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The NYCLU, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, and Make the Road New York have released a report arguing that schools can create a safer environment without metal detectors and harsh discipline. The study, called "Safety with Dignity: Alternatives to Over-Policing Schools," is based on a year-long examination of six NYC schools with "at-risk" student populations that do not use metal detectors. According to the report, these schools have improved attendance, better student retention and graduation rates, and "dramatically fewer" criminal and non-criminal incidents and school suspensions than schools equipped with permanent metal detectors.
The Department of Education says that the study's claim to better graduation rates is false, and the NYPD counters that metal detectors have helped schools confiscate 22 guns last year and six guns so far this year. But NYCLU director Donna Lieberman says, "The schools profiled in this report prove that there are effective, real-world alternatives to making schools feel like jails. They show that treating students with dignity and respect is the best approach to producing good, safe schools." In a statement, Lieberman adds:
Students, some as young as five, that's kindergarten, were handcuffed or assaulted or taken to jail for infractions like cursing, talking back, writing on the desk, refusing to show ID, or turn over cell phones. And we've seen the emergence of a terrible phenomenon known as the school-to-prison pipeline, where instead of graduation and employment or college, large numbers of children, overwhelming low-income, Black and Latino children, are groomed for jail.
The NYCLU is recommending that the Department of Education discontinue metal detectors and emphasize alternative strategies to intervene with troubled students. According to NY1, the six schools in the study—Progress High School for Professional Careers (Brooklyn), Urban Assembly for Careers in Sports (Bronx), Humanities Preparatory Academy (Manhattan), Urban Academy and Vanguard High School (Manhattan), and Lehman High School (Bronx)—use student safety officers "who employ conflict resolution techniques, such as fairness counsels, where both students and teachers discuss infractions and how to deal with them."
The study also highlights an interesting stat: Since 1998, when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani transferred school security responsibilities to the NYPD, the number of police personnel in the schools soared by 62 percent, from 3,200 to 5,200. The police force in New York City schools is now the fifth largest police force in the country—there are more police in New York City schools than there are on the streets of cities such as Baltimore, Las Vegas, Boston and Washington D.C. Even schools like the elite Stuyvesant High School have been using metal detectors—not to detect weapons but to disarm cheaters who might use their mobile devices during a test.
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http://www.ibabuzz.com/education/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/metal-detector.jpg
The images makes me sad that we treat children as criminals.
This Associated Press photo, from 1998, shows a weapons check at a public elementary school in Indianapolis.
Stay relevant, Felix. Stay gangsta.
when you treat them like criminals they'll act like criminals. I don't know what the solution would be.
There's that school in Hell's kitchen one should steer clear of when it lets out.
A combination of vouchers and school choice?
Sounds good to me, but most of the mass public doesn't understand libertarian ideals because most of the mass public wants to be taken care of instead of taking care of themselves.
Using public's money to line some religious school's pockets? No thanks.
I pay my taxes in order to provide funding for public services, at least that's the only way I can justify this legalized robbery. If you want to start cutting "socialized" services, I'd start with the military.
I'm against vouchers. not my tax money going to the church.
no thank you.
we just need to go back to old school teaching.
Get parents involved and let the parents know if you're kid acts up, it's a refection on what's in the household.
and don't come back with a gun if a teacher says your son is causing trouble in class.
hey look - the grass is green!
"no, it's brown. it's dead."
no, really it's green!
"it'll be brown soon, so let's just call it brown, okay?"
This study is BS unless the authors controlled for economic and demographic factors. It's a solid bet that more prosperous neighborhoods are less likely to have metal detectors imposed on their schools. Which isn't to say it's impossible to run great schools, with or without detectors, in poorer neighborhoods. Just that correlation shouldn't be interpreted as causation, particularly where other correlations may exist.
Good point, altho there are always the Littleton's of the world which break most any correlations.
They did control for economic and demographic factors -- these aren't schools in Park Slope and the UWS. The schools profiled are in the South Bronx and Bushwick, the students come from low-income families and more than 90 percent are youth of color.
NYC would be safer without the NYCLU...
NYC would be safer without idiots like you around.
Idiots like you don't respect the fact that people have different opinions than you, especially when it comes to the criminal liberties unions.
what irony, the Idiot criticizing others on respect.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=irony
I too relished the delicious irony of a conservative attempting to preach the values of tolerance. Why don't you just do us all a favor and crawl back under that slimy rock you came out from under.
PS don't ever, in your wildly arbitrary life, label me on your political spectrum.
LMFAO, stop, you're killing me! Too funny.
Metal detectors in schools are a direct result of Fear #1 on the list of the Three Fears that Describe Modern American Life:
1. Adults are afraid of teenagers.
2. Whites are afraid of minorities.
3. Everyone is afraid of Muslims.
About your second point: whites will be a minority group within the next 10 - 15 years. Better get used to it.
About your second point: whites will be a minority group within the next 10 - 15 years. Better get used to it.
Heck, what with all the panty piddling paranoia it will cause, I should invest in adult diaper companies and make a fortune.
