The gut-wrenching photo in this morning’s New York Times tells only part of the story: a little girl holds a sign saying, “Don’t shoot. I want to grow up.”
The gruesome beating death of a Chicago honors student outside his high school wasn’t an act of gun violence, though. This time, Derrion Albert, 16, was beaten to death by a group of thugs with a railroad tie. His death might have been another statistic in an urban district struggling to deal with violence, except a bystander caught the beating on a cellphone video.
That videoshown on broadcasts internationallydid not help Chicago’s reputation for violence, but it did spur local and federal officials into action. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the former Chicago schools superintendent, and Attorney General Eric Holder will visit Albert’s family today and later will speak about the federal initiatives to curb school violence.
Albert was the third student to die violently in Chicago this year, and he was the 67th since the 2007-08 school year, according to the New York Times.
Hundreds of others have been shot or beaten on their way home from school, arguably the most dangerous time of day.
The new schools chief, Ron Huberman, has a plan, and it’s not just about increasing security. Instead, he’s using $60 million in federal stimulus funds for the next two years to use data to find the students most at risk for becoming victims.
Those students are not randomstatistics show they are most likely to be black males living in an unstable environment and skipping an average of 42 days of school each year. Many are in special education.
Huberman’s plan would give those students paying jobs and a local advocate who would be on call 24/7 for support. About 10 percent of the district’s 410,000 students would be on the list.
“What this model won’t do is get every kid who gets shot, but what it does do is give us a fighting chance to identify those kids who are most in trouble,” Huberman, a former rapid response officer for the Chicago police, told the Times.
It’s clear the district needs more than the current strategies, and the district is focusing on the dangers of getting to and from schools, particularly the ones where most of the victims attended. The data-based plan is certainly a strategy for all districts to watch.
Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor
I agree. Plans to address the out-of-school needs of students in poor communities have often been criticized as lacking in rigor. Huberman’s plan brings “data-driven improvement” into this realm. I understand he has modeled his plan on data systems drawn from the business world.