SAFETY AND SENSE

THE RECENT shooting of four students after a Randallstown High School
basketball game has highlighted again the downside of life among
today's young people.

But most would be surprised to learn that today's teenagers are better
behaved than their parents' and teachers' generation. The
misperceptions of their behavior are contributing to a host of harsh
and counterproductive policies toward young people in America's schools.

From 1993 to 2000, for example, there was a 75 percent decline in
youth homicides in America, and the youth crime rate in 2000 was down
to levels not seen since the 1960s. Yet a 1999 poll commissioned by
the Building Blocks for Youth initiative in Washington found that
two-thirds of Americans thought that youth crime was on the rise.

The Class of 2000 was less likely to commit crimes in school, take
drugs, have teenage births and drop out than the Class of 1975. In
2000, there was only a one in 3 million chance of a young person being
killed in a school. Yet 71 percent of respondents to a 1999 Wall
Street Journal poll thought that a school shooting was likely in their
community, and school suspensions and expulsions have doubled (to over
3 million annually) since the 1970s.

Two female students recently were strip-searched at Kent County High
School after sheriff's deputies with drug-sniffing dogs descended upon
the school and conducted a warrantless search.

Last year, a senior at Montgomery County's Walt Whitman High School
was referred to the police and forbidden from attending graduation for
smoking marijuana, a decision upheld by the school's principal, the
school board and a county judge.

How many of today's educators, school board members and judges who
smoked pot as youngsters can honestly say that they or society would
have been better off if they had been strip-searched, arrested or
forbidden from attending graduation?

Shipping students from schools to jails for relatively minor problem
behavior has become so prevalent that the Harvard Civil Rights Project
convened a conference last summer examining the "School to Prison
Pipeline." It focused on the idea that when youths are kicked out of
school, a chain of consequences is set in motion rendering them
increasingly likely to wind up behind bars.

Too often, in response to shocking but idiosyncratic school violence,
teachers and principals are becoming appendages of law enforcement,
referring youths to police for things that landed their own generation
in the principal's office.

An analysis by the University of California found that "zero
tolerance" laws result in increasing referrals to court from schools
for minor misbehavior (the serious stuff has always resulted in
arrest). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that
out-of-school students are more likely to get into fights, take drugs
and drink alcohol and less likely to return to school and graduate.
Young people without high school diplomas are, in turn, less likely to
work and more likely to go to prison than high school graduates.

Expulsions and police referrals by schools are meted out in a manner
that is also hobbling minority youths, particularly in inner-city schools.

In Baltimore County, the suspension and expulsion rate for black
youths is double the white rate, a figure of disparity similar to the
national suspension data. Perhaps this is why the Justice Department
predicts that, nationally, one out of every three black boys born in
2001 (today's 3-year-olds) will end up in prison.

The good news is that there are other options to make communities and
schools safe. One study presented at the Harvard conference detailed a
series of rigorously evaluated programs that help schools build more
respectful environments and provide more intensive interventions for
students at risk of failure or delinquency. Further, these programs
show promise in reducing frivolous suspensions and arrests, ultimately
saving taxpayers' dollars by reducing legal system costs.

Other promising reforms include smaller schools and schools that
directly address the needs of nontraditional students by blending
education and employment training, secondary and postsecondary
training and learning opportunities that extend beyond the traditional
school day.

Young people clearly need to learn in an environment free from drugs
and violence. But now we are expelling and arresting students in
increasing numbers, often for acts that, while irritating, are not
dangerous to others. It doesn't have to be this way.

Young people are doing their part by behaving better than their
parents and teachers did when they were in school.

Now it's our turn to create schools that improve learning and safety
without resorting to counterproductive and punitive tactics.