The COVID-19 pandemic and recent racial justice movements have made it very apparent that our current approaches to keeping students safe and healthy in schools need major restructuring and reform. The country lacks mental health supports in many schools at a time when students need them most. Students of color are being punished and removed from…

Few studies explicitly examine how opportunity structures impact school safety, school climate, or bullying. This article applies school-centered ecological theory as a heuristic conceptual framework that links opportunity structures and school safety. Historically, opportunity structures identified how institutional characteristics such as labor…

Since 2005, bullying, school violence, and school safety literatures have expanded dramatically in content, disciplines, and empirical studies. However, despite this massive expansion of research, there has also been a surprising lack of theoretical and empirical direction to guide efforts on how to advance basic science and practical applications…

School climate is increasingly intertwined with efforts to create safe schools and improve social-emotional learning and academic outcomes. While current definitions of school climate implicate the decisions and actions of school staff members, the majority of school climate research focuses on the perspectives of students. This study presents an…

Improving school climate remains a priority for improving academic achievement and social emotional learning, and for reducing violence and promoting safe schools. This study examined staff member experiences of school climate with the goal of identifying the quality of climate (negative or positive) that staff experience and how certain…

Current and future decisions to leave the field of education affect the quality of schools and the next generations of learners, teachers and school leaders in the nation. Physical and verbal violence directed against teachers may be exacerbating reports of high stress, transfers and leaving the profession. This technical report outlines key…

The US is experiencing trends of dramatic employee turnover in our nation's schools. Current and future decisions to leave the field of education affect the quality of our schools and the next generations of learners, educators, and school leaders in the nation. Physical and verbal violence directed against educators may be exacerbating reports of…

Although homeless youth face a higher risk of victimization and mental health problems, little is known about school victimization and mental health outcomes for school-attending homeless youth. This study examined the relationship between school climate and school-related victimization and mental health problems among homeless youth. Multivariate…

There is insufficient empirical evidence exploring associations between gang membership and school violence behaviors. Using a sample of 272,863 high school students, this study employs a structural equation model to examine how school risk and protective behaviors and attitudes mediate effects of gang members' involvement with school violence…

Theories often assume that schools in communities with high violence also have high rates of school violence, yet there are schools with very low violence in high violence communities. Organizational variables within these schools may buffer community influences. Nine "atypical" schools are selected from a national database in Israel.…

This article outlines a philosophical and theoretical framework for conducting school violence assessments at the local level. The authors advocate that assessments employ a strong conceptual foundation based on social work values. These values include the active measurement of ecological factors inside and outside the school that reflect the…

The paper presents a conceptual framework and methodology developed by the authors to create systematic empirical basis to monitor important social indicators. The focus here is on ways to employ indicators of victimization in school in order to inform a range of constituencies interested in the well being of school children. The paper outlines…

Reports findings of national survey on school violence in Israel. Revealed high rates of violence in all areas and among all age groups, but relatively higher rates of low-level violent behaviors and lower rates of more severe violent events. Reports on age-related, gender, and cultural differences; discusses social workers' roles in shaping…

Examined children's understanding of the dangers and potential harms they face while traveling to and from school in high-crime urban neighborhoods, noting how they negotiated dangers within the context of their traveling routes. Interviews with elementary and middle school students and parents highlighted students' fear/awareness of death,…

Examined student views regarding violence-prone subcontexts in their schools, contrasting elementary and middle schools, grade levels, and different public locations at school. Found organization and social dynamics of the middle school likely influenced students' perceptions, and students in different grades within elementary and middle schools…