Twenty-three State legislatures in 2011 considered bills to permit the carrying of firearms at their public institutions of higher education, and some public colleges in at least six states now allow weapons on college grounds or in college buildings. The lawful possession of guns on campus is a recent and limited phenomenon, but decisions by the…

National polls of public attitudes toward public education consistently rank school safety and drug abuse at the top of the problem list. This paper describes some federal and state legislative responses to the problems and offers a preventative approach. Federal legislation has taken the form of two major statutes--the Comprehensive Drug Abuse…

Illinois Senate Bill 1644, the recently passed "Asbestos Abatement Act," requires all schools in the state, public and private alike, to remove friable asbestos by whichever comes first: July 1, 1989, or 3 years following the establishment of a system for state funding for corrective action. This document addresses practical…

Parents generally expect public school districts to provide for their children's care and safety while they are at school. Although in the first half of the twentieth century common law tended to make school officials immune from suit, more recently public school districts, school employees, officers, and elected boards have been successfully sued…

In 1994 and 1995, most school-finance legislation at the state level dealt with state aid--36 out of 127 bills introduced in 1994 and 31 out of 212 bills introduced in 1995. This report presents 13 tables that summarize the content of state legislation and identify bills that addressed the formation of study committees, the use of lottery funds to…

This description of the research, the development of state laws, and the origins of practices attempting to restore safe schools suggests that there was a relationship among research, policy, and practice. The Congress of the United States enacted the Safe School Study Act in 1974 to ensure a safe environment for education. In response to this…