Nearly every U.S. public school now conducts lockdown drills. Law enforcement officials and many school administrators say they are crucial for preparing and safeguarding students, but they include drills that child trauma experts say do little more than terrify already anxious children, reports the New York Times. “A whole new cottage industry has emerged where people who don’t know anything about kids are jumping in and adapting protocols for groups like police officers or people preparing for combat,” said Bruce Perry of the ChildTrauma Academy, which assists maltreated and traumatized children. “The number of developmentally uninformed, child-uninformed and completely stupid ideas is mind-numbing.”
The news media attention and policy debate surrounding school shootings heighten the perceived risk among parents and students. After the school shooting last year in Parkland, Fl., nearly 60 percent of U.S. teenagers said they were very or somewhat worried about a mass shooting at school, found a Pew Research Center survey. “Every shooting event brings a spike in contacts by people who say ‘we need to be doing something,’ ” said Greg Crane of the ALICE Training Institute, which teaches school officials and law enforcement. Crane, a former Texas law enforcement officer, said drills could make the difference between life and death. ALICE is an acronym for alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate. “The training is not designed to scare anyone,” he said. “I don’t have to make it real to get you to understand how the strategies work.” The National Association of School Psychologists and the National Association of School Resource Officers acknowledge that drills had the potential to save lives. The groups warn that “without proper caution, they can risk causing harm to participants.”