School Safety and School Choice

Conn Carroll / September 15, 2009

Yesterday in Belleville, Missouri, a 17-year-old high school student was beaten on a school bus while fellow students looked on and cheered. Today, in Miami, Florida, a student was stabbed to death at Coral Gables Sr. High School. No family should have to submit their child to such violence prone environments a daily basis. In fact, a study by the U.S. Department of Education’s (DOE) Institute for Education Sciences released in March of this year found that those parents participating in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program cited school safety as their most important reason for seeking a scholarship.

Since that time The Heritage Foundation submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) requesting records of crime incidents during the 2007-2008 school year in D.C. public, private, and charter schools. Our Center for Data Analysis has crunched the numbers and this is what we found: (more…)