One of the negative consequences of bullying in schools is its adverse effect on students' sense of safety. Previous studies yielded mixed results and a nonlinear relationship between bullying and students' sense of safety and pointed to the need for revealing possible mediating and moderating factors in order to better understand this…

Many students in rural schools have negative school safety perceptions. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological research study was to investigate the school safety perceptions of students in rural elementary, middle, and high schools in a public school district in South Carolina. The school safety perceptions of students in grades three…

This fourth of six briefs analyzing data from the 2020-2021 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), released earlier this year, focuses on the experiences of students with disabilities with disciplinary practices at both charter schools and traditional public schools. Though the COVID-19 pandemic was still in its early stages, concerns about the…

Shooting incidents at kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) schools in the United States have sparked calls to increase security or adopt altogether new approaches to school safety. These approaches include allowing teachers or staff to carry firearms in some schools. To learn what teachers across the United States think about school safety…

This study uses open source information to examine school shootings in the United States for the 1990-2016 period. We innovatively created a national-level database to address the gaps in existing research and identified 652 school shootings. These shootings included 473 intentional shootings (encompassing 354 with known offenders and 119 with…

This paper examines the extent to which transgender students' experiences with school-based victimization and school protective factors contribute to or reduce substance use. We conducted secondary analyses of school-based victimization, school protective factors, and substance use of a subsample of transgender students from the 2013-2015…

Positive perceptions of school climate correlate with many dimensions of academic well-being and student health. Unfortunately, some existing research finds more favorable perceptions in middle school for general education students (GENs) than for students with disabilities (SWDs). Given the importance of ninth grade to student success, it is…

This systematic review synthesizes research on school-based crisis intervention protocols, descriptions, and evaluations. We performed a comprehensive literature search, and 60 studies met the inclusion criteria for this review. We found an overwhelming lack of evaluation studies (n = 3), suggesting that interventions are being administered…

Purpose: The overall purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to determine the degree to which school level (i.e., elementary, middle, and high schools) and school urbanicity (i.e., city, suburb, town, and rural) were related to written safety plans (i.e., active shooter, hostage, bomb, and pandemic flu/disease threats) and drilled safety…

The study aimed to determine which of the domains in school quality significantly influence the self-esteem of CNHS learners. The quantitative non-experimental design using the correlational technique was used in the study. It was conducted in Compostela National High School involving 300 Junior High learners, specifically learners of grade 7,…

The federal Gun-Free Schools Act (GFSA) enacted in1994 requires U.S. public school systems to report any incident of a student bringing a firearm to school or being in possession of a firearm on school property, the law applies to all states and jurisdictions funded under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. Under federal…

Virginia law mandates the use of threat assessment in all public schools, yet there is little research on grade-level differences. This study investigated a statewide sample of 3,282 threats from 1,021 schools. Threats significantly differed across grade level in demographics, characteristics, and outcome. As grade increased, students were more…

Previous studies pointed out that dealing with difficult behaviour is perceived by teachers as a major challenge in inclusive settings. However, research on the students' perception of the classroom behavioural climate (CBC) is rare. Therefore, this study aims to examine students' perceptions of CBC and to identify predictors of CBC as well as…

School resource officers (SROs) are common in schools, yet consequences of their presence are poorly understood. This study leveraged mixed-methods data from student surveys and group interviews across 25 schools to examine how the frequency of interactions and trust/comfort between students and SROs relate to disciplinary outcomes and feelings of…

Poverty shapes the experience of more than twelve million children in the United States. To further an understanding of the relationship between poverty and school performance in South Carolina public schools, we investigated the association of high and low poverty levels with a range of state report card variables for three school levels:…