing at-risk behavior by young people. In fact, many of the most effective youth violence interventions include family components. Several of these programs are described as well as a number of collaborative approaches that demonstrate the potential synergy of school counselors and family therapists working together. With the addition of more courses in family dynamics in counselor education programs, school counselors will be in a better position to collaborate with family therapists in helping reduce violence in the nation's schools.     

Beyond Guns,Drugs and Gangs

SUMMARY

The failure to consider factors that make a key contribution to violence and its prevention may create serious problems of construct validity for school violence surveys. Further, few studies have assessed the relative importance of variables contributing to perceptions of safety by examining correlations between survey items and overall feelings of school safety. This study describes the development of a self-report survey, the Safe and Responsive Schools Safe School Survey, explicitly designed to assess perceptions regarding criminal violation and serious violence as well as day-to-day disruption and climate issues. Principal components analysis identified four factors involving student connectedness, incivility, feelings of personal safety, and delinquency/major safety. Further multivariate analysis suggests that, in at least some cases, feelings about connectedness and climate may be more critical than serious violence in shaping student perceptions of school safety.     

Monitoring School Violence

Abstract

National monitoring of school violence is essential for needs assessments, policymaking, and evaluation at the national level. As informative and important as national monitoring is, the data generated at the national level is often not useful at the district or school site levels. There is therefore a need for a feasible method of monitoring school violence on the district and school level; furthermore, we need to find ways to effectively apply national-level information to schools and school districts. over time should be the foundation for the design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions in this area. In this article, we propose an expanded concept of monitoring that links comparable data on school violence at the grade, school site, district, and national levels. The paper presents our conceptual framework and methodology and illustrates its implementation in a district in Israel. We present examples of reports generated to monitor school violence for the district as a whole and for each of the school sites. Finally, we conclude that this is a feasible and useful model that social services could adopt to monitor practice in many other areas.     

The School Enrollment Process for Group Home Youth

Abstract

When children are moved into a new group home, best practices would suggest that collaboration is required between public child welfare workers, group home staff, and school staff to ensure an appropriate educational setting for the child with minimal delay. The purpose of this research was to examine the amount of time between placement in a new group home and enrollment and attendance in a new school. The study also sought to better understand the reasons for delays when they occur. The study included data on 45 newly placed group home youth served in 26 randomly selected group homes in 3 counties in California. Data were obtained through case record reviews and interviews conducted with social workers, group home personnel, and school staff. The data suggest that the tools and legal codes designed to facilitate the process of enrolling group home youth in school frequently are not complied with or used. Delays in enrollment and attendance were common, particularly for youth requiring special educational services; inter-agency communication among responsible parties was infrequent; and all parties too often erroneously relied on others to carry out fundamental tasks associated with school placement. Suggested procedures are offered for public child welfare workers and other parties to improve coordination and educational outcomes for youth.