This isn't a cure all measure. You are definitely right on that the ideal situation would be to have smart and insightful teachers who knew every student and cared enough to be involved.
In the end, a system like this will only be as good as the administrators and teachers who use it. Will it help? I think it has the potential to do so.
The software is meant to be used as a tool, not a decision maker. Think about a risk averse drone school administrater (not knocking all of them, but I've seen some bad ones personally), especially when everyone is tense after columbine. Some kid makes a serious threat without thinking in the heat of a moment and is suspended. With this software (giving the benefit of the doubt that it lives up to its own claims), the student who was suspended by knee jerk reaction may actually be treated leniently if he is identified as being a lower risk. In any case it's very easy to bash a handful of people who run large public schools, but it's not a job that I would want to do. If you were a school official how would you deal with threats made? The students in that school are your responsibility. You could suspend everyone who makes any threat of violence, but what would that accomplish? An oppressive school environment. But what if the kid you don't suspend is the one who goes off and injures or kills someone else. There are no easy answers or solutions. It appears that the mosaic program might help the situation instead of making it more oppressive. Ohio's attorney general says this: "It brings together the shared experiences of many experts plus an evaluative piece," Ms. Montgomery said. "It says, 'Look, we've gone back and spoken to X number of people who have committed these crimes, and these are the risk factors we feel are present in their lives.' It collects these risk factors based on actual cases and organizes them in a way so we can have a consistent approach."
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This isn't a cure all measure. You are definitely right on that the ideal situation would be to have smart and insightful teachers who knew every student and cared enough to be involved.
In the end, a system like this will only be as good as the administrators and teachers who use it. Will it help? I think it has the potential to do so.
The software is meant to be used as a tool, not a decision maker. Think about a risk averse drone school administrater (not knocking all of them, but I've seen some bad ones personally), especially when everyone is tense after columbine. Some kid makes a serious threat without thinking in the heat of a moment and is suspended. With this software (giving the benefit of the doubt that it lives up to its own claims), the student who was suspended by knee jerk reaction may actually be treated leniently if he is identified as being a lower risk. In any case it's very easy to bash a handful of people who run large public schools, but it's not a job that I would want to do. If you were a school official how would you deal with threats made? The students in that school are your responsibility. You could suspend everyone who makes any threat of violence, but what would that accomplish? An oppressive school environment. But what if the kid you don't suspend is the one who goes off and injures or kills someone else. There are no easy answers or solutions. It appears that the mosaic program might help the situation instead of making it more oppressive. Ohio's attorney general says this: "It brings together the shared experiences of many experts plus an evaluative piece," Ms. Montgomery said. "It says, 'Look, we've gone back and spoken to X number of people who have committed these crimes, and these are the risk factors we feel are present in their lives.' It collects these risk factors based on actual cases and organizes them in a way so we can have a consistent approach."