School safety is an ever-present issue in the modern education system. Incidents like Sandy Hook, Parkland, and Columbine have forever changed the way school and police officials develop school safety programs. A primary component of many school safety programs is the utilization of school resource officers at various levels throughout the…

Positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) is a schoolwide approach to promote positive school safety in which student academic success can occur. However, at least one third of students in United States schools are suspended once in their K12 school career for violating a school's code of conduct. School suspensions have been linked to…

The purpose of this explanatory sequential, mixed methods research study was to identify the perceptions of school resource officers (SROs) regarding high school students with disabilities and their preparedness to work with this population, as a result of their SRO training. This study involved a national quantitative survey of SROs working in…

National context: Schools across the United States have long grappled with the role and impact of school-based police officers, often referred to as school resource officers (SROs). Proponents for school-based policing believe that SROs contribute to school safety by preventing or addressing crime and violence in schools. Opponents of SROs in…

Implementing school resource officer (SRO) programs has been a popular response to school-based violence in the United States (Lynch, 2017). Lynch further posits that there is a growing concern that school resource officers hyper-criminalize trivial student misbehavior, contribute to a culture of youth punishment and control, and are instrumental…

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…

Research on LGBTQ+ students and their sense of belonging in public schools is necessary; minoritized students deserve to feel safe, validated, and valued in a space where they belong. Using the 2017-2018 School Survey on Crime and Safety public-access data, we align variables to Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems framework. This study explored…

Disciplinary incidents at U.S. public middle- and high-schools are a public policy concern. Although businesses popularly give credence to leaders' subjective intelligence, principals' reports of their schools' strengths and weaknesses are questioned. To determine whether principals' reports carry legitimacy as indicators of student offenses, the…

The U.S. Department of Education's School Climate Survey (EDSCLS) is a free, open-source school climate survey available for any local or state education agency to use to measure three domains of school climate: engagement, safety, and environment. The present study leverages EDSCLS data from 3,416 students from 26 middle and high schools in…

This study investigated the associations among school climate domains and how school climate interacts with academic performance. A sample of Kosovan public school students (N = 855) was assessed using the School Climate Survey. The results showed that students had positive perceptions in the school climate domains of teaching and learning and…

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…

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:…

Little is known about principals' perceptions and their links to how school safety practices operate. Using data from School Survey on Crime and Safety from 2,009 public schools in the US, the current study examines the extent to which principals/administrators' perceptions of academic climate and crime risk are related to school practices…

The federal Gun-Free Schools Act (GFSA) was introduced into law as part of the Improving America's Schools Act of 1994. The federal law requires states funded under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 to have a state law in effect that requires local education agencies (LEAs) to expel students for firearm offenses for a…