Schools are becoming less safe
It's not just gun violence - rates of bullying, sexual violence, and more are all rising at schools in the United States.
The countless tragedies at schools across the country have understandably made gun violence the center of our attention when talking about school safety. While gun violence is a major component of the issue, we shouldn’t forget about the other aspects of school safety. Our schools have become drastically less safe over the last decade, and the problem is not just limited to gun violence.
Regardless of whether or not stricter gun laws are passed in response to Tuesday’s shooting in Uvalde, it is long past time for our country to have a serious conversation about school safety.
Trends in School Safety
School safety involves any threat to the welfare and wellbeing of students that originates through the school, or originates from outside of school, but becomes a problem at school. This can include but is not limited to problems such as gun violence, bullying or harassment, sexual violence, and student mental health.
These aren’t small issues – rates of gun violence and sexual violence in schools and youth suicide have all been increasing over the past few decades.
Threats, Attacks and Sexual Violence
Between 1966 and 2008, a total of 44 school shootings occurred, about one a year. In sharp contrast, from 2013 to 2015, 154 school shootings occurred, with the incidence rate increasing so rapidly, 2015 had almost twice as many school shootings as in 2013. As we all know, the situation has only gotten worse in the years since 2015.
In the past few years, schools have seen some dramatic increases in threats and incidents of physical and sexual violence. The chart below uses data from the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection to showcase the change in the number of documented offenses that occurred on school grounds, or during a school sponsored event between the 2015-16 school year and the 2017-18 school year, broken down by type of offense.1 2
Incidents of sexual violence in schools appear to be rising almost as fast as incidents of gun violence at schools. The 2017-18 school year saw a 42 percent increase in the total incidents sexual assault at public K-12 schools in the United States compared to the 2015-16 school year. Incidents of rape or attempted rape rose even faster, with the 2017-18 school year seeing a 74 percent increase in incidents of rape or attempted rape compared to the 2015-16 school year.
Sexual violence is one of the least discussed aspects of school safety, and although there has been increased focus on sexual violence and harassment in schools in the past few years, the issue still does not receive nearly as much attention as it clearly deserves.
Bullying and Sexual Harassment
Although efforts to reduce incidents of physical bullying in the United States have been incredibly successful, bullying and harassment have not disappeared entirely. A survey of over 85,000 high school students in Virginia found the following:
Almost 40 percent of all high school students in the United States report experiencing some form of bullying, with verbal and social bullying being the most common types.
Cyberbullying has also become an issue in recent years, with around 13 percent of all students experiencing some form of cyber bullying.
Over 51 percent of female high school students and 29 percent of male high school students have been the victims of sexual harassment in the form of unwelcome sexual comments, jokes, or gestures, sexual rumors being spread about them, being repeatedly bothered to go out with someone, or unwanted physical contact of a sexual nature.
Additionally, trends in bullying seem to echo the trends seen in violent offenses at schools. The above graph uses NCES data to show the trends in the percentage of students that reported experiencing bullying. In 2019, the total percentage of students that reported being bullied at school increased for the first time in over a decade. Only one type of bullying — being “pushed, shoved, tripped, or spit on” — did not see an increase in reports in 2019.
Student Mental Health
Discussion of school safety policy needs to include a discussion about the mental health of students, which has rapidly deteriorated in recent years, resulting in higher suicide rates among youth.
According to the CDC, The suicide rate for teens aged 15-19 years old in the United States peaked in 1995 and declined for almost a decade – but starting in 2007, the trend reversed itself, and started to climb again. As of 2015, the suicide rate for males aged 15-19 had increased by 31 percent since 2007. The trend for females aged 15-19 is even worse – from 2007 to 2015, the suicide rate among females more than doubled.
The trends that we are seeing in school safety in American schools are incredibly concerning. Across the board, schools have become drastically less safe for students.
It’s clear that the current policies and programs intended make schools safe for students are failing. Rape and sexual assault incident rates at K-12 schools are rising, more than half of all female students appear to have been victims of sexual harassment, and more students than ever are dying to gun violence or suicide. Policymakers must recognize the failure of current policy, and work to implement a robust and comprehensive system for improving school safety.
How do we make schools safer?
In the research I’ve done on school safety during my internships and for my college classes, I’ve identified four broad policy solutions that would make schools safer for students. These solutions include threat assessment models, school-based prevention and education programs, suicide or crisis hotlines, and school safety hotlines. Combining these four policy solutions into one comprehensive and centralized approach would be the best way to maximize the safety of students at schools.
