Assessing Student Threats: The Handbook for Implementing the Salem‐Keizer System

Citation

Mackey, H. (2012), "Assessing Student Threats: The Handbook for Implementing the Salem‐Keizer System", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 50 No. 3, pp. 391-394. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578231211232059

Assessing Student Threats: The Handbook for Implementing the Salem‐Keizer System, published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, is a step‐by‐step guide designed to assist school leaders in developing a student threat assessment system that is “designed for use when assessing people who are engaged in an activity or involved in circumstances that suggest the potential for aggression directed at other people” (p. ix). Van Dreal, as the editor of this handbook, incorporates the expertise of a variety of practitioner‐based perspectives, with expertise drawn from the fields of security management, crisis intervention, victim assistance, law enforcement, mental health, social work, school counseling, and school psychology. While distinctly practitioner focused, Van Dreal carefully situates the Salem‐Keizer System within empirical research and research‐based longitudinal studies as the cornerstones for both the foundation and implementation of the system.

The Salem‐Keizer System is unique from other approaches to threat assessment in that it is “a team‐based investigation process … that determines the level of risk posed by a situation involving one or more students opposed to other threat assessment instruments that profile students who appear to have characteristics that might predict future violence” (p. 5). This approach pushes back on the traditionally reactive and punitive discipline processes used in American schools and promotes proactive interventions. As Van Dreal (2011, p. 4) states, “This manual is designed to outline a process that accurately identifies risk concerns … then develops supervision and intervention strategies that are fitting to those identified concerns and thus decrease risk factors”.

Van Dreal organizes the book's 13 chapters into four distinct sections, beginning with the first two chapters introducing the history of the Salem‐Keizer System titled “Overview”. Section II, titled “Foundations” contains two chapters that review the empirical research supporting the approach and discusses the basic concepts of the System. Section III, “System, Team Dynamics, and Applications of Student Threat Assessment” provides a framework by way of five chapters that describe how educators and partner community members can apply the research‐based core concepts into practice. Van Dreal concludes the book with Section IV, “Further Applications”, in which he provides four chapters that look to other areas of threat assessment, beyond student threat assessment. This section discusses adult threat assessment, threat assessment in higher education, other security and behavior issues, and recommendations for deterring targeted violence.

In the first chapter of the book, Van Dreal introduces the necessity for student threat assessment by situating the proactive Salem‐Keizer system in the context of school violence, discussing the fact that violence containment is and has always been, a primary concern for society. He informs readers that violence containment is critical because violent acts, while egregious themselves, have consequences well beyond the act itself. He notes that this leads to “many policies written as reactions to school and community violence [that] are often based upon anger and fear and thus lead to ineffective, misdirected, and even draconian measures” (p. 3). He expands upon this by explaining that “school discipline code today exemplifies policy that results from a reactive and politically expedient move to address drug and alcohol use, aggressive acts, gang activity, and other delinquent behavior” (p. 3) in the form of prolifically implemented zero tolerance policies. Van Dreal discusses the irony of this approach in that it places students back into the community with little supervision and no educational alternatives thus allowing them the freedom to target members of the school community with impunity. The Salem‐Keizer System is designed to circumvent the over‐reliance on expulsion and other punitive discipline procedures. Van Dreal describes it as “a set of assessment and safety‐planning procedures overseen and administered by a unique collaborative community team composed of schools, law enforcement, public mental health, and juvenile justice services” (p. 4). Van Dreal continues to discuss through the second chapter, “A Brief History of the System”, the historical roots of the Salem‐Keizer System, namely, the highly publicized so‐called epidemic of school shootings through the 1990s. Negating the claim that a new epidemic was present in schools, he gives an overview of violence in American schools dating back to the Enoch Brown School Massacre in 1764, continuing through more recent events such as the Columbine High School shooting. One critical development stemming from the shootings in the 1990s was the increased attention and funding dedicated to school safety and violence containment. The chapter concludes by discussing how policy mandates and funding incentives led to the creation of the multiagency collaboration that developed the Salem‐Keizer System in the state of Oregon.

