Education Week - August 19, 2020 - 3

Do Disciplinary Policies
Provoke School Shootings?
GAO Study Finds Nothing
One Way or the Other
Are discipline policies linked to school shootings?
Do alternative practices to suspension and expulsion
make it more likely that a school could be targeted by
an assailant or an angry student?
Such questions have dominated the school safety
field following two horrific mass school shootings in
2018 in Parkland, Fla., and Santa Fe, Texas.
In Parkland, some outspoken families and advocates blamed an alternative program in Broward
County for obfuscating the shooter's pattern of disturbing behavior before the attack. They had a receptive ear at the U.S. Department of Education, which
in late 2018 moved to rescind Obama-era guidance on
school discipline aimed at curbing disproportionate
disciplinary outcomes for Black students.
For their part, advocates for such students have long
argued that harsh discipline policies and "zero tolerance" regimes feed the "school to prison" pipeline.
The federal government's watchdog agency, the
Government Accountability Office, set out to find out
if there was a link between discipline and shootings.
It could find no empirical research that directly linked
discipline policies to school shootings.
In its search, the GAO included any incident in which
a gun was fired at school, on school grounds, events,
or activities, or before or after those activities. The
agency came up with 318 over the 2009-10 to 2018-19
school years, including accidents and suicides.
Nearly a third of the shootings were motivated by
grievances. The next largest category was accidental
shootings, followed by school-targeted attacks. Only
5 percent of shootings had a targeted victim. Nearly
half the shootings were carried out by students.
Shootings that occurred outside schools were more
likely to be related to a dispute or grievance than
those inside schools.
Perhaps the most critical finding is that, despite the
roiling debate over the connection between discipline
policies and shootings, the GAO was unable to locate
even one study that addressed it empirically.
So the GAO collected studies that looked at specific
disciplinary approaches on other school safety outcomes, typically broader measures of violent behavior
or perceptions of student safety.
The results didn't tilt strongly in one way or another.

Shutdown Responses

Personalization/
engagement
(in class)

As schools restarted academics
after the pandemic shuttered
schools, how well did they do at
providing personalized feedback,

Personalization/
engagement
(out of class)

grading, or non-academic supports?
In the most comprehensive
look to date, researchers
analyzing more than 3,500 plans

Progress
monitoring

from the websites of traditional
public, charter, and private
schools and found some

Breadth
of service

intriguing differences. While all
schools offered similar depth of
academic engagement and
personalized instruction,

Equity
of access

traditional public schools were
more likely than schools in other

1
Sub-index score (out of 10) |

2
Traditional public

3
Charter

4
Private

sectors to provide a breath of
services-meals and mentalhealth assistance-and they were
somewhat more likely to detail
equity goals to ensure access for

SOURCE: National Center on Education Access and Choice; Education Research
Alliance for New Orleans.

students with special needs and
English-learners.

Parents May Have a Hard Time Finding Places
For Children in Shrunken After-School Field
Say in-person classes resume. Where are parents going to
send their children after school?
They can't count on after-school programs because many
of the thousands that closed months ago may never reopen.
In fact, nearly 9 in 10 have long-term funding concerns because of school closures caused by COVID-19-and 6 in 10
are concerned they may have to permanently shut their doors,
a survey commissioned by the Afterschool Alliance, a Washington-based advocacy organization, reveals.
The outlook may even be bleaker than the survey of 914
after-school providers indicates. Respondents were contacted in May and June, before a wave of districts, including 17 of the nation's 20 largest, announced that they plan to
begin the fall semester online.
"Programs are losing resources and funding and really
struggling to survive," said Jodi Grant, the executive director of the Afterschool Alliance. "We're really concerned with

what is happening in the field."
The survey aims to gauge the health of an industry that
served an estimated 10 million children before the pandemic
struck. Now, heading into the fall, providers are bracing to
serve only a fraction of that number.
Overall, the survey found that more than half of providers
are unsure if the "worst is over or yet to come." Among the
programs surveyed, more than 75 percent have laid off or furloughed staff members or cut their hours.
Programs that do reopen this fall likely will need more
money to pay for cleaning supplies and personal protective
equipment and more space to maintain social-distancing requirements-potential cost overruns that no program could
have anticipated even six months ago.
And in school systems that settle on a combination of inperson and virtual learning, programs may have to hire more
staff to serve extra students during a redesigned school day.

BRIEFLY STATED CONTRIBUTORS: Associated Press, Corey Mitchell, Stephen Sawchuk, and Sarah D. Sparks. Edited by Karen Diegmueller.

Vol. 40 * Issue 1 * August 19, 2020

5 Teaching During COVID-19:
Instructional Improvements
And Remote Learning Upgrades

11 Teaching in an Empty Classroom
During COVID-19: Benefits and
Drawbacks

6 Schools Reopen and COVID-19
Cases Crop Up. Can K-12 Leaders
Be Confident in Their Plans?

12 As Districts Seek Revenue Due
To Pandemic, Black Homeowners
May Feel the Biggest Hit

8 Could the 'Pandemic Pod' Be a
Lifeline for Parents or a Threat
To Equity?

14 Students in Special Education,
English-Learners May Go Back to
Class First. Here's Why

OPINION

DEPARTMENTS

16 Mask Wearing Isn't Unenforceable

3 Briefly Stated

17 The Principal Is In

18 Letters to the Editor

20 The Accidental Benefits
Of the Coronavirus

19 EdWeek Top School Jobs

10 Worried Teachers Want to Know:
What Happens If I Get Sick?

EDUCATION WEEK | August 19, 2020 | www.edweek.org | 3

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Education Week - August 19, 2020

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