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.     

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.     

The Effect of Peer Victimization on Learning

Abstract

Incidents of school violence have prompted calls for school communities to create environments that encourage student by-standers to act responsibly and proactively when they confront a range of violent incidents, from bullying and fights to weapon carrying and other serious threats to school safety. It is not always clear, however, what bystanders would—or should—do when faced with violent or potentially violent situations. This article describes findings from focus groups conducted with 54 middle school students and 97 staff in an urban, predominantly African American school district with relatively high levels of community violence. Discussions addressed bystander norms, attitudes, and behaviors, and identified barriers that prevent youth as well as adult bystanders from taking positive action. Findings inform violence prevention strategies for building consensus and supporting positive bystander responses.     

Context Matters: Reactive and Proactive Bystander Action to Prevent Sexual and Dating Violence in High Schools

ABSTRACT

Given high rates of relationship violence among adolescents, there is a need to understand variables that influence adolescents’ helping behaviors to reduce risk for dating and sexual violence (reactive) and promote prevention before violence happens or risk factors are evident (proactive). The current paper examined individual and school variables related to greater actionism in a large sample of high school students. Baseline, cross-sectional data used in the current analyses were gathered before intervention as part of a prevention program evaluation across 25 high schools in New England from students in grades 9–12 (N= 3,404). Students who self-reported a greater number of proactive actions taken were students who identified as sexual minorities, had a history of victimization, and were in schools with supportive peer norms. The current findings suggest a model for prevention that might include training individuals and attending to school level variables.     

Advancing a Conceptual and Empirical Model of School Climate for School Staff in California

ABSTRACT

School climate is increasingly intertwined with efforts to create safe schools and improve social-emotional learning and academic outcomes. While current definitions of school climate implicate the decisions and actions of school staff members, the majority of school climate research focuses on the perspectives of students. This study presents an adapted model of school climate that focuses on the experiences of school staff members, and is one of the first empirical studies to explore a statewide data set of responses from staff members in California public schools. Results suggest that there are meaningful differences in the experiences of school climate for different staff members and that these differences should guide the assessments of school climate and changes to policies and procedures that may influence climate.     

Disproportionality in Daily Metal Detector Student Searches in U.S. Public Schools

While the effectiveness of metal detectors to improve school safety remains debated, many public schools continue to rely on this technology to control school violence. Among them is the 1% of public schools where students are searched on a daily basis by metal detector. This study examines the school-level risk factors associated with daily searches to estimate the disproportionality of their use in high-violence, majority-minority public schools. Analyzing data from the 2007?2008 School Survey on Crime and Safety, this study finds that 91% of public schools that perform daily metal detector searches of students are high-violence, majority-minority schools. However, the results also show that, among high-violence schools, those with majority-minority enrollments are significantly more likely than others to conduct these searches. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of policy responses to school violence that are distinct and disproportionate according to student demographics, rather than safety conditions.     

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.     

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.     

学校暴力的防与治

暴力作为一个全球性社会问题,近年来频繁地在我国校园及其周边发生,给青少年学生带来身体及心理上的极大伤害。由于其后果的严重性,防"暴"治"暴"已成为当前净化学校环境的一项重要任务。文章在分析学校暴力产生原因的基础上,提出防"暴"治"暴"的学校管理策略。     

Fear of School Violence and the Ameliorative Effects of Student Social Capital

Abstract

Data from the Canadian National Survey of Children and Youth are employed in order to investigate hypotheses regarding the relationships between students' social connections and their feelings of vulnerability to criminal danger. The analysis is preceded by a review of the research relating to school fear and social capital. Findings point to the importance of the social capital inhered in the students' relationship with parents, friends, and teachers as well as their own personality characteristics. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the broader theoretical and policy implications which emerge from this analysis.     

Socioeconomic Status and Behavior Problems

Abstract

Violence in the schools is a fundamental concern for students, educators and communities as they collectively address issues that make schools safer. A longitudinal analysis of disciplinary referrals was conducted with a large countywide school district to measure differences across socioeconomic status and school level. These variables proved to be critical in identifying and targeting schools that may need to be the focus of prevention and intervention efforts. Other suggestions related to the effects of school violence on academic instruction and methods for the targeting of services are discussed along with implications for educators and mental health professionals in school based settings.     

Teaching for Social Justice and Social Action

Social justice education involves promoting critical awareness of social inequalities and developing skills that work against these inequalities. This article describes a general theoretical framework for social justice education, describes general strategies for facilitating students' social justice awareness and engagement, identifies challenges to social education, and highlights articles in the special issue that address these themes.     