Section II opens with the third chapter that reviews the research sets that have “greatly influenced campus and threat assessment today” (p. 17). Van Dreal's list begins with the Exceptional Case Study Project conducted by the United States Secret Service, which analyzed “eighty‐three persons who had engaged in assassination attacks or near attack behaviors from the previous forty‐six years” (p. 17). He then discusses findings from a monograph based on data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Department of Education's Safe School Initiative, and other evidence‐based resources that contain findings that informed the development of the Salem‐Keizer System. Chapter four lays out the “Basic Concepts” of the System and provides a starting point from which members of the school and greater communities can begin to develop and implement their own student threat assessment process. These include developing an understanding of threats and inappropriate communication, looking at behaviors along an aggression continuum (rather than simply calling all acts ‘violent’) and determining contextually relevant intervention, and keeping the details of the situation in mind when assessing “circumstances involving individuals or groups rather than assess[ing] individuals isolated from the circumstances that increase or decrease the risk they pose to others” (pp. 33‐34). Van Dreal recommends that those who implement should understand the difference between targeted and reactive aggression, recognize common pre‐incident behaviors, and be able to identify both incident accelerators (triggers or precipitating events) and incident inhibitors (stabilizing factors). This chapter concludes by discussing the “four types of concerning youth aggression” (p. 41), which include vengeance or revenge, troubled or disturbed youth, gang, and love/relationship aggression. Van Dreal suggests that an effective data collection system, based on the core concepts, will allow a team to assess risk and develop effective interventions that will decrease violence and aggressive acts in schools.

Section III, “System, Team Dynamics, and Applications of Student Threat Assessment”, steps the reader through design and implementation of site‐based and community‐based assessment. Van Dreal uses the fifth chapter to describe Level 1, or school site‐based assessment, that “is engaged … when a threat or threatening situation is detected or suspected” (p. 47). He provides flow charts that map the three tracks associated with Level 1 assessment and provides recommendations for who should be on a site‐based assessment team. He then provides detailed instructions for conducting a Level 1 assessment. Chapter 6 provides an overview of the Level 2 or community‐based assessment, and discusses how and when the Level 1 assessment would lead to greater investigation at the next level. One critical element of assessment on either level is the organization of a trained investigation team. In the seventh chapter, Van Dreal, Rainwater, and Okada identify three areas of expertise from which team members are drawn:

1. 1.

   education;

2. 2.

   mental health; and

3. 3.

   law enforcement.

They then provide specific protocol for interviewing students and assessing threat for each of these three areas. Van Dreal and Speckmaier dedicate chapter 8 to outlining the process and protocol for Level 2 student threat assessment team operations. The ninth chapter concludes Part III by providing suggestions for organizing the overall threat assessment system (Level 1 and Level 2) based upon success and barriers encountered throughout the development of the Salem‐Keizer System.

Student threats are not the only concern for safety and assessment in schools. Part IV, “Further Applications”, begins with chapter 10, in which Swinehart, Byrd, Van Dreal, and Spady discuss other security and behavioral issues on campuses. The authors highlight site security as a primary concern and recommend review of the exterior and interior for security as part of system development. They also recommend using staff behavior to help create an atmosphere of trust and accountability. This chapter stresses the importance of personal safety and provides strategies for dealing with angry people and concludes by suggesting that schools “develop and implement protocols for the screening of suicide and fire setting, as well as the management of sexual incidents” (p. 111). Chapter 11 addresses the need for adult threat assessment in the community and provides details of a multiagency assessment and advisement team that is not only concerned with school safety, but also domestic violence and workplace violence. In the 11th chapter, Van Dreal and Speckmaier identify ways in which threat assessment in higher education might be conducted similarly to the Salem‐Keizer System with university campus specific adaptations. Elliott concludes Part IV with a final chapter that provides recommendations for staying ahead of targeted violence by creating threat management coordinator positions in schools or using a protective response team, which has the same function as a management coordinator but is done as a team. In conclusion, Elliott states that “the past decade of threat assessment work has taught us that being proactive matters. We can shift the focus of potential attackers, we can minimize the impact of targeted violence, and often, we can prevent it altogether” (p. 142).

Assessing Student Threats: A Handbook for Implementing the Salem‐Keizer System provides valuable detailed instructions and protocol that practitioners will find useful as they create and establish effective threat assessment teams. Van Dreal has collected a vast amount of school safety and violence containment literature and synthesized it into a useful, working handbook that is straightforward both conceptually and instructively. Readers will find the design and step‐by‐step structure of this book remarkably helpful.