After the worst school massacre in this country's history, there must be something we can do. Right? If crime in the classroom is an epidemic, it's like tuberculosis--one we basically control, with a few flare-ups every once in a while that beat the inoculation. Overall, school violence is not going up. Just 10 of every 1,000 students were the victims of serious violent crime at school in 1996. And while that's 10 too many, more than twice that number (26) were victims off campus. After the shootings that occurred in the 1997-98 school year, many districts tightened security. It's having an effect, according to the National School Safety Center: there were 42 deaths in the 1997-98 academic year, and just nine--before Littleton--this school year.

What has increased over the past five years is the multiple-victim, video-game-like rampages that led up to the Littleton abomination. They are the Ebola virus of schools--horrifyingly bloody, yes, but perhaps so determined that we can't devise general means to stop them. On Saturday, authorities in Texas announced that five 14-year-old boys had been charged with plotting a murderous assault on their junior high school. Since Littleton, dozens of copycat threats have popped up around the country. There are two categories of dealing with them: first, nurture more; second, crack down. The latter is embraced by security experts and frightened school employees. For these folks, even zero tolerance is somehow too much; they want lock-downs and detector dogs and strapped rent-a-cops to be a regular feature of school life. (President Clinton also said the Federal Government would provide more money for schools to hire police. For the record, however, Columbine High School's armed cop couldn't do much to stop the shooters.)

Most schools blend the two approaches, to the extent that they can afford it. Trumbull High School in tony Trumbull, Conn., can afford a lot. The school has an armed, uniformed police officer at the entrance, and an 11-member team of counselors watches for warning signs and deals with problem kids. There are two guards inside, these in plainclothes; one of them, John Kichinko, wears Winnie-the-Pooh ties to keep kids at ease.

Across the nation, the most common violence-prevention measures are the cheapest--and the easiest for a couple of well-armed outcasts to blast past. According to a study published last year in the journal Urban Education, the direct-prevention plan most commonly reported by school administrators is to place teachers in hallways. Next come alternative schools, which lump the troubled kids together under one (ideally sturdy) roof; and finally, visitor registration.

The stark limits of such measures became clear after Jonesboro and Springfield and the rest, and many schools have added paranoia to their prevention plans. All bomb threats, at one time sifted for credibility, are taken seriously at most schools.

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