Suicide or Crisis Hotlines
Suicide hotlines are one of the most well-known programs currently in use as a solution to the growing mental health crisis among both youth and adults. These hotlines are 24/7 toll-free numbers that individuals in crisis can call to receive – or get connected to – mental health services. The most well-known of these hotlines is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which is comprised of a network of more than 160 crisis centers across the country that can be reached through a single phone number. The NSPL has been documented to be effective at de-escalation during suicidal crises and increasing the utilization of mental health services.
The mental health professionals that operate these crisis hotlines face several difficulties that should be taken into consideration. First and foremost, getting students to use crisis hotlines can be extremely difficult due to societal stigma around mental health. A 2006 study examining the use of crisis hotlines among students found that only 2.1% of study participants had ever utilized a crisis hotline. Students that hadn’t used a hotline reported that the primary reasons they had never used a hotline was because they were ashamed to use the hotline, or because they did not think a problem was serious enough. To address this, stakeholders tasked with implementing these crisis hotlines for young people must take steps to market the hotlines to them in a way that reduces the stigma associated with using a hotline.
The difficulties associated with getting students to use a crisis hotline should not discourage policymakers from taking the steps to implement and strengthen hotlines. When crisis hotlines are used, they can be extremely effective at achieving their stated goals, and the stakeholders currently implementing these hotlines – usually mental or behavioral health providers – are constantly looking for ways to improve their effectiveness through the use of new strategies. One such strategy is the Safety Planning Intervention (SPI), a form of cognitive behavior therapy meant to teach at risk individuals coping methods to help them when they are in crisis. Crisis counselors that use SPI strategies when answering calls for these hotlines perceive the intervention to be highly effective.
Threat Assessment Systems or Models
Threat Assessment Systems or Models are a commonly suggested solution to the problem of incidents of school violence. They were first proposed in a 2002 report by the United States Secret Service in the wake of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colorado. The report recommended the adoption of threat assessment models that include “efforts to identify, assess and manage individuals and groups who may pose threats of targeted violence”.
Typically implemented by state and local law enforcement agencies and local education agency administrators, these models rely upon student data – and reports from other students – to make an early identification of threats, before they lead to violent incidents. While there are a wide variety of different models that have been proposed, or are currently in use, most have a few key features that stand out.
One model that was specifically put forward for college campuses - but can be adapted to K-12 schools - would be a five-stage threat assessment model that establishes a way to gather reports, evaluate the reports, respond to incidents, and evaluate the response to determine what went well and what may need to change in future responses. Although this specific model has not been rigorously evaluated to my knowledge, the below chart from the article that proposed the model is one of the better visualizations I could find that show how threat assessment models work.
There are a number of different stakeholders involved in threat assessment systems, but the primary stakeholders include students, school and district staff, parents, law enforcement, and mental health professionals. Incident response can be carried out by at least one or more of these stakeholders. A report indicating an imminent threat may be responded to by a law enforcement agency, whereas a report indicating simple concern about another student’s well being may be responded to by mental health professionals or school staff that are better equipped to address the situation.
Threat assessment models have serious potential as part of a solution to the growing problem of gun violence or other similar threats to schools, but they face several obstacles from stakeholders that can be hurt or may be opposed to the models on other grounds. Stakeholders such as law enforcement, school staff and mental health professionals are key to the success of a threat assessment system, but it’s imperative for them to maintain the trust of students and parents, and key to that is finding a balance between privacy and safety.
School Safety Hotlines
School safety hotlines have been implemented by a growing number of states and local education agencies in response to the increasing threat of school shootings. The first – and most notable – of these school safety hotlines is the Safe2Tell hotline, which was implemented in Colorado in 2004 as part of the state’s response to the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. Safe2Tell and other similar hotlines provide students with an anonymous or confidential method of reporting potential threats to school safety, without fear of repercussion. According to the former Executive Director of the Safe2Tell program, between 2004 and 2010, reports to Safe2Tell hotline resulted in over 400 formal investigations, and prevented 28 potential school attacks.
Safe2Tell is not just unique among school safety hotlines because it was the first – Safe2Tell also has seen an interesting trend in how students use the hotline. The hotline started out as a means of preventing school attacks like the Columbine shooting from ever happening again in Colorado – but by 2010, the hotline had already evolved to do so much more than prevent violence. Students have been using the hotline to report a broad range of problems and concerns related to the safety of their schools and their peers, most notably concerns about potentially suicidal peers.
