To understand the effects of school safety practices and strategies on the school environment, researchers have consistently investigated the perceptions of students and various school personnel concerning school safety. Yet school social workers, professionals commonly employed in today's schools to address the mental health needs of students, are often left out of the school safety discussion. Data were collected from 229 school social workers across the United States to examine: (a) school social workers' perceptions regarding the effectiveness of various school safety strategies; (b) differences in these perceptions based on student- and school-level variables; and (c) comments from participants regarding school safety in U.S. schools. The purpose of this article is to provide timely implications concerning school safety from a unique and unstudied perspective.

Objective: Use of safety strategies is increasing in United States schools due to increased media attention to school violence and maladaptive student behavior. Yet, relationships between the use of school safety strategies and school social work practice have not been adequately researched. This study examines relationships between school-level characteristics and types of safety strategies in schools where social workers are employed and how these strategies influence school social work practice. Method: We used data from 229 school social workers to explore the extent to which school-level variables predict the implementation of authoritarian and educational/therapeutic school safety strategies and examine how these strategies affect practitioners. Results: School size and education level are positively associated with the use of authoritarian strategies, and urbanicity and percentage of socioeconomically disadvantaged students enrolled are negatively associated with the use of educational/therapeutic strategies. Findings suggest that school social workers are affected in their practice by the types of safety strategies their schools implement. Conclusions: Implications call for social work practitioners to assess their schools' safety measures and their influence on students and school personnel when developing case conceptualizations. Practitioners should also evaluate the need for educational/therapeutic strategies and implement them accordingly, particularly in rural schools enrolling a greater percentage of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Additional recommendations for school social work practice, education, and research are noted.

As the population becomes more diverse, social work educators will bear a larger responsibility for educating culturally competent practitioners. To enhance student learning, research should consider those factors that influence students' multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills. This information potentially can help students better prepare for cultural competency courses and improve student outcomes. The focus of this study was to evaluate BSW and MSW students' (N = 191) multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills at the beginning and end of a required cultural diversity course. The results indicate that more previous diversity trainings at different sites consistently predict higher pre-test scores while previous diversity training sites and pre-test scores predict post-test scores. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of research, practice, and teaching implications.

School resource officer (SRO) programs that place sworn law enforcement officers at schools are a popular violence prevention strategy. Despite widespread implementation, little is known about the impact of interacting with these officers on students' attitudes about SROs and feelings of school connectedness. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of SRO interaction on the attitudes and feelings of 1,956 middle and high school students at 12 schools in one school district. Multivariate analyses showed that more SRO interactions increased students' positive attitudes about SROs yet decreased school connectedness. Overall, the results suggested a complex relationship between SRO interactions, students' attitudes, and experiences with school violence. The implications of these results and strategies for how officers can contribute to a positive school environment are discussed.

The safety of students at American schools has become a national priority. With every incident of lethal violence, public fear swells and the demand for effective violence prevention methods increases. School resource officer (SRO) programs that assign sworn law enforcement officers to schools are frequently identified as one straightforward and popular strategy for making schools safer and more secure. However, the placement of these officers at schools raises complex issues and poses new challenges to students' rights, including the risks of unreasonable search and seizure, the inappropriate sharing of confidential information, and students' decreased feelings of safety. In this paper, the authors will provide the reader with a review of these students' rights issues and the possible consequences to students and schools when these rights are not respected. The authors then provide the reader with a review of the relevant literature on the relationship between SROs and students and outlines specific recommendations for the successful implementation and operation of SRO programs that foster positive and respectful connections with students and school officials.

Recent incidents of school-based violence have led to the widespread implementation of safety strategies in United States schools. However, there is little research concerning the influence of parental and community involvement on the implementation of these strategies. This study examines the effects of parental and community involvement on the implementation of school safety strategies in United States high schools using data from the 2007?2008 School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) (N = 936). Structural analyses suggest both parental and community involvement significantly influence the types of school safety strategies implemented in United States high schools. Implications for school public relations are provided.

The number of school resource officers (SROs) placed at schools has increased dramatically. These officers are tasked with making schools safer, yet the effect of interacting with SROs on students’ feelings of safety needs more investigation. To address this need, 1,956 middle and high school students were surveyed. Latent class analysis identified two groups of students, one who felt safe and another who did not. Regression showed that interacting with SROs was unrelated to these feelings of safety; instead, African American students and victimized students felt less safe while males, students with more school connectedness, and students with more positive attitudes about SROs felt safer.

In response to evidence that mental illness stigma is especially prevalent among college students, an innovative seminar was developed that mixed popular films and other media with lectures and class discussions to reduce new college students' stigma. Multivariate analyses showed students in the seminar had more negative attitudes toward people with schizophrenia at the beginning of the seminar but possessed significantly more positive attitudes at the end when compared to a control group. Most notably, seminar students showed greater improvements in their feelings of fear, perceived dangerousness, and desire for segregation from people with schizophrenia than control group students. Implications for college students and anti-stigma programming are discussed.

This article describes the results of a study comparing attitudes toward mental illness and perceptions of professional danger among new social work students (n=64) and other university students (n=111). Such topics have implications for social work education and curriculum development but have not been studied adequately. Results from multivariate analyses showed that new social work students generally had more positive attitudes toward serious mental illness. They had less fear, were less avoidant, and were more willing to help people with severe mental illness than other students. There were no differences in other attitudes, however, including the dangers posed by mental illness and the perceived dangerousness of the social work profession. Implications for educating social work students are discussed.

(2011). School Resource Officers in Middle Grades School Communities. Middle School Journal: Vol. 42, Reaching and Teaching All Students, pp. 56-64.

