Safety policies designed to protect schools from mass shootings have done little to deter them and may even be harmful to students, research shows, despite a renewed push for such measures in the wake of Tuesday’s shooting in Texas.
The 18-year-old gunman who killed at least 19 children and two teachers at a Uvalde elementary school was able to evade armed police officers and other security protocols already in place.
Yet some U.S. lawmakers are arguing those policies are needed, and should be reinforced, instead of pursuing meaningful gun control. “We have years of data suggesting that these measures, while they have been impacting school outcomes, they haven’t been necessarily changing the trajectories or the trends in actual injury and deaths,” said Odis Johnson, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools in Washington, D.C. Read more: Everything we know so far about the Texas mass school shooting Johnson and other researchers have found evidence that school safety policies — including on-campus police officers, metal detectors, and increased surveillance systems like security cameras — have a negative impact on education itself.
Students at schools that rely on such policies for safety often achieve lower test scores and rates of college admission compared to other schools, the research suggests.