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Public secondary schools – Are they safe enough?

The National Center for Education Statistics reports reveal that people should be alarmed of the growing violence in schools. The education system in the United States is getting affected everyday due to these cases and parents are now worried to send their children to schools. It is important to take some definite action.

 The reports were exhaustive giving every detail possible to show case the points responsible for school violence. Over 2000 schools of America falling under secondary category were examined and reports were made. The reports are stored in the form of data in a database of Crime and Safety Survey of Secondary Schools (SSOCS).

The statistics shows that the characteristics of the school act as a factor in the school violence. The demographic characteristics of the schools were the primary focus of these surveys which also focused on general school disarray and the administration of the school.

The examination of the demographic characteristics of secondary schools revealed factors such as the total number of enrollments in a particular location and the crime rate in the neighborhood. The teacher should provide individual attention to the students for which student – teacher ratio is important. It is also necessary to find the number of time students change their class rooms between the class hours. The reports had a comprehensive study of these characteristic of secondary schools. Every school should have a law enforcement personnel and this is verified in the reports as well. The final factor of the school disarray in the reports showed some cases of disciplinary breaches and transfers due to disobedience and suspicious behaviors.

It is clear from the reports that the other categories of schools such as the elementary schools have lesser percentage of school violence as compared to the public secondary schools.  Surveys taken across America reveal that there is a minimum of two or more cases of assault and violence from about 92% of the public secondary schools. The more number of assault cases a school reports, the greater would be the chances of fights and violence in the school, the report says.

The practices of bias among the school children by the administration results in the psychological distress and in turn increases aggression in their behavior. These claims were proved in the reports generated by the organization.  

The ratio of male and female students in the school can play a major role in showing this type of behavior in children. Schools having poor ratio cause imbalance with increased number of males who are mostly responsible for violence in the secondary schools.  Students showing extreme behavior in disarray of schools like disciplinary breach also show evidence of lagging in the class tests.

The National Center of Education Statistics has played a major role in identifying the factors responsible for increasing school violence. With these reports it would not be difficult to plan the future effectively to enhance the secondary schooling experience of the children in the United States.