Newtown anniversary: US schools keep trying wrong fixes to deter school shootings, experts say
It happened after Columbine, after Virginia Tech, and after Newtown, too. After every massacre in a school, Americans grasp at quick cures. Let's install metal detectors and give guns to teachers. Let's crack down on troublemakers, weeding out kids who fit the profile of a gunman. Let's buy bulletproof whiteboards for the students to scurry behind, or train kids to throw erasers or cans of soup at an attacker.
Researchers who study school shootings say the nation has done the wrong things, again and again, to prevent these rare but frightening events. And when more promising measures that address the real causes of school shootings are tried, the money has ridden a rollercoaster, rising a year after a major attack, then falling as memories fade. Only one out of five schools currently gets money for one of the Obama administration's signature programs to reduce school shootings.
"Many of the school safety and security measures deployed in response to school shootings have little research support," concluded a 2010 research article in Educational Researcher, "What Can Be Done About School Shootings?: A Review of the Evidence." The researchers called the widely adopted policies of zero-tolerance discipline and student profiling "unsound practices."
The problem, the researchers say, is that the nation hasn't paid attention to actual research about how school shootings unfold.
http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/11/21851427-newtown-anniversary-us-schools-keep-trying-wrong-fixes-to-deter-school-shootings-experts-say?lite