Keeping Rural Schools Safe

The authors examine school safety and violence prevention among school superintendents in Georgia's rural public schools spanning three decades. Survey data from 1995, 2005, and 2015 provide points of comparison and contrast regarding efforts by school superintendents to keep schools safe. School superintendents are in positions with the best vantage point to know the strategies and techniques being used to protect students, faculty, staff, administrators, and visitors from crime and violence on school grounds. The longitudinal research design provides a means to sort out changes in school security technologies and shifts in policies and procedures implemented to keep students safe from harm. The authors find that rural public schools have been safe and remain so. The impact of globalization and social media present new challenges for rural school superintendents who recognize that schools are soft targets for those motivated to bring violence to school.

Racialized Perceptions of School Violence Suspensions of African-American Students

The history and current practices of out-of-school suspensions significantly impact African-American students; research shows the practices to be overly used and target African-American students. This chapter explores the ways that school violence is responded to disproportionally and is entangled with racial mythology. That is, racial discrimination shows up in structural and interpersonal ways such as suspending and expelling students of Color for the same infractions for which White peers get to return to class such as kicking a trashcan, defiance, and truancies. The chapter closes with recommendations for educators and policymakers, focusing on ways to mitigate the impact of out-of-school suspension practices and racial discrimination in order to improve the future of learning, school discipline, and outcomes of African-American students.

Tightening the Gap

Between January 1, 2012 and January 30, 2018 alone there were 27 school shooting incidents, accounting for 62 victim deaths, 108 victims injured, countless witness and community members affected, and 10 assailants who committed suicide or were killed by a police officer during the attack, at schools or campuses across the United States (U.S.). Clearly, further intervention and prevention strategies are necessary for school personnel and law enforcement, as well as our greater communities, in reducing instances of school violence. Identification of individuals and groups who are at higher risk for violence toward self or others is one essential step in prevention. When prevention is unsuccessful, a student may begin down a path toward violence, eventually posing a threat to the extent that identifying and intervening becomes necessary. Encouraging law enforcement and school personnel to become well-versed in both, so that they might successfully support each other's efforts and develop common goals, is essential to successful communication regarding students and groups of concern.

The American K-12 School Violence Incident

The authors give an overview of a research project that examined in detail 106 characteristics of 78 school violence incidents that occurred in the United States between 1979 and 2011. The result is an extensive overview of the location, date, and time of school violence incidents; the school environment in which violence occurred; the school violence incident itself; the characteristics of the perpetrators involved; characteristics of weapons used; and injuries incurred. The authors pose to the reader six major findings of the characteristics of K-12 school violence incidents in the United States which they argue must be considered as we move forward in dealing with this issue.

The Relationship Between Tracking and School Violence

Tracking in the American education is where students are formally assigned/labeled college prep, general, or vocational. In some areas of the United States, tracking/labeling begins as early as kindergarten. IQ and early achievement tests designed to measure “ability” determine track/label placement in the elementary school years, thus setting in place an educational trajectory for the students' educational tenure. Social reaction or labeling theory holds that criminality is promoted by becoming negatively labeled by significant others. Labels such as “gifted,” “honors,” “average,” “remedial” give certification of overall ability or worth. These labels teach students that if the school does not identify them as capable in earlier grades, they should not expect to do well later. Such labels isolate kids from society and lock them into lives of antisocial behaviors. Labels create expectations that the labeled person will act in a certain way. Eventually these students begin to accept their labels as personal identities, locking them further into lives of crime and deviance.

Cyberbullying

The purpose of this chapter is to examine cyberbullying among children and adolescents. This chapter is organized into six sections, including (1) explaining the definitions, technologies used, the role of anonymity, and prevalence rates of cyberbullying, (2) discussing the characteristics and risk factors associated with cyberbullying involvement, (3) reviewing research findings on the psychological and behavioral consequences resulting from cyberbullying involvement, (4) discussing solutions and recommendations, (5) exploring future directions, and (6) providing conclusions. The chapter will draw on qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-design research methodologies from psychology, sociology, social work, and criminology.

Examining the Victim-Offender Overlap

Because of the negative consequences associated with adolescent behavioral problems, such as violence, more research is needed that focuses on the interconnectedness between unsafe schools, bully victimization, and subsequent violence. Additional research may also help identify the processes through which victimized individuals become offenders. Drawing from Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory and Coleman's social capital theory, this researcher argues that the bonds between youths and their families and youths and their schools are important for understanding violent offending. Additionally, this chapter merges insights from sociological and criminological research to explore how unsafe schools and victimization occurring in multiple contexts contributes to youths becoming violent offenders. This chapter also provides policy implications, stressing the importance of an approach that considers how we can best invest in youth's future by bridging families and schools to promote safer schools for all students.

The Role of Teachers and School Leaders in K-12 School Violence

While data regarding school violence are gathered on a regular basis, noticeably missing from the literature are incidents that involve violence directed toward K-12 teachers and school leaders. The scarce evidence that does exist regarding this phenomenon suggests that this population is targeted more often than one may think, and they suffer from great harm as a result of various violent behaviors such as harassment, verbal threats and intimidation, bullying, property offenses, and physical attacks. Since very little is known about violence that is directed toward K-12 teachers and school leaders, there is a significant need for more research in this area in order to provide a more comprehensive view of school violence and to develop policies and formulate effective solutions. Addressing these issues will not only allow teachers and school leaders to perform to the best of their abilities, but school environments will be safer so that learning can take place without the interruption of violence.

A Threat Assessment Model for Posts in The Online Sphere

Since it has been suggested that social media offers an unprecedented view into the mindset of “persons of concern” with regards to mass shooters, this research study focuses on the comments about “school shootings” expressed on the social media and video sharing website YouTube. As a form of targeted violence that tends to be planned well in advance of the attack, there are opportunities to intervene and assess a school shooting threat before it transpires. Since previous studies have purported that the majority of school shooters had communicated their intention to carry out their attack in advance of it occurring—something which has become known by the term “leakage”—the authors have chosen to develop the foundation for a threat assessment model that is based upon the internet postings that relate to school shootings. The proposed model entitled “online threat assessment of school shooters” (OTASS) could be a tentative starting point for carrying out assessments of threats into online postings.

Cyberbullying in Adolescence

The advent of the internet has revolutionized the way individuals conduct business, socialize, and search for information on any topic imaginable at any time. Nevertheless, with all its benefits, the internet also has a darker side for which new criminal opportunities have emerged and some traditional crimes have evolved and multiplied. One area of concern that has emerged since the advent of the internet is that of cyberbullying, a distinct type of deviant behavior that has attained worldwide attention from practitioners and scholars. This chapter examines cyberbullying as associated with the age, gender, race, and urbanicity of the victims versus the extent to which traditional face-to-face bullying took place within these same groups. Cyberbullying remains an elusive social problem for all because cyberbullying has been associated with school shootings, suicides, and other violence among adolescents. Discussion of the implications for practitioners and scholars will be included in that cyberbullying extends beyond the school grounds and well within the realm of public safety.