School safety hotlines can be operated as entirely anonymous hotlines, or confidential hotlines. While anonymous hotlines ensure that the identity of callers will never be disclosed to law enforcement or any other responding agency, confidential hotlines allow for exceptions to be made in the event of false reports or a need to determine the identity of callers to prevent a threat.
There are often concerns about confidential hotlines from law enforcement agencies, mental health professionals, and other stakeholders involved in the implementation of school safety hotlines, with the primary concern being that they may discourage students from using the hotline if the student feels they may not have anonymity and could face consequences for making a report.
A few different studies of confidential and anonymous survey procedures have compared the accuracy of self-reported drug use surveys of students and young adults when the surveys were anonymous versus confidential. Both studies found no discernible difference between the two types of surveys, indicating that concerns over the use of a confidential hotline reducing the number of reports in general, are likely unwarranted.
In my own research of school safety hotlines for legislation in Colorado that made Safe2Tell a confidential hotline, I found little evidence to indicate that whether a hotline was anonymous or confidential impacted how frequently the hotline is used. Based on the data I was able to collect from the seven hotlines that were created by state legislatures, it didn’t appear as though the anonymity status of a hotline impacted the number of reports it received. Although the per-capita rates for Oregon and Michigan might make it appear as though there is a trend towards confidential hotlines receiving less reports, this can be easily disproved by pointing to the fact that Nevada and Wyoming have the 2nd and 3rd highest per-capita reporting rates.
Safe2Tell Colorado has a substantially higher per-capita reporting rate than any other school safety hotline. This success has little to do with the fact that Safe2Tell is anonymous instead of confidential and everything to do with Safe2Tell’s vast array of resources for students, parents, educators, and schools. Safe2Tell offers dozens of posters and brochures, PSAs for students, detailed implementation guides for schools, training opportunities for students, school staff, law enforcement, and community members, and more. For comparison, Safe Oregon has 2 different posters and a brochure.
When it comes down to it, how school safety hotlines are “marketed” to students matters significantly more than anything else. Beyond the resources given to schools for implementing a school safety hotline, how a student perceives the hotline is going to have a significant impact on their choice to use it. If you compare promotional materials for Safe2Tell to promotional materials for Safe Oregon for example, you’ll notice that the promotional materials for Safe2Tell put a major emphasis on issues like school violence, and suicide and keeping friends safe, while in Oregon and Michigan, there is a greater emphasis on bullying and drug use.
The focus on the issues that teens have a closer emotional connection to such as school violence or suicide creates a positive perception of the hotline, whereas the focus on drugs results in the hotline being perceived as something that “snitches” might use. The most successful school safety hotlines have worked to send the message that the hotline is more about mental health and school safety than it is about reporting drug use or bullying (to a lesser extent than drug use).
Stakeholders such as law enforcement or other implementing agencies can benefit from adopting a confidential hotline instead of an anonymous hotline. Confidentiality will not reduce use of hotlines and will give law enforcement agencies or mental health professionals the ability to better respond to potential threats to schools, or the safety of individual students in cases where a report may not have provided enough information to stop or address a threat.
School-based Prevention and Education Programs
Prevention and education programs are very broad and can cover a wide variety of aspects of school safety. There are programs that focus on sexual harassment or violence, programs dedicated to ending the student code of silence, educational programs intended to support other policy programs, and more.
Systemic reviews of school-based programs intended to reduce sexual violence at schools are typically ineffective, however, there are a few programs that have the potential to be effective:
Safe Dates, a 10 session program that teaches students about the consequences of dating violence reduces sexual dating violence and victimization 4 years after the program was implemented.
Shifting Boundaries, a building-level intervention that included restraining orders and poster campaigns over a 6 to 10 week period resulted in reductions in the perpetration and victimization of sexual harassment and violence.
Some school-based educational programs aimed at addressing the mental health needs of students and reducing bullying and harassment have shown promise:
The Emotional and Behavioral Health–Crisis Response and Prevention (EBH-CRP) intervention is a comprehensive intervention that is student-centered, and includes frequent lessons and training sessions, student ambassadors, protocols for early identification of mental health issues and connects students to mental health providers. The intervention has not completely stopped upward trends in school violence and bullying, but it has dramatically reduced their rate of growth.