I think I agree with the NYCLU on this one, surprisingly. Metal detectors, random searches, and constant police presence don't make a student feel safe -- they make them feel like a criminal. Kids are malleable and are still trying to figure out how to behave -- if you give them the impression that they should behave like criminals, they'll live right up to that expectation.
Look, I'm not saying we should give these kids lollipops and pat them on the head and all will be fine. But treating every student like a potential gangster, acclimating them to prison life in math class...this is not the way to teach. And if we're not teaching -- if we're just warehousing the kids until they can enter the real world -- then why bother?
"metal detectors have helped schools confiscate 22 guns last year and six guns so far this year"
So everyone is just ignoring these facts because of their own person feelings about metal detectors?
One of those guns may have killed one of your kids.
Read the study numbnuts.
Reading this study is akin to Reading the Onion. No news, just opinions. Funny funny opinions.
They found school without metal detectors that are doing swell. I can argue that I've found schools that have no computers that are doing well. Do we ban computers from the classrooms based on a small vague sample with forced correlation?
Probably not.
Valeriob, you and Bush are right, studies are so useless and reading is for losers. if Bush took reports seriously and read the flood of intelligence reports indicating al Qaeda attack then Guiliani wouldn't have a vocabulary.
Ugh, really Velriob?
If you want to go around smugly telling people how things are, at least have an informed opinion and actually read what you're arguing against.
My old high school in Bklyn now has metal detectors and x-ray machines plus two cops in the lobby. The kids wear photo ID and there are holding rooms with reinforced doors on each floor. Last time I was there the local Pathmark had set up one room like a supermarket and students could train to be cashiers. They killed the theater program but added an astroturf field for the football team. Glad I got out when I did.
"...and students could train to be cashiers"
jesus.
thank god Dickens isn't alive to see this.
Mayoral control is a failure
Metal detectors are a fucking joke. The kids who want to use weapons store them at the local bodegas anyways. Just like they store their ipods and cell phones...
Schools are safer without criminals attending. Give them diplomas and send them out into the real world to do real crimes.
If they had the ability to expel problem kids, this would be less of an issue. The reason they have to do metal detectors is that 5% of kids create all of the problems. Get rid of those kids, and you probably won't need metal detectors.
Of course, where those 5% of kids go would be the issue. Rikers?
I hope someone who has done this study actually at one point in this decade went to public high school in nyc..yeah i didn't think so.
My high school had metal detectors..we threw our backpacks into the machine for scan and walked through..take off our belts if we have..they see something suspicious we get further checked.
I hated the metal detectors they slowed us down, I wasn't allowed to bring in any mp3 players, phones etc.
My school needed it plain and fvcking simple. Fights broke out everyday and a couple of rumbles between sets and crews happened every now and then. If it wasn't for those metal detectors irony being, I would have carried a blade on me too before the "dude next to me" does(self defense).
There was definitely incidents where people got slashed on the train or around the school.It didnt happen or rarely at school because of the metal detectors.
NYCLU definitely needs a reality check with this useless study. Ask a kid or an adult that actually goes or had went to a "at risk" school.
One also has to realize that metal detectors are just a deterrent. Not some automatic kill switch for violence. Someones gonna get stabbed, slashed etc its either inside or outside the school.
As a "minority young man" in the "hood" id rather read about how the NYCLU conducted a survey on the conditions and lifestyle or even the mentality some are leading after school and not how the metal detectors made us feel.
Reality check end.
Screw metal detectors, unleash the nuns.
I love when a bunch of transplants comment on what is best for NYC public schools that they never went to and have no intention of ever sending there children to. Like some of the other people that have posted, I actually went to public HD in NYC, I can tell you for a fact that life was safer in school after they started putting in the metal detectors and the extra security.
I went to public school in NYC and I think that, in general, metal detectors in schools are a bad idea. I'm not speaking from the point of view of the school, but of the society. It's totally the wrong message to teach kids. If a particular school has a problem with weapons, I could understand having some temporary installation of metal detectors, but that school should be viewed as "in crisis" and the crisis should darn well be resolved in a few months.
Stick a cellphone in your pussy, a folding knife in your ass, then tell the rent-a-cop its staples from surgery. When you outlaw _______, only cops and robbers will have them. Oh yeah, you can also makes friends with the crooked guards and have them let you in through the other door, bribe them with KFC or McDonalds when coming back after you cut classes, or have your homie open a door from the inside, or have a staff member bring your gun/knife/phone in, or hide your gun/knife/phone in a classroom, like the locker room, computer room, library, etc. Theres your shoes too. I don't remember taking shoes off, only belt. Gansta Nikes gonna have lots of metal. Nomenklatura to the fullest.
If 5% has all the problems with sets and gang fights, don't let them in, send them to "Alternative School" and leave the peacefully folks alone.
Didn't the NYCLU do a similar study at the NY airports earlier to get rid of metal detectors? Safety with "Dignity: Alternatives to Over-Policing Airport Security" or something to that effect. No they did not as it would have been laughed atm as should this current study. Treat all with dignity but remember you get what you inspect not what you expect in life. Keep the security cameras coming and protect the students and others who wish to have a safe environment to work and live in.