School Safety Training - The Hidden Cost

School Safety Training

Michael Dorn has written an excellent blog on how certain forms of school safety training is costing some school districts a lot of money. In the state of Iowa, one insurance company has received numerous Workman's Compensation claims of nearly $300,000 in the last year and a half.  That's a rate of $200,000 a year, and do not count any follow-up visits, physical therapy, surgeries or other medical expenses for these injuries.  Nor does the figure count costs associated with lost work time, substitutes and other administrative costs.

School Safety Training Analysis

Any time there is a process that causes this many injuries, the first question that should come to mind is, what is being done wrong?  On one hand, it would seem that the training is being conducted improperly, as participants are incurring injuries. On the other hand, what are the schools doing to ensure the safety of their personnel during this training?

Schools cannot assume that trainers and/or consultants know what they are doing.  They should take steps to monitor the training being given, and should stop any practice that could lead to injury.  A good training company will enumerate possible risks, and provide steps to mitigate against accidents and injury.

This applies even when law enforcement officers are conducting the training.  There are risks in their training they accept because of their job description, and because of the level of training and mental and physical conditioning they have acquired that educators do not have.  Therefore educators should have more protection during training, not less.

Just as it is not prudent to jump right into a full-scale exercise, it is not prudent to jump right into Close Quarter Combat (CQC) training.  With this many people being injured, both the training and the schools should look at how they are doing things.

Preparing for Active Shooters, a small likelihood versus other risks to schools, does not require serious injury to accomplish.

School Safety Training - Who's Being Trained?

In the last blog, I wrote about Criterion-Referenced Instruction, and how it can be applied to Active Shooter Training, as well as other forms of school safety training.  In this blog, I will ask the most important question a trainer should be asking, "Who is being trained?"

Professional educators who do not consider their students do not last long in education.  What considerations do school safety trainers today give for their classes?  Some give great thought to whom they teach.  Dave Grossman, when presenting at the Indiana School Safety Specialist Academy, doesn't train educators the same way he trains law enforcement, or the way he trains military personnel.  Michael Dorn is the same way.  He adjusts his training to the audience he is training. 

That is what master educators do.  They learn about their students, and find the best way to teach them.  What they don't do is teach the same from class to class.  They discover the learning styles of their students, and design their lessons to match those learning styles.  So again the question becomes, "Who's being trained?"

Educators, as a whole, are not like law enforcement personnel.  The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a personality survey used by researchers.  The MBTI of educators shows that they are: Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling and Judging (For a more detailed explanation of what these terms fully mean, check out the Wikipedia entry on Myers-Briggs).  INFJs may come across as individualistic, private and perhaps mysterious to others, and may do their thinking in a vacuum, resulting in an unrealistic vision that is difficult to communicate.

Law enforcement, as a group, are ESTJs, Extroverts, Sensing, Thinking, Judging.  According to the MBTI of law enforcement personnel, "ESTJ people tend to be so focused on the objective pursuit of their goal that they ignore the ideas or feelings of others. Situations where an intimate rapport is needed are likely to be less comfortable for them. They may not collect enough information before jumping into action, and risk missing new opportunities that are not already part of their plan.

A look at the two types, even knowing that they don't apply to all within the group, show that law enforcement and educators are vastly different.  This becomes problematic when law enforcement trains educators.  Most law enforcement trainers are used to training cops, not educators.

I am not saying law enforcement officers can't train educators.  As noticed above, some do very well.  Those that do, know their audience, and teach to that audience.  They know whom they are training.

The question is, do you?

School Safety Training - Criterion-based?

There are numerous companies and numerous school safety programs out there, especially in the area of Active Shooter Intervention.  The last couple of blogs have been taking a look at various elements in school safety training, research and continuity of training.  Now let's look at criterion-referenced training.

Many quality training programs lack a component that is prevalent throughout education; the use of Goals, Objectives and Assessment.  One educational model that incorporates these elements is Criterion-Referenced Instruction (CRI).  This model was developed by Dr. Robert F. Mager (More research!), and is used by many professional educators to develop their lesson plans, and their curriculum.  To be sure, there are other models in use, but they do have common elements; What overall goal is being attempted? What are the standards to be assessed?  How will the assessment be conducted?

Having sat through quite a few different training programs and classes for school safety, the only ones I know that has followed these educational guidelines is FEMA.  To be able to get a certificate from the Emergency Management Institute, you have to complete the modules (goals and standards) and then successfully pass a final exam (assessed to a criterion).

Let's take a look at how an Active Shooter response lesson might look using this criterion.

