Research Topic
School shootings over the past few decades have had a significant impact on the lives of many people throughout the United States. School shootings were first recognized as a problem in the United States during the 1960s. Ever since, they have gained a great deal of attention due to their severity and frequency. In order to improve the safety of schools, more reforms should specifically handle the design and delivery success. The purpose of the study is to explore the leadership strategies that can be used in the design and delivery of school reforms and how leaders currently perceive the current design and delivery of the reforms. The study will look at urban school districts and will involve a survey of fifteen principles in the different institutions to identify their opinions and views.
Research Problem
School leaders face an increasingly huge amount of challenges when facing various critical incidences in their institution. It is currently not known how educational leadership can be used to design and deliver school safety reforms. There is lack of data regarding reports on the ways safety in institutions can be designed to ensure that school-based crime can be reduced. Most of the data regarding the safety also involve self-report surveys that do not pertain practical safety reforms that can be implemented. The lack of adequate data on how leadership can be used to deliver safety creates an increasingly huge challenge for leaders as they try to face and convince parents, students, and the general community that school institutions are safe. Schools are safe and the use of school safety reforms will make the institutions the safest place for a student (Brand et al., 2003).
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Research Purpose
The purpose of the study is to fill the gap of leadership strategies regarding school safety reforms by analyzing school safety and conduct based on the practices, perceptions, and policies that have been implemented by school safety specialists in different urban institutions. The study focuses specifically on how leadership can be used to improve safety measures, identify the currently implemented safety measures, identify whether various leaders think that safety measures are working, and how the safety measures can be improved to further prevent violence in institutions.
The current literature focuses on mostly on general aspects of safety reforms that have been implemented without looking at their applications and how they can be redesigned and delivered effectively. The study will involve the use of a mixed method research to identify the process of designing and delivering school safety reforms in various institutions. The study will involve the use of surveys where various specialists will answer questions regarding the best way to design and deliver school reforms. The study will contribute to the ever growing research on school safety reforms that have been implemented and identify various ways which they can be further improved. The research is being proposed to identify new ways which educational leadership can be used to improve school safety through the design and delivery of school reforms.
Background Context and Theoretical Framework
Violence targeting juveniles has been a significant problem for American institutions starting from the 1970s and the 1980s. The decades between 1990 and 2000 can be ranked as the most violent times in most American institutions (Gabrino, 1995). During this time, many individuals in the United states had to witness tragic images of violence in various schools. It was recorded that there were more than 300 deaths that occurred on or near learning institutions in the United States as a result of school-related violence (Towers et al., 2015). School killings left many individuals surprised and communities were shaken. Children and parents increasingly feared about their safety in the schools (Wang & Degol, 2016). The unsafety in most institutions became a hard reality for several schools in the United States (Gereluk et al., 2015).
In a bid to make the public schools to become safer, the federal and state governments implemented several policies and legislation. One of the first policies was Gun Free Schools Act implemented in 1994 and the Safe Schools Act. After these policies were passed, the 1997 amendment (Act 30) required that all school districts should report statistics regarding school violence, tobacco possession, alcohol, drugs, and weapons. All the incidences were to be reported to the Department of Education. Additionally, schools were required to have a Memorandum of Understanding that was established with various agencies (Eckland, 1999). The aim was to create a school violence prevention program that would prevent any future incidences (Cerrone, 1999). The development of the different frameworks and various programs assisted in the program creation and preparation. Various leaders in the schools and individuals that were interested in the safety of the institutions were able to have an emergency and crisis response plan. This would be important in improving the safety of students and the schools.
Even though the policies were put in place, school institutions have continually experienced a surge of violence. There have been several tragedies that have been reported over the past few years. This means that some of the reforms are somewhat ineffective and that there needs to be additional reforms in order to ensure that school safety is improved (Mowen et al., 2016). In a bid to ensure the improvement of safety, the reforms should be based around the experiences and opinions of the leaders in various institution. The aim of the paper is thus to analyze how leadership in schools can be used to further improve the design and delivery of school reforms.
Research Questions
School violence continues to become one of the biggest problems for security. The dissertation will examine the primary question: Is the current reforms on school violence appropriate, and if not, how should school leaders design and deliver school safety reforms.
The different research questions for the mixed method study will be examined by considering the following questions:
R0: Are the current safety measures adequate in preventing school violence?
R1: Do the school leaders find that the current safety measures are effective?
R2: Should the safety measures and reforms be improved?
R3: How well are the current safety measures designed and delivered to ensure improvement?
R4: Does leadership in crisis plan help in the design and delivery of school violence reforms?
The Hypothesis for the different research questions were identified as:
H0: The current safety measures are inadequate in preventing school violence.
H1: School leaders find that the current safety measures are ineffective.
H2: The current safety measures should be improved significantly.
H3: The current safety measures have been designed poorly and thus do not significantly improve safety in the institutions.
H4: A leadership in crisis plan can improve the design and delivery of school safety reforms.
The research questions are based on the answers that will be provided by the leadership of different institutions. The research questions are tailored around the perceptions that school leaders such as principals view the current design and delivery of school safety reforms. It will involve the use of survey to get answers so as to identify various ways that safety in schools can be improved.
Literature Review
The study explored the dilemma that various stakeholders of safety in institutions such as principles face when trying to identify the best approach when providing a safe environment for the students and the faculty. A review of literature was conducted to provide an analysis of current reforms available in schools and examining the various leadership strategies that have been implemented by the institutions to improve on safety.