The Peer Gatekeeper Suicide Prevention Training has some evidence suggesting that giving students training about the common triggers and warning signs for suicide can lead to students being more likely to identify peers that may be suicidal.
School-based programs to end the student code of silence are typically implemented separate from other programs, but in some cases, they will be implemented as part of other previously mentioned policy alternatives such as threat assessment models or school safety hotlines. Safe2Tell, the school safety hotline mentioned previously, credits some of its success to the educational component of the program, which is responsible for publicizing the hotline at schools, teaching students and teachers how to use it, and more.
School-based interventions in the form of educational programs and training can be difficult for school administrators to implement, but they appear to be effective at improving school safety for students, especially when coupled with other programs or interventions.
Creating a Centralized System
If implemented separately from each other, the four broad types of policy solutions that I have described are unlikely to be effective at improving every aspect of school safety. Policymakers looking to make schools a safer place for children in the United States should look to implement a comprehensive school safety system that incorporates all four of these policy solutions, but specifically centering them around a school safety hotline.
Part of the problem with current school safety initiatives in the United States is that they lack unity and centralization. The current state of education and prevention programs is probably the best example of this problem. Some of these programs are developed and implemented by school districts or state education agencies, while others are created by local law enforcement agencies or nonprofits.
The list of different stakeholders that create, design and implement these programs and initiatives is unending. Since each nonprofit or state or local agency wants to create their own program, you also end up with prevention and education programs that have not gone through any kind of rigorous review prior to being implemented.
It's perfectly fine to have all these stakeholders involved in trying to improve school safety, but they need to work together, not separately from each other. This is where school safety hotlines come in – they should be the backbone of a centralized system.
Reports made to these hotlines can be evaluated using threat assessment models, and hotline operators can use the model to determine what the appropriate response should be, and who should respond. If there is clear evidence of a direct threat to a school, the operator may notify law enforcement and the school. If a student uses the hotline to express concerns about a friend’s wellbeing, the operator may choose to notify social services. If there are reports of bullying or harassment at a school, the operator may decide that only the school needs to be notified. Whatever the situation, these school safety hotlines can connect every relevant stakeholder together, and ensure that there is an appropriate response to every report.
As mentioned earlier when discussing Safe2Tell – promotion and outreach are key to making a school safety hotline successful. Policymakers looking to implement a school safety system that revolves around a school safety hotline should work to ensure that every stakeholder is involved in the implementation of the hotline, and that every actor – students, families, educators, law enforcement, social workers, etc. are all aware of the hotline and its intent.
Policymakers should look to Safe2Tell as a model for how to promote the hotline. Schools should print the hotline number on the back of student identification cards, hold assemblies about the hotline and school safety, put up posters about the hotline, and do everything in their power to make students aware of the hotline, and to make them feel comfortable using it.
There also needs to be heavy investment in prevention and education programs at K-12 schools. Schools should work with local law enforcement, social services, healthcare providers, nonprofits, and any other relevant actors to provide education and training programs that can make schools safer. This might include programs like the ones I mentioned previously, or other programs intended to address different aspects of school safety. Regardless of what the program is trying to address however - every single education, prevention or training program should be implemented in coordination with the agency that runs the school safety hotline. It is imperative that students get the message: the school safety hotline is available as a resource for them to use.
The evidence makes it clear that when stakeholders are left out of the policy solutions aimed at improving school safety, the policy solutions aren’t nearly as effective. Safe2Tell has been effective in Colorado because it works to ensure that there are no stakeholders that “lose” in the process, and everyone instead works together to make schools safer. When stakeholders actively work together, they are able to achieve their goals of making schools safer.
Creating a comprehensive school safety system like what I’ve described here will not be the perfect solution - but it would be a massive step in the right direction. Every child in America deserves the right to a safe learning environment, and we should be doing everything in our power to give it to them.
There was one additional category of offense not included in the chart: “Physical attack or fight with a firearm or explosive device”. The data for Illinois in the 2017-18 school year appeared had been incorrectly entered, and I felt it best to just leave this category of offense out of the chart.
The CRDC is a mandatory biennial survey completed by local education agencies in the United States. For the data on offenses, local education agencies report all document incidents that occur. Pages 89-90 of the 2017-18 survey instrument sent to LEAs include the definitions of each category of offense, and showcase the instructions given to the LEAs for how to count incidents.
Schools are becoming less safe
Is there any data on whether private / voucher schools do a better job at safety?