Districts Take Action to Stem Violence Aimed at Teachers
In Elgin, Ill., a former student stabbed a teacher in the head, neck, and upper body, blinding her in one eye. In Cleveland, a teacher sustained a spinal injury when students assaulted him as he tried to break up a fight. In Lincoln, Ark., a student set fire to a teacher’s car during school hours as retribution after being thrown out of class.
Those are just three among dozens of cases of student violence against teachers reported in the news media this school year.
Experts caution that reliable and up-to-date statistics on the problem can be hard to acquire. National and district data, however, show a drop in such violence over the past decade. The National Center for Education Statistics’ 2007 school crime and safety report , the only known source for such data nationwide, says the proportion of public school teachers physically attacked by students dropped from 3.9 percent in the 1999-2000 school year to 3.4 percent in...
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