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The survey asked respondents to indicate how many of three specific actions were taken against students for each of the following offenses:

 

 

The possession or use of a firearm;

 

The possession or use of a weapon other than a firearm;

 

The possession, distribution, or use of alcohol or drugs, including tobacco; and

 

Physical attacks or fights.

The three disciplinary actions about which schools were asked to report were expulsions, transfers to alternative schools or programs, and out-of-school suspensions lasting 5 or more days. It is important to note that schools may have chosen to invoke any, more than one, or none of these disciplinary actions during the 1996-97 school year for the above offenses. They may also have taken other disciplinary actions. Thus, these three disciplinary options are not an exhaustive list, simply those that were focused upon in this survey. It is important to note that schools may not have experienced any of the crimes or infractions and therefore took no actions.

Possession or use of a firearm. For the possession or use of a firearm, 5 percent of all schools reported taking one or more of these three actions against students for a total of 16,587 actions (table 18). Half of the actions reported were out-of-school suspensions lasting 5 or more days (49 percent; figure 7). Twenty percent of school-reported actions were transferring students to alternative schools or programs, and 31 percent were expulsions of students for the possession or use of a firearm (figure 7 and table 18).

Possession or use of a weapon other than a firearm. Weapons other than a firearm were defined as any instrument or object used with the intent to threaten, injure, or kill, including knives, razor blades or other sharp-edged objects, ice picks or other pointed objects, baseball bats, sticks, rocks, or bottles. Twenty-two percent of public schools reported having taken one or more of the specific actions against students for possession or use of a weapon other than a firearm (table 18). About 58,000 actions were reported: 23 percent of these actions were expulsions, 22 percent were transfers to alternative programs or schools, and 55 percent were out-of school-suspensions lasting 5 or more days (figure 7 and table 18).

Possession, distribution, or use of alcohol or drugs, including tobacco. For the possession, distribution, or use of alcohol, drugs, and tobacco, 27 percent of schools reported taking a total of about 170,000 actions: 62 percent of the actions were out-of-school suspensions lasting 5 or more days, 20 percent were transfers to alternative schools or programs, and 18 percent were expulsions (figure 7 and table 18).

 

Physical Attacks or Fights. About 40 percent of all public schools reported having taken at least one of the actions against students for fighting for an estimated total of 331,000 actions (figure 7 and table 18). The most commonly reported action was out-of-school suspensions lasting 5 or more days (66 percent), followed by transfers to an alternative school or program and expulsions (19 and 15 percent, respectively).

 

Zero Tolerance Policies

Three-quarters or more of all schools reported having zero tolerance policies for various student offenses (figure 8 and table 19). "Zero tolerance policy" was defined as a school or district policy that mandates predetermined consequence/s or punishments for specific offenses. About 90 percent of schools reported zero tolerance policies for firearms (94 percent) and weapons other than firearms (91 percent). Eighty-seven and 88 percent had policies of zero tolerance for alcohol and drugs, respectively. Seventy-nine percent had a zero tolerance policy for violence and 79 percent had a zero tolerance policy for tobacco.

 

 

Schools with no crime reported were less likely to have a zero tolerance policy for violence (74 percent) than schools that had reported one or more serious crimes (85 percent).

 

Policies to Report Crimes to the Public

Thirty-nine percent of public schools had a policy to report serious crimes to the public (table 20). Schools with no reported crime (46 percent) were more likely than schools with reported crime (34 percent) to have such a policy.

 

Requiring School Uniforms

Three percent of all public schools require students to wear uniforms (table 21). About one-fourth (26 percent) of these schools initiated the requirement prior to the 1994-95 school year, 40 percent initiated it between the 1994-95 and 1995-96 school years, and 34 percent initiated it in 1996-97 (figure 9).

 

 

Uniforms were more likely to be required in schools with a high percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (11 percent in schools with 75 percent or more free or reduced-price lunch eligibility) compared with schools in which less than 50 percent of students were eligible (2 percent or less; table 21). Schools with 50 percent or more minority enrollment were also more likely to require student uniforms than those with lower minority enrollment (13 percent compared with 2 percent or less).