Astor on Gun Violence: ‘We Can Do Something About This’

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News outlets covering the nation’s rash of mass shootings have called on Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor, an authority on the causes and prevention of school violence. Astor has weighed in on topics including mental health resources, the impact on grieving families, proposals to harden schools and arm teachers, and the potential for legislative change in a politically divided country. He also shared details of an eight-point plan for immediate government action, put forth by a coalition of scholars, with Spectrum News1, KTLA and NBC News. “We have decades of research, not just our research but research from all around the world, that actually shows we can do something about this,”  said Astor, who has a joint appointment with the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. Other outlets citing Astor include the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, ABC News, WFYI, CNHI and the 19th. On India’s Mirror Now and Canada’s Global News, he has offered insights about U.S. gun culture to an international audience.

Watch the Spectrum News1 report

Scholars Issue Call for Evidence-Based Action to Prevent School Violence

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A nationwide coalition of scholars who have conducted decades of research into school safety has issued an eight-point plan for immediate government action to reduce gun violence. The coalition, including Ron Avi Astor, a professor of social welfare and education at UCLA, called for a comprehensive public health approach to gun violence that is informed by scientific evidence. The recommendations come days after a shooting rampage at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, left 19 children and two teachers dead. “The recent mass shootings across the country are another painful reminder of failed efforts to stop the kind of gun violence that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School nearly 10 years ago,” according to a statement by the coalition known as the Interdisciplinary Group on Preventing School and Community Violence. The researchers called for a new mindset that prioritizes prevention over reaction. “A focus on simply preparing for shootings is insufficient,” they said. “Prevention entails more than security measures and begins long before a gunman comes to school.” Several of the recommendations focus on limiting access to firearms, including a ban on assault-style weapons and comprehensive background checks for gun buyers. The coalition also calls for a national program to train culturally proficient crisis intervention and threat assessment teams at the school and community level, as well as a requirement that schools assess their learning environments to ensure that they are physically and emotionally safe. “It is time for federal and state authorities to take immediate action to enact these proposals,” the coalition said. “We contend that well-executed laws can reduce gun violence while protecting all constitutional rights.”

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Astor on Ending the Scourge of School Shootings

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Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor spoke with media outlets around the world to bring context and insight to coverage of the tragic shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, which left 19 children and two teachers dead. NPR, Grid News, Global News in Canada and SBS in Australia posted extended interviews with Astor, who said Americans must reframe their approach to the scourge of mass shootings targeting children. While he is optimistic that an “aha realization” will eventually lead to stronger national gun control legislation, Astor called for more action at the local level, including paying close attention to what the students themselves are saying. “They’re the rumbling before the earthquake,” he told SBS. “They know what’s happening in their schools and their communities.” Astor also cautioned against media coverage that inadvertently glorifies acts of violence. Even publishing lists of the deadliest shootings could inspire copycats to compete for fame, he told the Los Angeles Times. Astor, who holds a joint appointment with UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, also spoke with media outlets including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, La Presse in Montreal and Channel NewsAsia in Singapore.

Read the NPR article
Read the Grid article
Listen to the Global News podcast
Listen to the SBS report

Astor Emphasizes Emotional Intelligence as a School Priority

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Professor of Social Welfare Ron Avi Astor spoke to the Southern California News Group about ways to prevent bullying and violence in schools. In a survey of California middle and high school students, about one in three reported being bullied or harassed over a five-year period. However, schools that have implemented a focus on “social-emotional learning” saw lower levels of reported bullying. Social-emotional learning emphasizes that students get in touch with their own emotions and mental well-being and show empathy for others. “This actually moves into the core purpose of what schools are supposed to do for society; they are supposed to create a society that cares, that supports and helps people,” Astor said. “It puts schools out in front of what we hope society will be in 10 years.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, many California school districts have increased their focus on students’ mental health and well-being.

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Astor on Aggression Targeting School Staff

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Several media outlets reached out to Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor to provide context to a new report by the American Psychological Association (APA) on the alarming levels of harassment and threats experienced by school staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. Astor, a member of the APA task force that conducted the research, spoke to NPR’s Morning Edition, CBS Los Angeles, K-12 Dive and The 74 about the “pressure-cooker” atmosphere in the nation’s schools. “Schools were and still are a battleground,” he said. “COVID is symbolic of all these larger cultural layers that filter into every classroom, every school in the country.” Astor also appeared at a March 17 congressional briefing on the study, and noted that school staffs are “just underfunded, understaffed and do not have enough help organizationally to create a positive, healthy environment.” The report, which received national attention from NBC News and EdWeek, among other outlets, recommended comprehensive research-based solutions to improve the campus environment for both students and staff.