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.     

社区发展是社会管理创新与和谐城市建设的重要基础

社区是城市生活的重要组成部分。是人居环境、城市文化、城市人文生态的主要载体。在中国迅速城市化的过程中,传统城市社区受到了重创,新的社区还没有全面建立。党中央提高社会管理的科学化水平的号召,给当代城市管理者提出了一个崭新的命题——关注城市社区的建设和发展。本文梳理了社区的定义,揭示了中国城市化过程中社区被破坏的现实,提出城市治理过程中要注重城市社区的建设和发展,创新社区管理与发展的方式,为科学社会管理、建立和谐城市打下良好的社会基础。     

社会组织管理体制:内在逻辑与发展趋势

本文认为:改革开放以来,与我国社会组织的蓬勃发展相适应,我国社会组织的管理体制经历并正在经历着重大的制度创新。这个主要表现为强制性制度变迁的历史过程,背后存在三种不同的战略思路,一为发展型战略,二为控制型战略,三为规范型战略。三大战略形成了三种不同的力量,彼此互动和博弈,推进着整个社会组织管理体制的发展演进,随着法治国家的建设和社会管理创新的实践,这三种力量既相互促进又相互消融,共同推动着我国社会组织管理体制朝着有利于社会组织积极作用发挥、有利于整个社会和谐的方向发展。     

Total and Marginal Cost Analysis for a High School Based Bystander Intervention

Costs of providing the Green Dot bystander-based intervention, shown to be effective in the reduction of sexual violence among Kentucky high school students, were estimated based on data from a large cluster-randomized clinical trial. Rape Crisis Center Educators were trained to provide Green Dot curriculum to students. Implementing Green Dot in schools (N = 13) randomized to the intervention, over five years, cost $1.6 M and included start-up ($58 K) and ongoing implementation ($1.55 M). Costs for adding a school ($25,510) were calculated based on the final year, where no start-up costs were incurred. Knowing the $25,510 cost estimate for adding Green Dot may be particularly useful for high school administrators or school boards when they were making economic decisions based on strong evidence of program effectiveness to reduce violence.     

Role of School Psychologists in Violence Prevention and Intervention

Abstract

Kansas school psychologists were extremely accurate in their estimates of violence in their own schools and viewed school violence prevention as an important part of their job, regardless of the rates of violence in their districts. Most had at least some involvement in their own school's violence prevention program, although many reported that they had little or no training. Despite the fact that the majority of respondents work in districts with relatively low rates of violence, over half reported that fighting, bullying, and substance abuse, early warning signs of school violence, occur a lot or a fair amount in their districts.     

美育建设的实践依托与社会管理创新目标的实现

对美育建设实践语境中的社会管理如何实现既定目标这一过程性问题,展开具有明确对象的、与亲历者广泛深入的访谈和研究。社会管理的核心问题,是要采取卓有成效的措施,提高广大人民群众的经济收入,进一步夯实其美好生活新期待的物质基础。用富于时代美感的事物滋养人民群众的心田,摒弃一切与社会主义新农村建设相违背的丑恶的思想和行为。要把管理视作服务,并以此为业务的基本依据和出发点,不断地扩大、延伸服务群众的范围和领域,创新服务方式,促进管理者与人民群众的情感交流,增进其和谐。     

社区创新社会管理的经验与挑战——以深圳桃源居社区为例

加强和创新社会管理的基础在社区。本文以深圳桃源居社区为例,深入剖析了社区创新社会管理的经验与挑战。桃源居社区通过创新理念,积极培育了社区社会组织;通过构建多元参与的机制,创新了社区社会治理的模式;通过创新社区管理方法,建设了社区骨干人才队伍;通过资源整合模式创新,解决了长期以来社区公共服务供给不足的难题。     

加强社会建设 推进社会管理创新——以深圳的实践为例

社会管理创新的根本出发点是作为基础的社会建设。充分调动和发挥广大人民群众的积极性,让他们广泛参与到社会管理过程中来,才能够最大限度激发社会活力,增加和谐因素。社会建设的重点既包括大力改善民生,更要着力于建设社会本体。没有形成一个在规模力量和功能作用上与国家、市场相匹配的本体社会,社会管理将会因权力扭曲、缺乏合作及其与市场交换关系的纠缠而陷于困境,失去动力和效率。必须按照中央确定的党委领导、政府负责、社会协作、公众参与的方针,通过以形成公民社会为目标的社会建设来推进社会管理创新。近年来,深圳市在推进社会管理方面进行了有益探索。