This Long-Neglected Law Can Help Parents Get Their Kids Out of Violent Schools

On Wednesday, the Department of Education published a letter reminding states of a little-known school choice provision that allows students attending dangerous public schools to enroll in another public school or charter school in their district.

The provision, called the Unsafe School Choice Option, was originally passed as part of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act and was continued under the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act. The law allows students attending a school deemed “persistently dangerous,” as well as students who were victims of violent crimes at school, to transfer out and into another school in their district. However, the law has gone largely unenforced.

In all, just eight states had ever designated a school as persistently dangerous, according to a 2019 analysis from education news outlet The 74. Of those eight states, only New York and Pennsylvania have made more than 100 designations. Why have so few schools received this designation? Since individual states were allowed to define persistently dangerous themselves, most have chosen criteria that are almost impossible for schools to meet. For example, in Ohio, a high school of 1,000 students could have four homicides and 19 weapons possessions without being deemed persistently dangerous.

In a letter sent to state-level education officers, the Education Department encouraged states to reconsider their definitions of persistently dangerous schools and “ensure that they have clear and robust communication protocols to ensure that parents know if their child’s school has been identified as persistently dangerous and understand the school choice options available to them.”

“The number of persistently dangerous schools reported nationwide appears low particularly given the number of violent offenses in schools reported through the Department’s Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC),” reads the letter. “For example, not a single school was designated as persistently dangerous in the 2021-2022 school year, while public school districts reported through the CRDC approximately 1.2 million violent offenses in that same school year (with physical attack without a weapon and threats of physical attack without a weapon accounting for 93% of these offences).”

If states develop reasonable definitions of persistently dangerous, more American parents may soon have the ability to remove their children from public schools plagued by violence—and schools with safety problems could soon face pressure to improve conditions.

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