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…

The racial discipline gap--the finding that Black and Latino students are more likely to be disciplined at school than White students, and often more harshly--has implications for students' academic success. This study concluded that differences in students' behavior do not fully explain the disproportionate likelihood that Black students are…

In this article, the author discusses the important roles that students, school staff and teachers play in keeping the school safe particularly from weapons. The author believes that one way that they do this is by working together to reduce the problem of weapons in school. The role of school staff and teachers extends beyond prevention and…

The reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) is 3 years overdue, and the Obama administration, through Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, has explained the urgency of revising and reauthorizing the law. Attention has been focused most acutely on the provisions that directly relate to academic performance and accountability.…

This article argues that metal detectors bestow an organizational stigma to schools. One symptom of this is students' heightened level of fear at school. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and a matched-pair design, this study finds that metal detectors are negatively correlated with students' sense…

Despite its flaws, the USCO created the conditions for an unprecedented national statement on school safety. This study asks: How do states conceptualize school safety? While critics have denounced the dizzying assortment of states' persistently dangerous criteria, we argue that these differences have been grossly exaggerated. We contend that…