Florida's School Safety Dashboard helps parents and teachers address the foundation causes of bullying, fights and other misconduct

Florida has updated its School Safety Dashboard in April 2024 and is now probably the most comprehensive within the country. F. Chris Curran is a Professor of educational policy on the University of Florida, who collaborated with Safe schools for Alexa non-profit organization founded by Max Schachter after the murder of his son Alex Parkland massacre in 2018to publish the new edition of the dashboard. The conversation asked him how parents and schools can profit from the dashboard and what other states could learn from it.

What can this dashboard show parents about how protected a college is for his or her child?

Parents can use the Safe Schools for Alex dashboard to check safety metrics at their child's school to district and state averages, in addition to other similar schools. The dashboard covers all K-12 public schools in Florida and over 50 school safety indicators, from fights and guns to high school bus accidents. Parents can even view information concerning the school's response and resources, akin to whether school staff are trained in suicide prevention and what the ratio of counselors to students is.

By accessing this data, parents and parent-teacher associations will know what inquiries to ask their teachers and principals to assist them contribute to high school improvement plans. It can even help parents higher support their very own children at home by talking about and addressing the problems shown on the dashboard. For example, parents could use the statistics within the dashboard to confer with their children about bullying or bullying.

With quite a few school safety measures at their fingertips, parents can seek for the symptoms that meet their individual child's needs. For example, a parent whose child suffers from anxiety or depression might compare mental health resources available at different schools.

How can schools use the dashboard?

School districts and educators can see their school safety data in comparison with other schools and districts – and the way that data pertains to standardized test scores, community violence and other indicators. For example, a college might notice a growing trend in its community of scholars living in poverty or without medical health insurance and concentrate on connecting families with outside social support resources. In contrast, a college that experiences a rise in school-related incidents despite improved community indicators might as an alternative concentrate on improving school engagement and disciplinary measures.

In collaboration with Safe Schools for Alex, also for my team Training developed which uses the dashboard to begin conversations about school safety and find solutions. School leaders can use the dashboard to discover problem areas in their very own school – akin to an increasing frequency of arguments. The dashboard and training then facilitates the conversation concerning the root causes of the issue. The dashboard's resource list provides evidence-based approaches to developing and implementing solutions. For example, school leaders could discover a recent bullying prevention program to implement or discover one other school with fewer fights to achieve out to and learn from.

Could there be unintended consequences?

Unfortunately, research has shown that data dashboards can result in a Stigma towards certain schools and result in it wealthier families leave these schools. Public rankings of faculties have been linked Increase in economic, racial and academic segregation. Lower-ranking schools, in turn, may lose enrollment and resources as wealthier parents select higher-ranking schools.

For this reason, the Safe Schools for Alex dashboard deliberately avoids classifying or labeling schools as “safe” or “unsafe”. The dashboard includes a variety of indicators so educators and fogeys can avoid a simplistic view of a college as protected or not protected. While parents often need a single indicator of a college's performance, such indicators often misrepresent safety or performance, which is frequently the case somewhat point to other aspectsakin to the poverty level of the scholars served.

What does the dashboard reveal about violence in schools today?

Schools across the country have reported Student misbehavior is increasing lately. The dashboard also shows this increase. However, while a few of the increase in safety-related incidents is attributable to violence akin to fights, a big portion is attributable to non-violent incidents – particularly e-cigarettes.

The data also shows that while the variety of some incidents is increasing, government resources akin to school safety and mental health funding are also increasing. Special, government funding per student for mental health has roughly doubled $24 per student to $48 per student in Florida for the past five years. In the meantime, Funding for implementing security practices akin to hiring school cops has increased by roughly 15%.

Ultimately, the dashboard shows that there are major differences between schools and districts. Some have high rates of violence and others low; some gain weight, others shed some pounds.

What's next?

School safety is a highest priority from students, parents and educators. Just as schools have embraced the usage of Data to enhance academic instructionThe use of information to make sure school safety can also be increasing. And yet we have now it found that 1 / 4 to a 3rd of states don’t currently make school safety or discipline data publicly available.

In addition to the Florida dashboard, Safe Schools for Alex also offers dashboards for Kentucky, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire And Virginia. These other dashboards are currently expanding to incorporate more data and features just like the Florida dashboard.

A lot of other states, including Georgia, have their very own dashboards, which also include extensive data points and interactive functions. And some states, akin to Kentuckyhave integrated such measures into their broader school reports.

These dashboards don't have all of the answers, but they might help parents and college leaders know what inquiries to ask and where to seek out resources to make schools safer, fairer, and more conducive to learning.