Profile of a School Shooter: Ingredient 9 - Freedom of Information Meets Privacy Laws
The United States has very complicated privacy laws. Often those in authority are not allowed to share information with one another. The court might not be allowed to notify the school of a problem with a student, nor can the school notify law enforcement about a problem if it is outside of the scope of the law. The teachers and staff aren't always allowed to talk among themselves about a student or compare notes to see if the other teachers have seen similar behavior. Even if a principal is aware of a problem, he can't always warn the other teachers. Studies have been done where teachers have been fed information about a particular students performance ahead of time. In some cases they were told that students performed well above average on tests, when they were actually poor performers. On the other hand a child that was presented to a teacher as a "problem child" could be in every other case a model student, but this specific teacher saw them exactly as they we...