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7 Lessons Learned from the Sandy Hook School Shooting

7. Rumors after Sandy Hook prompted many schools to implement unproven strategies.

Many concepts and strategies adopted by a significant number of schools have been demonstrated by the summary report to be based on early, unofficial and inaccurate accounts of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting. This report indicates that millions of dollars and countless staff hours have been expended to implement active shooter response strategies based on occurrences that – according to the report—never happened.

This should be a powerful warning about making improvements based on school security incidents as a whole. Students, parents and elected officials often urge action be taken quickly after a catastrophic event like the Sandy Hook shooting, and sometimes the strategies that are adopted have not been proven to be effective. While most schools had opportunities for improvement immediately after the Newtown, Conn., shooting, many opportunities to implement response concepts that have been proven to work were missed while unproven concepts were implemented instead.

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