Abstract
Although schools are generally safe places for youth today, school safety remains priority for school administrators and policy makers in the United States. As a result of local, state, and federal efforts to improve school safety, a growing body of literature in this area has emerged. Dr. David C. May builds upon this body of literature in his text, School Safety in the United States: A Reasoned Look at the Rhetoric. The purpose of this text is to provide a critical data driven analysis of school safety in the United States. It is well organized and structured around a variety of topics in the area of school safety presented from a scholarly perspective. It is written to a general audience and flows logically end to end, driving the reader through a number of topics and trends that lack empirical investigation in current school safety research. The text begins with an introductory chapter to the critical study of school safety, which discusses what the term “school safety” means by exploring its definition and recent school safety statistics. Following are 10 “stand-alone” chapters that discuss a number of topics relevant to school safety, all of which are authored or coauthored by Dr. May.
The second chapter uses archival data from two national sources to investigate the prevalence of school shootings between the years 1966 and 2013. The third chapter uses cross-sectional survey research to examine individual- and school-level variables that influence middle and high school students’ willingness to report gun or other weapons possession to adults. Chapter 4 uses cross-sectional survey research to examine parental aggression against teachers with the objective of determining its prevalence and the contextual factors associated with its occurrence. The fifth chapter uses secondary data from the Mississippi Crime and Justice Research Unit to determine factors that drive fear of crime in schools by exploring the influence of student and school-level characteristics on known predictors of fear in schools. Chapter 6 uses secondary data collected by the Kentucky Center for School Safety to generate profiles of schools in Kentucky that use corporal punishment and identify factors that influence the implementation of corporal punishment in schools. In Chapter 7, the authors use a quasi-experimental research design to longitudinally investigate the effectiveness of the Bully-Proofing Your Schools program in two middle schools in Kentucky over 3 years. Chapter 8 uses secondary data from the U.S. Department of Education to examine correlates of disproportional minority contact in schools. In Chapter 9, the authors employ a quasi-experimental research design to examine the effectiveness of community service work as an alternative to out-of-school suspension in six school districts in Kentucky. Chapter 10 uses cross-sectional survey research to explore perceptions and attitudes of School Resource Officers (SROs) on their role within the school context to develop a typology for SROs while comparing their responses with principals’ responses regarding changes in problem behaviors since the SRO program’s inception. In Chapter 11, Dr. May uses his practice and research experience to complement 23 points for school personnel to consider in crisis response planning, as presented by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The text concludes with a final chapter that summarizes a number of common themes identified throughout the text, providing recommendations for policy and future research.
Every chapter makes a unique contribution to the literature on school safety by providing a thorough review of literature around each topic followed by an identifiable gap that is subsequently addressed. Each chapter concludes with a discussion that further explores the empirical findings and recommendations for policy and future research that are easily read and understood. Each chapter provides tables and figures and citations for in-text references that facilitate the interpretation of referenced work and the study’s results. One of the greatest strengths of this text is its ability to translate complex research findings into real world practice and policy recommendations. Complimenting this strength is the “stand-alone” nature of the chapters within this text, which allow readers to review and reference numerous topics pertaining to school safety without having to read the entire text. Another strength of this text stems from the author’s expertise in this area, which is reflected through the text’s ability to provide an in-depth look at topics presented from a sociological perspective. Readers interested in the topic of school safety can easily use this text to improve their efforts of promoting a positive school environment in which youth can learn and grow.
Although this text provides an authoritative presentation of school safety, the appeal of this book might be reduced depending on the information sought by the reader and the reader’s perspective. First, this text fails to paint a comprehensive picture of school safety in the United States. Although the author is explicit that a comprehensive review is not his intention, readers should be aware that this text only covers a handful of school safety topics based on the author’s past research. Second, from a subjective standpoint, it is unclear as to why the author did not discuss the role school mental health care professionals’ play in school safety efforts. Common trends throughout the text concerned the likely benefits of improving school climate; promoting staff and student communication; and increasing students’ feelings of connectedness within their schools, yet school mental health care providers, a population that might facilitate these improvements, are seldom mentioned. Therefore, this text could be strengthened with a discussion of the role school-based mental health professionals (e.g., school counselors and school social workers) can play in school safety within the context of the text’s presented findings.
Despite the weaknesses mentioned previously, this insightful text’s well-crafted integration of the author’s practice and research experience with current trends in school safety make it an important contribution to school safety literature. Readers will likely walk away from this text with a better understanding of school safety and its respective body of research, making it a valuable resource and a worthwhile read for anyone with a vested interest in school safety.