Research Perspectives / Public Policy / Social Science
Time to Expel Suspensions – Unpacking the School Discipline Debacle – SDP #17
Student suspension rates continue to drop across the United States. However, are we observing a genuine decline or the engineered result of creative new categorizing exempt from state and federal reporting?
Read MoreExamining the Patriot Act, Privacy, Freedom; Safety – Interview with Dylan Allman – SDP #16
Dylan Allman is a rising political scholar alarmed by the growth of government and its invasion into personal privacy as protected by the 4th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America.
Read MoreFour BIG Problems Arise When “Advisory” Groups Dictate School Safety Protocols – SDP #10
School leaders must maintain the distinct purpose of advisory groups as informing those that make decisions and not allow such groups to transform into a small group model which develops protocols and policies that are then vetted by school leaders and school boards.
Read MoreScientist Proved 65% of Typical People Will Follow Deadly Directives From Authority – SDP#3
The Safety Doc Podcast #3 Key Words: Milgram Experiment, Following Orders, Revisionist Research, Forgetting Curve, Memory Distortion, Active Shooter Recruitment, Mob Mentality & Diffused Responsibility WHY WOULD YOU OVERWRITE 50-YEAR-OLD RESEARCH FINDINGS? The Safety Doc Podcast #3 challenges “The Atlantic’s” revisionist interpretation of the famous Milgram Electric-Shock Studies of the 1960s that showed that people…
Read MoreTRAP-18 will present serious issues when schools begin to implement it for early identification of the “lone wolf” terrorist (AKA – student active shooter)
Commonalities of school shooter narratives… Bullied Told others prior to event Male While those points are typically accurate, the development of a profile rapidly fades following the “given” characteristics mentioned above. For example, many shooters had good grades, many had a clean discipline record and many regularly interacted with a peer group. There is no…
Read MoreProtecting Soft Targets – My Thoughts about the 2005 Study of Chula Vista High School (San Diego)
“Establishing a containment perimeter while a SWAT team is assembled to conduct a slow methodical building to building search is an obsolete procedure.” Crockett, et. al., 2005. On December 7, 2005, researchers conducted a safety analysis of a high school in San Diego. The study team, which included a Microsoft employee, offered many practical sense crisis…
Read MoreWhy “Boatlift” Exposes Drastic Flaws in Traditional School Safety Planning
500,000 people were rescued from Lower Manhattan on 9/11. Did you know that? I didn’t – not until well down the path of my doctoral research. It was an incredible in-the-moment coordination of countless variables by largely “untrained” sailors that had not previously worked together. The context was precarious as another plane could be inbound…
Read MoreSentinel Events – The Problem With Only Focusing on the Direct Cause
School safety recommendations that have come out following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting are revealing a positive trend to look beyond the direct causes for sentinel events. I’ve often felt that an emphasis on direct causes results in excessive fortification of schools and layers of procedures. The journey to the root cause is longer,…
Read MoreProximal (to school) Shootings Appear To Be Increasing. What Does This Mean For Schools? What Does This Mean For The Feds?
It’s widely acknowledged that Federal school violence data is, at best, a very broad, lagging estimate of the field. Safety experts Kenneth Trump and Michael Dorn have exposed the data hodge-podge mess before several congressional hearings (over several years). It’s almost just accepted that the data is, and will be, “bad”. The issues of inter-rater reliability…
Read MoreGiving Students Voice (Conquering the Adolescent Code of Silence)
Giving Students Voice (Conquering the Adolescent Code of Silence) Giving Students Voice – Association for Middle Level Educators – February, 2014 This is an article I wrote about the adolescent Code of Silence. The 2-page bullet-point article examines the three constructs that support the Code of Silence and provides research-supported strategies to encourage youth to conquer the code…
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