Re: Is this OT?

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 11:22 -0500 9/5/02, Rick Tarara quoted:

> In the first year following implementation, overall school crime decreased
> by 36%; sex offenses, by 74%; physical fights between students, by 51%;
> weapons offenses, by 50%; assault and battery offenses, by 34%; school
> suspensions, by 32%; and vandalism, by 18%.[13,18]

As usual clips like these always raise more questions than they
answer. The first one that pops to my mind is, what else was going on
at the same time? We aren't told how the distict's statisticians
controlled for the "uniform" variable. Often such actions are coupled
with increased vigilance on the part of the school administration and
faculty, which is likely to have a large effect on such events,
regardless of whether uniforms were mandated at the same time or not.
I would like to see data on how things were after several years, when
attention to the problems that led to the change had dropped back to
the pre-change level. There easily could have been any number of
things done without the fanfare given to the uniforms that made a
difference--increased police presence on campus, improved
communications on campus, better counselling services available, more
administrators patrolling the halls, better communications with
parents, more involvement by faculty, and on and on. We are told
nothing about these things, one way or the other. All we hear about
is the change that the article's author is focusing on.

Hardly a scientific result.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
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<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

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