States Consider Wide Array Of School Safety Measures After Newtown

Education Week (4/24) reports on the "hundreds of possible strategies" that have been floated in state legislatures to improve school safety in the wake of December's school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. The piece reports on Education Week's analysis of over 400 bills across the country, ranging from "arming teachers, adding guards or police officers, and shoring up the security of school buildings." The piece discusses the differences between this spate of legislation and that which followed the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. "Although the concept of arming teachers has received more attention than other proposals, a plurality of the bills reviewed by Education Week would encourage or require school emergency planning: more drills, more types of drills, and more detailed and dynamic plans."