School exclusion (out-of-school suspension and expulsion) is the most common and serious discipline response to student misbehavior. While most existing studies have considered student and school level risk factors for exclusion separately, multilevel analysis that evaluates student and school level variables together is needed since students are nested within their schools.This article addresses this need by using multilevel modeling to predict the likelihood of school exclusion following the last infraction of the year for 9706 middle and high school students in one school district. Multilevel modeling shows that students' poverty, previous suspensions, and severity of the last infraction predict exclusion while the schools' duplicated suspension rate predicts exclusion at the school level. These results highlight the need for comprehensive interventions that seek to change student behavior as well as the school environment. The role of school administrators, faculty and staff in developing and implementing these interventions and other implications for school personnel are discussed. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The transition from elementary to middle school is difficult for many students. However, the association between such transitions and changes in the types and frequencies of student discipline problems has not been adequately investigated. Using data from two school years, infractions and dispositions for all 5th-grade students (N = 4,196) from one school district are followed from the final year of elementary school through the first year of middle school. Results show a substantial increase in reported student discipline problems and the use of in-school suspension in middle school. This increase is most dramatic for subjectively defined infractions like "class disturbance" and "failure to follow rules" compared to more concrete, objective infractions. Implications for educators and school administrators are discussed.

In many U.S. school districts, there has been a near epidemic of out-of-school suspensions (OSSs) for relatively minor or vaguely defined student offenses. Suspension provides temporary relief to frustrated teachers and administrators and may result in more parental involvement. However, for a large number of at-risk youths, it appears that being suspended leads to significant problems outside of school, increases the likelihood of receiving additional OSSs, and may result in dropping out of school. As a result, school social workers need to be made aware of programs that focus on the elimination of students' problematic behaviors rather than the elimination of students themselves. This article summarizes recent research on individual and school factors that have been shown to be associated with and predictive of OSSs. On the basis of these findings, the authors present a set of practice guidelines for reducing OSSs and identify and describe promising and proven programs within each practice guideline. They conclude with a discussion of challenges facing school social workers seeking to implement alternatives based on these practice guidelines.

Social work has struggled with image problems and misperceptions of the profession and the types of services it provides. Photography is a medium that has been used effectively by other professions to change attitudes and perceptions. The present study examined the potential of photographs to change the image of available social services--namely, an adult day care program. Participants were divided into two groups: (1) a control group that only completed a survey on attitudes about adult day care services and (2) an experimental group that viewed photographs showing positive images of clients engaged in program activities before taking the survey. A multivariate regression demonstrated that those who saw the photographs before taking the survey had more positive attitudes about adult day care services. In fact, the variable representing the presentation of the photographs had the strongest effect on attitudes. Such findings suggest that photography is a potentially powerful tool to promote positive attitudes about social services programs. The implications of these results are discussed.

Book review of Franklin E. Zimring, The Great American Crime Decline. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. $35.00 hardcover, $21.95 papercover.

A popular misconception among the general public is that sex offenders most often victimize strangers. To better understand these misconceptions about sex offenders, this study determines the frequency of misperception in the general public and establishes if the misconceptions are related to the policy of sex offender registration. Using a self-administered mail survey, it is found that on average, 3 out of 10 respondents indicate more worry about a child being sexually abused by a stranger than a child being sexually abused by someone known to them. In neighborhoods where registered sex offenders reside, awareness of a local sex offender significantly increases the likelihood that a respondent is more worried about a stranger sexually abusing a child. Interpretations of the findings follow, including discussing if the findings demonstrate an unintended consequence of sex offender registries.

As school resource officer (SRO) programs continue to be widely implemented, there is concern that an increasing police presence at schools will “criminalize” student behavior by moving problematic students to the juvenile justice system rather than disciplining them at school. If true, this has serious implications for students and schools; yet research on this topic is limited and the discourse is often based on speculation or anecdotal evidence. To address this issue, this study evaluated the impact of SROs on school-based arrest rates by comparing arrests at thirteen schools with an SRO to fifteen schools without an SRO in the same district. Poisson and negative binomial regression models showed that having an SRO did not predict more total arrests, but did predict more arrests for disorderly conduct. Conversely, having an SRO decreased the arrest rate for assault and weapons charges. Implications of these findings for understanding SROs and their role in criminalizing student behavior are discussed.

ABSTRACT The number of Native American youth gangs has increased dramatically since the 1990s. These gangs bring increases in crime and pose unique challenges to tribal leaders and local police departments. Using an integrated theoretical perspective, this article connects cultural and historical factors to explain the emergence of gangs in Indian country, identify risk factors for gang involvement, and outline important considerations for effective prevention and intervention strategies. It is expected that an improved understanding of Native American culture and experiences combined with the implementation of culturally-appropriate prevention and intervention programs will lead to more positive outcomes.

Although research has highlighted that dating violence is a serious and pervasive problem in many adolescent relationships, the prevalence and characteristics of such violence at schools is not fully understood. Yet, adolescents spend a great deal of time at school, and schools facilitate their relationships by providing numerous opportunities for dating partners to interact during the course of a typical day. School social workers are in a unique position to intervene in violent relationships while also educating students to prevent dating violence. This article defines dating violence as a constellation of different behaviors, reviews research about the prevalence of these behaviors at school, and discusses important conceptual and methodological considerations pertaining to the assessment and prevention of school-based dating violence. It is expected that such information will enhance school social workers' and school personnel's knowledge about,dating violence and understanding of critical issues relating to adolescence and adolescent relationships and will inform efforts aimed at preventing dating violence at school. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract)