Reason Foundation

Recent Research and Commentary

It Isn't the Bullying, Stupid, It's the Parenting

Don't blame school shootings on kids being bullied

December 4, 2007

Joanne Jacobs

You have no right to assault other students, physically or verbally, for any reason. Period. Disabled kids? Fat kids? Nerds? Not OK. Bullying is not wrong because Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Walt Whitman or Helen Keller were admirable people. And it's not wrong because the worm might turn up with a gun. It's just wrong. The Columbine killers and their imitators want to be famous. They're not seeking justice against bullies, just TV coverage and the online adulation of adolescent losers.  Sometimes, it's not bullies at school. It's mental illness and incompetent parenting.

How Schools Underreport Violence, Cheat No Child Left Behind

From underreporting violence to inflating graduation rates to fudging testscores, educators are lying to the American public

June 30, 2005

Lisa Snell

In the 2003-04 school year only 26 of the nation's 91,000 public schools were labeled persistently dangerous. Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia proudly reported that they were home to not a single unsafe school. That would be news to the parents of James Richardson, a 17-year-old football player at Ballou Senior High in Southeast Washington, D.C., who was shot inside the school that very year. It would be news to quite a few people: The D.C. Office of the Inspector General reports that during that school year there were more than 1,700 "serious security incidents" in city schools, including 464 weapons offenses.

Break Up LAUSD's Violent Schools

Smaller campuses are the safest

March 3, 2005

Lisa Snell

Violent crimes are more likely to occur in large schools. Thirty-three percent of schools with 1,000 or more students experienced a serious violent crime, while just 4 percent to 9 percent of small- and medium-size schools had a similar occurrence.

Study: 75 Percent of Large School Districts Do Not Share School Crime Data On Web Sites

Think tank recommends changing methods of school violence reporting

January 27, 2005

There were 14 sex offenses, 53 robberies, and 22 assaults with deadly weapons at Los Angeles' Locke High School during the 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 school years. In April 2003 there was a lunchtime brawl at the school involving an estimated 300 students. Yet, Locke doesn't qualify as a "persistently dangerous" school by California's standards.

School Violence and No Child Left Behind

Best Practices to Keep Kids Safe

January 1, 2005

Lisa Snell

School Violence Tolerated

1,603,000 non-fatal crimes at school from '96 to 2000

October 13, 2004

Walter E. Williams

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