It has happened again--yet another school shooting in our country with multiple fatalities. This shooting is the 16th school shooting this year, an average of about one every week. Parents and teachers are terrified, students are marching, politicians are offering thoughts and prayers, and administrators are struggling with how to protect our nation’s students. We can anticipate over the next few days that someone will proclaim that the latest violence is the result of a “sicko;” we could not, however, predict that incoming NRA president Oliver North would blame the shootings on a culture of violence and all of the boys who have been on Ritalin since “their early years.” Comments such as this only serve to increase the stigmatization of students with mental health issues or special needs. We must not let this happen. The purpose of this blog is not to address the need for commonsense gun laws. Instead, it focusses on addressing other strategies that can help prevent school violence, such as threat assessment plans, and recognizes what does not work, such as profiling of students with special needs (a la Oliver North).
Threat assessment programs were developed by the United States Secret Service and FBI who studied the behavior of people who had already demonstrated violence, including persons who had attacked public figures, such as US presidents. The Department of Education subsequently partially funded research on school shootings, which determined that the shootings were “. . . the end result of an understandable and often discernible process of thinking and behavior. . . “ The clues to the pending violence were all there. Forensic psychologist Robert Fein, PhD said, “. . . people don’t just ‘snap.’" People know something is ‘wrong.'
The FBI and Secret Service recognize that school shooters are frequently the victims of bullying or are angry, depressed, socially isolated, or plagued by mental health or family problems. However not all bullied and depressed students are violent so very thoughtful threat/risk assessment must be undertaken to keep schools safe without rounding up the usual students who often are those with special needs. Unfortunately these characterizations apply to lots of students in our country who will never be shooters. Thus, the FBI and Secret Service have declared profiling ineffective because of the risk of grossly overestimating and misidentifying students as potential shooters. What we need is a better way to evaluate and help potential shooters. “We don’t intervene because we predict someone is dangerous, we want to intervene because they’re troubled or there’s conflict or people are worried about them,” says psychologist Dr. Dewey Cornell. “Prevention becomes a bonus or a secondary gain from dealing with the underlying issue.”
Threat assessment plans were thus developed to interrupt the cascade of negative events that result in violence. One such protocol is the Virginia Model for Student Threat Assessment, which is a research-based violence prevention training program developed by Dr. Cornell in 2010. The plan has been implemented in more than 1,000 schools and organizations throughout the United States. The Virginia model provides a 7-step decision tree and triage approach which will enable most threats to be acted upon immediately and resolved quickly. Schools are trained to establish multi-disciplinary teams, which typically include educators, school administrators, counselors, psychologists, social workers, community organization leaders and resource officers. One of the key factors in the Virginia Model is to distinguish between transient threats (those threats spoken in anger and frustration and can be resolved easily) and substantive threats (those threats which include serious intent and detailed plans). The context of the threat is vital to determine its gravity. Thus, a threat assessment plan will delineate the difference between a student MAKING a threat versus the student who POSES a threat. According to Dr. Cornell, "Any student can make a threat, but relatively few will engage in the planning and preparation necessary to carry out the threat.” For threats deemed substantive, mechanisms are quickly put in place to notify and protect potential victims, engage law enforcement, initiate mental health screens, and develop safety plans.
School districts are required by law to meet the needs of students with special needs, who are afforded disciplinary protections not provided to the general education population to reduce exclusionary practices for special education students. Unfortunately, many school districts feel ham stringed by their legal obligations to students with special needs and regard these regulations as obstacles to their efforts to protect schools. As a result, we are seeing school districts overreact at IEP meetings and manifestation determination hearings to behaviors committed by their special needs population. Too often, students on the autism spectrum with language deficits parrot violent video talk. Perhaps threats are shouted out during melt downs or periods of dysregulation. Students with poor impulse control or social skills may be unable to self-monitor wildly inappropriate social media posts. Additionally, it is true that about half of threats reported to principals involve students in special education, particularly students with emotional disabilities, who by definition have behavioral and relationship issues. Accusations without thoughtful analysis of data is just another way of making bias and prejudice actionable, to remove students from their LRE which is antithetical to IDEA. For too many school districts faced with the mountain of fear in schools and in the community, districts have become reactive and pander to the strong emotions of community members. In this age of texts and social media it does not take much to have people in a state of mass hysteria with wrong information growing to grossly distorted levels and feeding upon itself like a growing forest fire that consumes all rational thought and students with special needs are often the victims.
A good threat assessment plan, however, will provide schools with the tools to quickly evaluate the seriousness of these particular threats. The overwhelming majority of students with special needs represent no threat to others. In their fear and anxiety, however, school staff are beginning to treat many special needs students as potential shooters. These threats should be taken in context and through the lens of threat assessment and ultimately be viewed as transient threats. What these students need are more support and more services, not removal from or stigmatization in their school placements. Implementation of threat assessment plans can benefit all students, not just those with special needs, and promote healthier and safer school environments for everyone.Thus, in this difficult period of escalating school violence, fear, and grief, we must still urge school staff to urge caution when assessing threats made by students with special needs.
According to a Department of Education review, some 80% of students knew that the students who became shooters represented “trouble,” yet they were not reported. Nevertheless, "see something, say something" is not enough. School culture does not reward those that tattle, so effective measures must be made part of an overall culture of schools to support the collective safety of everyone who attends or works there. Yet, these isolated students had quietly flown below the radar and were not identified by school authorities. You only can see what you are looking for. Let’s help all these troubled and marginalized students who are desperately crying out for help and not merely focus on the special education population as potential shooters. Please watch the Sandy Hook Promise video. The signs are there. And lets do more than pray!
