[Newsclip] Hyping School Violence [W. Post, Tuesday, August 25, 1998] [Loose]

a/s ceived, we have not witnessed the Vincent Schiraldi kind of reporting or analysis needed to give worried parents or con- cerned policymakers the context in Hyping which to judge the safety of our institutions of learning. Instead, the media's linking of School these shootings as a "trend" has exacerbated people's fears about the safety of their children in schools. The result has been that misdirected Violence public policy is being generated to safeguard the schools, even though the real threat lies elsewhere. To remedy the purported "crisis" During the last school year, the of classroom violence, politicians public was riveted by the images of have proposed solutions ranging small-town schools taped off by from putting additional police offi- police lines, paramedics rushing to cers in schools to eliminating any wheel adolescent bodies away on minimum age at which children may gurneys and kids being carted off in be tried as adults: The legislature in' handcuffs. As the national news Texas has proposed to expand the media zoomed into Pearl, Miss., death penalty to 11-year-olds in West Paducah, Ky., Jonesboro, response to the Jonesboro shooting. Ark., Edinboro, Pa., and Spring- Despite a 30 percent decline in field, Ore., news outlets began to juvenile homicides since 1994, Pres- describe these highly idiosyncratic ident Clinton recently proposed cases as "an all-too-familiar story" or that police be allowed stop children "another in a recent trend." on the street during school hours A kind of moral panic swept the without cause. Gov. James Gilmore country as parents and children of Virginia suggested ending after- suddenly feared for their safety. A school programs due to the vio- principal in Bethesda-a communi- lence, even though a wide spectrum ty that had recently experienced a of criminologists, police and educa- 26 percent decline in juvenile tors say that such programs consti- crime-warned that "it could hap- tute vital crime reduction and com- pen anyplace." munity-enhancing strategies. But it doesn't happen anyplace, Likewise, concern among school and it rarely happens at all. The best administrators has reached such a data available from the Centers for fevered pitch that children are now Disease Control on the threat of being suspended from school for making make-believe threats to There is no "trend" harm the Spice Girls or Barney the purple dinosaur. A computerized search of the nation's newspapers toward shootings at turned up 216 such school expul- sions just in the months of May and schools. In fact, June this year, compared with 22 in May and June of 1997. There are many real dangers fac- such attacks have ing America's children. Our kids are killed by guns at 12 times the rate for children in other industrialized na- been on the decline. tions. But 99 percent of kids' deaths are away from school, and the peak school-associated violent deaths re- times for such killings are evenings, veals that kids face less than one weekends and vacation periods. chance in a million of being killed at The good news is that schools are school. Young people report being some of the safest places in Ameri- assaulted in schools today at the ca, and America's teenagers are same rate as in 1976. Research by represented more by the weeping the National School Safety Center young faces depicted following the shows that there were 27 percent shootings than by the image of Luke fewer school killings in the 1997-98 Woodham being led out of the school year than in 1992-93. Indeed, school in handcuffs. twice as many people were killed by The recently publicized school lightning in 1997 as were killed in shootings, though, could provide a all of-America's schools. long-overdue call for action in This is not to say that our chil- America to productively occupy our dren face no threats to their safety children after school hours and keep in society-even in schools. As trag- them away from handguns. But only ic as the 11 deaths in Jonesboro, if our elected officials avoid panick- Paducah, Pearl, Springfield and ing and look in the right place for Edinboro were, 11 kids are killed solutions. every two days by their parents or caretakers. The writer is director of the But with all the media coverage Justice Policy Institute. these school shootings have re- The Washington Post TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1998