Violent Schools—Unsafe Schools

Abstract

The article presents eleven theories advanced to explain school crime, the subject of the inconclusive Safe Schools Study coordinated by James Samuel Coleman, then collects 90 statistical measures across the 215 public schools in one of the most violent school districts in the United States—the statewide district of Hawaii—so that each theory can be tested with at least one indicator. Data are intercorrelated, factor analyzed, and a stepwise multiple regression is run on variables corresponding to each empirically distinct form of school disorder. The data suggest that efforts to mainstream students are needed to bring a sense of community to the students of public schools, whether through racial desegregation or through proper classification of the abilities of immigrant and local students.