As U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan works with other Obama administration officials on policy responses to the shootings at a Connecticut elementary school, he brings a personal and professional history that has acquainted him with the impact of gun violence. As schools chief in Chicago from 2001 to 2008, he was affected by the gun deaths…

By nearly all accounts, the staff and students at Sandy Hook Elementary School did everything right on Dec. 14--and with the security measures they took before that day--when a young man armed with powerful weapons blasted his way into the school. But the deadliest K-12 school shooting in American history, a day that President Barack Obama has…

A new video game in which the player stalks and shoots fellow students and teachers in school settings is drawing fire from school district officials. "School Shooter: North American Tour 2012" is a first-person game that allows the player to move around a school and collect points by killing defenseless students and teachers. The game,…

The three school shootings that left a principal and six students dead in less than a week have sparked a barrage of pledges from national and state political leaders to tighten campus security. School safety experts urged caution against overreacting to the horrific, but rare, incidents in rural schools in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.…

This article discusses the March 21, 2005, shootings at Red Lake High School that brought to light an issue of whether school security personnel should be armed. Among the what-ifs being asked after the shootings at Red Lake High is one with uncomfortable implications for many school leaders: What if the two security guards posted near the…

Administrators and students at private schools tend to see their schools as safer than public schools. Spurred in part by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many private schools have joined the national push to revamp campus safety plans. Kenneth S. Trump, the president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services,…

Major initiatives in New York City and Chicago to close unsuccessful schools and create small schools in their wake are stirring criticism from some community activists, local politicians, and others. Critics charge that the growing scale of the efforts is producing negative ripple effects on other schools in these cities. In Chicago, the chief…

Picked up by immigration authorities, undocumented children who are apprehended without their parents are sent to shelters throughout the United States and educated while they wait out deportation proceedings. At one such shelter in Miami, new students appear almost as rapidly as others leave. The shelter is run by Catholic Charities of Miami…

Coaches and school administrators have been threatened, verbally abused, or physically assaulted in school sports incidents. Threats to coaches arise in a sports atmosphere that many observers say is marked by heightened incivility from the professional ranks on down to inter- scholastic and youth leagues. The demanding, coarser attitudes of…

This article deals with an initiative embarked upon by the government of France one year after widespread youth violence broke out in many disadvantaged communities in France. The initiative is aimed at adapting its 25-year-old "priority education" program to a landscape that has dramatically changed. The initiative is the centerpiece of…

In this article, the author stresses the dangers facing school leaders on the job. The school shooting at Campbell County Comprehensive High School in Jacksboro, Tennessee, on November 8, 2005, which left one assistant principal dead and the principal and another assistant principal seriously wounded, is an extreme example of dangers school…