The issue of school safety is of paramount concern but what is lacking is clarity on the best course of action aimed at bolstering safety in public schools. We sought to answer the following research questions: What topics are addressed in school board policies related to arming employees? What outlying policy topics are addressed in school board…

Between 1999 and 2018, 210 shootings have occurred on public school campuses in the United States. The increased need for security and student support may crowd out instructional resources post-shooting. Shootings may also cause students, especially those from socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds, to move away, leading to declines in…

Mass shootings in schools raise important questions about how best to keep individuals safe and increase survivability in such situations. One of the most common techniques used is lockdown drills, which train individuals to build time and space between them and the threat. Despite their use in 95% of public K-12 schools nationwide, their efficacy…

Although school-based youth homicides and student fear of attack or harm at school have slowly decreased over the past two decades (Musu-Gillette et al., 2018), students are not free from worry; violence is still present in schools. School violence refers to acts of physical force, harm, or power that occur on school grounds or at school events…

This study investigates the impact of statewide Restorative Justice (RJ) reforms on school suspensions and bullying outcomes in Michigan and Texas, amidst a broader movement away from zero-tolerance policies. Since the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994, zero-tolerance approaches have led to increased suspensions, particularly affecting marginalized…

Four-day school weeks have proliferated across the United States in recent years, reaching over 650 public school districts in 24 states as of 2019, but little is known about the effects of the four-day school week on high school students. This study uses district-level panel data from Oklahoma and a difference-in-differences research design to…

School discipline is a salient challenge in K-12 districts nationwide. The majority of prior studies have focused on suspensions with relatively little attention paid to other forms of exclusionary discipline. This mixed-methods study provides a descriptive analysis of overlooked disciplinary consequences, namely, assignment to alternative…

This article provides a brief history of the development of the federal model of school threat assessment, which was created by the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education based upon findings from their empirical research on school shootings across the USA. The article reviews the major findings from that behavioral research, which…

Weapons at school pose a danger to students as well as faculty. Educational administrators have attempted to reduce their prevalence by implementing random weapons searches in schools. This article examines the effectiveness of this approach using data from two geographically adjacent school districts in Florida (Miami-Dade and Broward). In the…

Relationships among individual- and school-level factors and students' perpetration of violence, victimization, and safety were studied in two southeastern school districts (N = 26,160, Grades 6-12). Both student demographics (sex, ethnicity, and grade) and school level (high vs. middle school) were associated with perpetration, victimization, and…

Mounting evidence indicates that students of color are more likely than their white peers to receive exclusionary discipline (out-of-school suspensions and expulsions), but alleviating these disparities requires an understanding of what drives them. In this study, we use seven years of student- and infraction-level data from every public school in…

The University at Buffalo School of Social Work established the VISA Center (the acronym stands for "vision, integrity, service, and accountability") in collaboration with the school district of Buffalo, New York. With funding from the New York State Education Department, a university on-campus center was set up to serve 30 students at a…

Background: Multiple approaches exist, both in theory and in practice, to reduce young people's risk of violent victimization when they are in school. Among these approaches, a growing number of school districts are choosing to install metal detectors. We sought to review the literature available on the impacts of metal detectors on school…

The AISD Student Substance Use and Safety Survey, administered annually to a random, representative sample of AISD students, provides self-report data on student knowledge, attitudes, and behavior related to substance use and school safety issues. This report summarizes results from the 2010-2011 school year.

The 2019 edition of the "Digest of Education Statistics" is the 55th in a series of publications initiated in 1962. The purpose of the "Digest" is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field of American education from prekindergarten through graduate school. It contains data on a variety of…