Read the NPR article
View the CBS LA report
Read the K-12 Dive article
Read the 74 article

 

School Personnel Report Threats, Harassment During Pandemic

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Professor Ron Avi Astor and a team from UCLA Luskin Social Welfare contributed to research on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on teachers and other school staff as part of a task force launched by the American Psychological Association. In a report released today, the task force found that approximately one-third of teachers surveyed said they had experienced at least one incident of verbal harassment or threat of violence from students during the pandemic. Almost 50% of the teachers expressed a plan or desire to quit or transfer jobs, according to the report, based on a nationwide survey of 14,966 teachers, administrators, school psychologists, social workers and other pre-K through 12th grade school staff. “This was one of the first studies we know of that looked at how both COVID-19 and issues of school safety impacted all school personnel,” said Astor, who holds a joint appointment with the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. “School staff such as bus drivers, janitors, secretaries, yard aides, crossing guards and cafeteria workers are often left out of these large national studies. Their voices are so important and commonly ignored.” The APA task force will present its findings at a congressional briefing today at 2 p.m. EDT,  joined by several national co-sponsoring organizations. The UCLA team that contributed to the findings included Hector Palencia of the Social Welfare field education faculty and doctoral students Laura Liévano-Karim, Natalie Fensterstock, Chaoyue Wu, Kate Watson and Sawyer Hogenkamp. Gordon Capp of CSU Fullerton was also part of the UCLA team. — Joanie Harmon

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Read the APA report

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Astor on ‘Tsunami of Mental Health Needs’ in Schools

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A Reuters article on signs that the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic are worsening gun violence in American schools included insights from Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor. Since the 2021-22 school year began, campuses have been the site of 141 shootings, more than at any point in the previous decade, gun safety advocates say. Astor said several factors, including the pandemic, overall community violence and breakdowns in family structures, have created a “tsunami of mental health needs” in schools. In many places, burnout, staffing shortages and illness have left teachers and administrators ill-equipped to deal with the challenges. “Kids are walking into a system that has been massively weakened,” Astor said. “We’re going to see a variety of different forms of gun violence and violence in general. We’re in a situation where things are going to get worse.”

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Astor on Parental Concerns for Child Safety in Israeli Schools

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A study co-authored by Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor about perceptions of child safety in Israel’s schools was featured on several international new outlets, including YNET News. Astor and his research partners analyzed 2,165 responses from a nationwide survey of the parents of children between kindergarten and 12th grade. The study, which assessed parents’ and children’s sense of protection in Israeli schools, found that only 10.6% of parents “feel their children are very safe in the educational institution.” According to the survey results, 40% of children were victims of physical harm at least once and several reported verbal harassment and social media shaming. The research team also highlighted parent dissatisfaction with educational institutions’ handling of violence.

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Faculty Reported Among Top 2% in Scholarly Citations

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Eighteen faculty members affiliated with UCLA Luskin are included in a listing of the top 2% for scholarly citations worldwide in their respective fields as determined by an annual study co-produced by Stanford University researchers. The 2021 report is a publicly available database that identifies more than 100,000 top researchers and includes updates through citation year 2020. The lists and explanations of study methodology can be found on Elsevier BV, and an article about the study was published by PLOS Biology. Separate data sets are available for career-long and single-year impact. The researchers are classified into 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields, with field- and subfield-specific percentiles provided for all researchers who have published at least five papers. The following current and past scholars with a UCLA Luskin connection met the study’s criteria to be included among the most-cited scholars:

Laura Abrams

Ron Avi Astor

Evelyn Blumenberg

Randall Crane

Dana Cuff

Yeheskel Hasenfeld (deceased)

Aurora P. Jackson

Duncan Lindsey

Susanne Lohmann

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris

Thomas Rice

Ananya Roy

Robert Schilling

Donald Shoup

Michael Storper

Brian Taylor

John Villasenor

Martin Wachs (deceased)

 

Astor on Schools’ Role in Protecting Students, Preventing Violence

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Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor spoke to the Los Angeles Times about pandemic-related factors behind reports of tension, misbehavior and violence on school campuses. Students who returned to in-person learning after a long period of isolation may have also experienced food and housing insecurity, mental health issues and other stressors, Astor noted, so schools should be well-positioned to support students on many levels. “Historically, schools have also played the role of creating a better society and a better world,” he said. “This is the right time to retreat back to that.” A K-12 Dive article on who bears responsibility for preventing violence on campus also cited Astor. He recommended that everybody — including teachers, staff, administrators, peers, parents and law enforcement — be trained to spot and properly respond to students who display red flags, including an obsession with firearms; signs of depression and suicidal ideation; having a plan to hurt themselves or others; and troubling social media posts.

Read the L.A. Times article
Read the K-12 Dive article