Arming teachers: Bad for students, bad for spending

In late August, news broke that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was considering using federal money to buy guns for teachers — a proposal that she and others suggest may help curb school shootings that have become commonplace in recent years.

While a $50 million school safety bill passed by Congress in March forbids spending on weapons, the most recent deal on federal spending under the Every Student Succeeds Act does not prohibit such purchases. An Education Department spokesperson recently said that Congress would need to explicitly prohibit states or districts from using federal funds to purchase guns for teachers, leaving the possibility open.

{mosads}No matter where funding and initiatives come from, arming teachers is a horrible idea.

First, while teachers fill multiple roles — including making students feel safe in school environments — wielding deadly weapons should not become one of them. To my knowledge, as an assistant professor of education policy and economics, learning intricate information on how to handle and shoot a gun safely and effectively is not part of any teacher training program in the United States. Police officers and military personnel undergo intensive training to learn how to use guns and other weapons to protect the public. They alone should continue to be responsible for this knowledge and role in our communities.

Instead of asking teachers to take on yet another task, we need to help them excel at the skills that already are on their plates: delivering accurate, accessible and demanding content; engaging students’ social and emotional development; and encouraging students’ civic participation in their schools and their communities.

Second, schools and school systems already are under-funded and unable to purchase the resources that we know help to improve outcomes for kids. Spending federal funds to buy guns instead would be an unwise use of limited dollars. Federal expenditures on schooling make up only a small fraction of total expenditures (generally less than 10 percent, compared to roughly 45 percent each from state and local sources). However, federal dollars pay for important resources, particularly for low-income communities who receive these funds through the Title I program, the Title IV program, or the new student support program under Title IV Part A included in the Every Student Succeeds Act. Secretary DeVos has suggested that funds from this latter program could be used to arm teachers, under the initiative’s goal of improving the safety of school communities.

Spending on education has important implications for students, particularly when used to purchase instructional resources. Federal dollars typically have been spent to supplement state and local resources in order to help level the playing field for children from low-income families. Similar to Title I funds, the $1 billion student support program under Title IV is intended as a way to provide services that support a well-rounded education, including providing extra instruction in math and reading, after-school programs, preschool, and summer programs that reinforce the regular school curriculum.

Rigorously designed studies show that high-quality programs like these can produce large and meaningful impacts on student outcomes. For example, the effect on student outcomes of high-dosage tutoring — a resource-intensive intervention that often relies on supplemental funding — is similar to or larger than average gains in learning of upper-elementary and middle school students over an entire school year. Using these funds instead to buy guns would take away important resources for students most in need of additional supports.

New efforts can and should be taken both by educators and the public at large to ensure that schools are safe spaces for students, teachers, and school leaders. However, asking our teachers to wield guns — aside from using federal dollars to pay for these weapons — would be more likely to detract from students’ educational experiences than to help make schools places for learning.  

David Blazar is an assistant professor of education policy and economics at the University of Maryland College of Education. Follow him on Twitter @david_blazar