Q&A of the Day – The Impact of Metal Detectors on School Safety
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Today’s Entry: Hi Brian, I’m glad to hear that we’re finally starting to see a significant rollout of metal detectors in schools, it certainly had been talked about for long enough. My question is if there’s now enough data from schools using metal detectors to know what the impact on school safety is. Are there actually fewer problems in schools with the metal detectors? Too often it seems as if there’s only coverage of school security matters if there’s a tragedy. Thank you!
Bottom Line: We are in the midst of a significant rollout of metal detectors at area schools. Last spring the Palm Beach County School District announced a plan to bring metal detectors to all district high schools. However, before a full rollout was to take place, test schools were used as part of a pilot program to create best practices for the implementation of them throughout the district. As of this week eight district high schools now have metal detectors in place with the buildout to continue through the end of the school year. Similarly, Vero Beach High School was just equipped with metal detectors following a recent incident with a student possessing a gun on campus. The Indian River County School District has plans to rollout metal detectors to all high schools going forward and there’s also discussion about adding them to middle schools in the district as well. It’s a topic I’ve studied at length since the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 and it’s one that continues to be hotly debated across the country.
The concern with the use of metal detectors in schools continues to be one of cost and inconvenience contrasted with the benefit of deterrence and detection of weapons. One of the leading arguments against the use of metal detectors has been the potential failure rate of detectors in identifying weapons. As always though there are two sides to stories and one side to facts. I’m supportive of metal detectors in all grade schools at all education levels. That’s due to there being ample evidence that metal detectors are extremely effective in improving security. And really, before I dive into data, the impact is a matter of commonsense. Why is it that we use metal detectors at all airports and federal buildings (among others) if they aren’t effective? And on that note, while it’s still early and with a small sample size to draw significant deductions regarding the potential impact in local schools, it isn’t when we look at the impact across the country with schools which have used them, in some instances, for decades.
The first school to implement the use of metal detectors was an inner-city Detroit High School in the 1989-1990 school year. Since then, there’s been a slow and steady growth in their use. Entering the 2022-2023 school year a total of 2% of elementary schools, 7% of middle schools and 10% of high schools used metal detectors. There have also been temporary uses of metal detectors used at schools during times of specific concerns or as part of a random use of metal detectors. The best sample size of a single school district comes with the largest school district.
The New York City School District has used metal detectors for many years. Since 2016, the schools have been required to report data on the confiscation of weapons from students attempting to enter schools. Since the 2016-2017 school year there have been more than 1,000 weapons, ranging from knives to guns, which have been confiscated due to detection by metal detectors. That’s a rather eye-opening number of confiscated weapons within effectively a five-year window (due to the NY School Districts’ prolonged remote learning program during COVID). A related study showed that the number of schools students attempted to bring weapons into dropped from 78% of all New York District schools to 14%. The real-world result is even larger than what was predicted prior to the implementation of metal detectors. An accredited study from over a decade ago provided data on the likely impact metal detectors had on student behavior. The study found that students were 43% less likely to attempt to bring a weapon onto school campuses once they implemented metal detectors.
It’s clear that deterrence is likely the biggest benefit of metal detectors. Additionally, with far fewer weapons being brought onto school campuses, it's also much less likely that one makes its way past a metal detector as well. On that note, and I hesitate to say this, because it could create unrealistic expectations...I’ve not been able to find an example of a school shooting inside of a school that used metals detectors. Given that school shootings are what have brought us to the use of metal detectors, that’s an effectual takeaway. Metals detectors aren’t the solution to every potential school security problem, but there is a large body of evidence over many years, in numerous locations, illustrating their effectiveness in significantly enhancing school security.