School shootings and gun violence can be dated back to April, 20, 1999 when two students killed 12 other students in the institution and later committed suicide (Katsiyannis et al., 2018). The incident changed the perception of many individuals regarding school safety policies and the response by law enforcement officers and safety specialists. One of the recent incidences was in December, 2012 when Adam Lanza shot his to the school and was confronted by the principal and psychologist in the institution who were killed. The individual went ahead to shoot and killed 20 first-grade children and four of the faculty members (Katsiyannis et al., 2018). The result of those tragedies have resulted in an ever increasing demand for school safety in institutions.
Policies that have been implemented to improve school safety deal with gun control. Gun control is thus one of the most controversial debates that come about from mass shootings. Some scholars note that mass shootings should be addressed through a wider ownership of guns by several individuals (Smith & Spiegler, 2017). More ownership will mean that several individuals will have the ability to prevent crime and confront one if any incident arises. There have also been opinions regarding making sure that school teachers and the faculty for defense should be armed. Making sure that many individuals are armed in schools ensures that the different individuals will be able to engage the shooter before any dire consequences. Arming various individuals has been identified to be a critical and fast way to reduce the number of casualties (Rogers et al., 2018).
There have been individuals that oppose the policies on increased gun possession and note that a tighter gun control is one of the best ways to respond to mass shooting. The view observes that shooters will be able to cause a huge number of casualties because guns are widely and easily available. Having fewer guns available for purchase and making it limited to very few individuals will make it difficult for any psychopathic individual to be able to possess the gun (Blocher & Miller, 2016). The proponents of the opinion note that gun violence and mass shootings, especially those in school shootings, will be significantly reduced when the larger population do not have access and are not in possession of guns (Goodman & Perry, 2018).
There have been various policies aimed at addressing the issue with gun violence the GFSA amended the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002 and a weapon was defined to mean a fireman. The GFSA created a zero tolerance policy and permitted that school principals and administrators should modify an expulsion for students that are in possession of any weapon (Curran, 2019). Leaders of different institutions thus face an overwhelmingly huge amount of responsibility when dealing with gun violence. They have the responsibility to ensure that the students under them are in a safe environment.
Proper application of school leadership will be involved in the reduction of risks and improvement of preparedness when the institution faces crisis. Trump (2011) identifies that there are positive effects of having a safe environment in the school institution. It can lead to reduced dropouts, improvement in parental confidence, and an increased motivation for the students (Benbenishty, 2016). In order to improve the safety of institutions, Trump (2000) suggested different ways that the school administration can take part in safety protocols that can be used to improve safety. Some of the safety protocols identified include making safety part of the school culture, incorporating discussion on safety, crisis management, communication regarding dangerous condition or people, and creating an emergency plan in case of any incident.
Methodology
The purpose of the study is to explore the leadership strategies that can be used in the design and delivery of school reforms and how leaders currently perceive the current design and delivery of the reforms. The study will look at urban school districts and will involve a survey of fifteen principles in the different institutions to identify their opinions and views.
The mixed method survey is chosen because it will involve gathering of both opinions of the respondents and identifying the current statistics regarding the effectiveness of school safety. The qualitative research method will involve identifying the opinions that school leaders have regarding the current design and delivery of school safety reforms. Additionally, the qualitative research will go towards identifying the opinions regarding how the current design and delivery of school safety reform can be improved. The leadership strategies that can be used to improve the design and delivery will also be investigated. The quantitative study will involve gathering of the current data regarding the progress and effectiveness of school safety reforms. The data will be used to identify whether there is a need to improve the current safety standards.
The principal method of data collection will be done through the use of web-based surveys. Surveys will be sent to the identified school principal in a specific urban location. An email will be sent to the director of public schools in the region to request for participation of school principals in the survey. An email will then be sent to all the principals that will participate in the surveys.
The survey will involve the use of questionnaires that will be filled by the participants. The questions that will be designed based on the relevant literature regarding the progress of various reforms on school safety. The questions that will be asked will allow for collection of information regarding the current realities that urban public schools face. The questions in the survey will be used to identify the relationship that exists in safety policies, safety leadership, design of safety policies, and the delivery of safety policies. The questions will be based on a 1-4 Likert style scale.
References
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Blocher, J., & Miller, D. A. (2016). What Is Gun Control: Direct Burdens, Incidental Burdens, and the Boundaries of the Second Amendment. U. Chi. L. Rev. , 83 , 295.
Curran, F. C. (2019). The law, policy, and portrayal of zero tolerance school discipline: Examining prevalence and characteristics across levels of governance and school districts. Educational Policy , 33 (2), 319-349.
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Eckland, T. Nikki. "The Safe Schools Act: Legal and ADR Resposes to Violence in Schools." Urb. Law. 31 (1999): 309.
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Goodman, S., & Perry, B. (2018). The American Gun Control Debate: A Discursive Analysis. In Discourse, Peace, and Conflict (pp. 67-82). Springer, Cham.
Katsiyannis, A., Whitford, D. K., & Ennis, R. P. (2018). Historical Examination of United States Intentional Mass School Shootings in the 20 th and 21 st Centuries: Implications for Students, Schools, and Society. Journal of Child and Family Studies , 27 (8), 2562-2573.
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