"In this well-researched and thoughtful analysis, Aaron Kupchik identifies the factors that have contributed to the over-policing of children in schools and offers sensible solutions for keeping children and schools safe. We are living at a time when fear and anxiety exert too much influence over our policies."—Pedro A. Noguera, Distinguished Professor of Education, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

"Professor Kupchik provides a clear and compelling account of what works, and what doesn't, in promoting safer, more equitable schools.  In writing that is both grounded in data, and clear and accessible, he challenges the myth that school policing and school exclusion are effective or necessary in maintaining school safety.  His work shows us how these approaches harm students of color in particular, and create long-term problems for our schools and society.  A must-read book that focuses on the real problem in school safety--the over-reliance on punishment, and the under-reliance on problem-solving and caring."—Russell J. Skiba, Director, Equity Project, Indiana University Center for Evaluation and Education Policy

"In this well-researched and thoughtful analysis, Aaron Kupchik identifies the factors that have contributed to the over-policing of children in schools and offers sensible solutions for keeping children and schools safe. We are living at a time when fear and anxiety exert too much influence over our policies."&;Pedro A. Noguera, Distinguished Professor of Education, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

"Professor Kupchik provides a clear and compelling account of what works, and what doesn't, in promoting safer, more equitable schools.  In writing that is both grounded in data, and clear and accessible, he challenges the myth that school policing and school exclusion are effective or necessary in maintaining school safety.  His work shows us how these approaches harm students of color in particular, and create long-term problems for our schools and society.  A must-read book that focuses on the real problem in school safety--the over-reliance on punishment, and the under-reliance on problem-solving and caring."&;Russell J. Skiba, Director, Equity Project, Indiana University Center for Evaluation and Education Policy

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Schools across the United States are in a school safety crisis. But it's not the one that most might imagine it to be. The crisis is not that our schools are at risk of another mass shooting like those at Columbine or Sandy Hook. And it's not that children are out of control, with violence and theft rampant in schools. Such situations are horrifying (particularly mass shootings) and devastating, and we ought to do what we can to prevent them. But they do not exist at crisis levels. The crisis — the real school safety problem — is that we have implemented a series of practices that go too far in promoting school security and punishment, and as a result do considerable harm to students, schools, families, and communities.

Parents, school officials, and policy-makers often ask the wrong questions. For example, consider my seven-year-old daughter's reaction when I told her about the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. I expected a ten-minute conversation, in which I would tell her, she would be scared, and I would comfort her. I was so wrong. We talked for well over an hour. She was calm and curious, not scared. She asked me question after question about what had happened. At first she wanted to know the specifics of the event itself, in an attempt to wrap her mind around how such tragedy is possible: Were the children who died all in one classroom, or in many? Did they die right away? Did the killer use several guns, or reload one? And so on. But then her questions shifted to trying to come to grips with how the tragedy could have been prevented, what her school does to prevent violence, and what schools should do. She wanted to know what was done to diagnose and treat gunman Adam Lanza's mental health issues, whether the door to the school was locked, how Lanza was able to enter the school, whether they should have had a police officer there, and whether police officers should be at schools everywhere. She wanted to know whether schools were safe, and what we could best do to keep schools safe.

Thankfully, I felt pretty confident in answering her questions, since I'd spent the past several years trying to understand what schools do to keep kids safe, how well these practices work, and what effects they have. But it occurred to me how few people ask these questions that are apparent to a seven-year-old. Instead of asking whether tighter security and harsher punishments are a good idea for schools, the public, school administrators, politicians, and others simply assume that they are. Rather than engaging with the problem of school safety and seeking information, as my daughter did, these groups more often respond out of fear. As a result, their assumptions about security and punishment are usually wrong because they misunderstand the real problem with school safety. The problem is not that students misbehave too much, that school gates aren't sufficiently secure, or that we don't have enough surveillance over our kids. Instead, the real problems with school safety are the well-intended but misguided policies we have put in place over the past twenty years. Our fears about school safety have caused us to alter public education in a way that has hurt children more than it might help them.

Consider the response to the horrible events at Newtown. Soon after the massacre, the National Rifle Association (NRA) made headlines by proposing that all schools in the United States hire armed guards. The public response to their suggestion was harsh, with politicians and advocates calling it absurd (among other things). While I agree with the critics that it was a bad idea, the backlash against it was political hypocrisy, seeing as how it isn't too far from what we currently do. For example, then New York City Council Speaker (and 2013 mayoral candidate) Christine Quinn called the NRA's proposal "Some of the most stupid, asinine, insensitive, ridiculous comments I have ever heard in the public arena." New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the NRA's proposal "a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe." And yet, during Bloomberg's time as mayor, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had a School Safety Division of over five thousand school safety officers policing the city's public schools. Their job requirements are less strict than those for other NYPD officers, and they receive less training and pay than other officers. And while they do not carry guns, they do have arrest powers and are backed up by police officers who are armed. New York City was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union because of alleged unfair treatment of students, and several investigations have documented abusive treatment at the hands of these officers. Is that really so different from what the NRA proposed? Don't hold me to this, but I think the NRA's proposal may be better than what went on in New York City public schools during the Bloomberg administration.

The NRA wasn't the only group offering more security as a solution, either. Senator Barbara Boxer (D–CA) proposed stationing National Guard troops in schools across the country. Ironically, Mayor Bloomberg, who oversaw NYPD's massive School Safety Division, called Senator Boxer's plan "ridiculous," stating that "You can't live your life that way. You'd be in a prison." President Obama's January 2013 executive order in response to Newtown also proposed more policing in schools. While the gun control measures in this order drew the most attention by far, it also included more funding for police officers in schools.

We have already been fortifying schools for the past twenty years. We have added police officers, surveillance cameras, and locked gates. We now have drug-sniffing police dogs searching students' possessions. We follow zero-tolerance policies and suspend, expel, or arrest students for minor misbehavior that would only have led to a trip to the principal's office a generation ago. And so on. Each of these reforms is justified as a means to maintain safety: metal detectors are intended to prevent guns from entering the school, dogs to detect and eliminate drugs from the school, and zero-tolerance policies to target students who are violent and remove them from school before they can hurt other children. Of course, the causes of these practices are more complex and involve racial and class tensions, as well as insecurity about schools more generally. But they promise to maintain safety by securing the school's borders, policing students within the school, and punishing students who are seen as potential threats.

Over the past twenty years, while we have been punishing...