There are numerous goals to set when considering how to respond to an Active Shooter Incident in your building.  I teach the use of the Window of Life to help people assess their actions during the critical opening seconds of any crisis.  The steps are: Protect yourself; protect others; protect your facility; notify public safety.  Since this addresses those critical first moments, let's establish a goal for its use.

Mager established a method to analyze goals.
1. Write down the goal in brief phrases or single words.
2. Write down the performance that, if achieved, would provide confirmation that the goal was achieved.
3. Delete any duplications or unwanted items. If there are items in 1 and 2 that are too abstract (fuzzy), rewrite to make more specific.
4. Write a complete statement for each desired behavior or performance. Describe the nature, quality, or amount considered acceptable.
5. Test the statements against the original goals in no. 1. If a student demonstrated the stated performances, would you be willing to say that he has achieved the goal? when the answer is yes, the analysis is complete.

When writing goals, use concrete language to describe measurable behaviors.  Some terms to use include: To write, to recite, to identify, to differentiate, to solve, to construct, to list, to compare, to contrast, to demonstrate.

Using all this, let's establish a goal.
1. Use the proper action steps during the first 30 seconds.
2. Staff and students are secured, and prepared for further action.
3. N/A
4. Upon recognition of an Active Shooter Incident, the student will take proper action steps, in 100% compliance with the Window of Life.
5. N/A

Using this, we go from an orientation, which is the common approach of a lot of school safety training, to describing discrete, measurable skills that can let the instructor know that their students understand what they have taught.

In today's world of liability issue, this can be huge.  An instructor who can document that his/her students met a criterion will be in much better shape than an instructor who says, "They attended my class."  This can be especially true of "Train the Trainer" certification.  The question now is, if you are a 'certified' instructor, what does that mean?  To an educator, that means that an instructor has demonstrated mastery of the skills for which they are instructing.

If the overall goal is to instruct educators on how to save lives, then shouldn't we find out if they can after they've been instructed?

Next: Who's Being Trained?

School Safety Training - Continuity of Training

When Safe Havens International trains people in a school, they use the same approach every time.   While what they teach is tailored to the needs of the school, how they teach is consistent from school to school.  This is achieved by setting standards, in the case of Safe Havens International, high standards.  Each unit taught has common objectives, methods, and expected outcomes.  This is what I call 'Continuity of Training'.

This is more difficult for schools to determine when assessing a company's capabilities.  Contact previous schools a company has trained and asked how they were trained.  Apply what you know of teaching to their methods.  Are they appropriate for the audience?  Are they effective?  Is there continuity of training from school to school?

Another important consideration is the safety of your people.  Are they being trained in a way that endangers them?  Look for a pattern of injury to participants.  Occasional mishaps are one thing, a pattern of injury is an indication of bad training techniques.

When schools hire new teachers, they check credentials and references, and conduct background checks.  Schools should do similar checks for people who are going to train yours.

Next; Criterion-based training

School Safety Training - What's the Research?

School Safety Training

Since the Sandy Hook massacre, there has been a figurative explosion in the amount of school safety training provided to schools.  On the surface, this would appear to be a good thing, but is it really?  Many of the training "programs" are not based on research, provide no continuity of training, are not criterion-based, and there is confusions as to who is actually being trained.  For the sake of brevity, one of these issues will be addressed at a time.

There is considerable information out there on how the human mind is affected by high -stress information.  LTC Dave Grossman has written extensively on the subject, as has Loren Christensen, Kenneth Murray, and others.  Dr. Gary Klein has done considerable research on how decisions are made under stress, Dr. Dewey Cornell has done considerable research on youth crime and school safety.  Yet, very few programs being used today rely on any of them to back what they do.

Dr. Cornell said, "Some people leap to dubious ideas, like bulletproof backpacks and arming teachers, when in fact our energy and resources are better spent dealing with less sensational everyday problems like bullying, or mental health issues like depression."  Yet the focus since Sandy Hook have been on "proactive responses" to Active Shooter Situations.  This, despite the fact that from 1998 to 2012, there were 22 Active Shooter Incidents in K12 schools, with 62 deaths in those incidents. 

While one death is a tragedy, schools have finite resources to apply to all the dangers they face.  In that same time frame, many more students died in school transportation-related crashes (525).  Many more students died by homicide (339) or by suicide (129), than by Active Shooter (62) (Satterly, 2014).  Yet millions of dollars have been spent to prepare for Active Shooter Incidents, and little for suicide and crime prevention in schools, or in better training for school bus drivers.

Anytime a school proposes a new program, the question should be asked, "What research supports this program?"  If they can't provide solid, peer-reviewed research that back what they do, then the school can do better.

Next: Continuity of Training.