The Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) Initiative has awarded over $2 billion in grants to more than 350 school districts in partnership with local mental health, law enforcement, and juvenile justice agencies. To estimate the impact of grantee characteristics, grant operations, and near-term outcomes in reducing violence and substance use,…

Almost all U.S. college campuses ban concealed weapons. But in the aftermath of the tragic shooting deaths at Virginia Tech in 2007, the debate on whether guns should be permitted at colleges and universities has intensified. Dozens of states have considered proposals to lift bans on concealed weapons at colleges and universities, but so far none…

School shootings are traumatic events that cause a community to question itself, its values, and its educational systems. In this article Bryan Warnick, Benjamin Johnson, and Samuel Rocha explore the meanings of school shootings by examining three recent books on school violence. Topics that grow out of these books include (1) how school shootings…

A tragic school shooting occurred in Brazil on April 7, 2011. A young adult male returned to the school that he had previously attended, Tasso da Silveira in Realengo, and shot and killed 13 and wounded another 20 students or teachers. Realengo, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, is composed of hard working lower and middle class families with strong…

A new video game in which the player stalks and shoots fellow students and teachers in school settings is drawing fire from school district officials. "School Shooter: North American Tour 2012" is a first-person game that allows the player to move around a school and collect points by killing defenseless students and teachers. The game,…

On the morning of September 27, 2006, a 53-year-old drifter with no ties to the community walked into Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colorado, with several firearms, taking a college-prep English class hostage. After a 4-hr stand-off, one 16-year-old student--along with the drifter--was killed in subsequent police action. This case study…

There is widespread agreement that many school shootings could be prevented if authorities were informed that a student was planning or preparing to carry out an attack. A universal problem is that young people are highly reluctant to report on their peers. This code of silence represents a major barrier to prevention efforts. In response to the…

Research in the field of out-of-school suspension and expulsion in K-12 public schools is limited when focusing on violence, due process, weapons, drugs and alcohol, and search and seizure. Understanding the role of an administrator when dealing with out-of-school suspension an expulsion led the researcher to develop the following question: What…

Gender-based violence is pervasive in South African society and is often seen as the driver of HIV, particularly affecting youth. Rural KwaZulu-Natal, where we have been working in a district in an on-going university-school partnership, is noted as the epicentre of the epidemic. The two secondary schools in this study were therefore conveniently…

As a result of educational policies emanating from issues relating to globalized societies, schooling is becoming increasingly standardized, not only in terms of assessment and evaluation, but also in terms of processes, policies and procedures. Two issues, "zero tolerance" and "full inclusion" policies are discussed as representative of…

We conducted an investigation into a determinant of academic motivation that has implications for how we respond to school violence and tragedy. We conducted two studies to examine whether exposure to messages related to the salience of one's own mortality cause people to align their own academic beliefs more closely with stereotypical beliefs…

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…

The 2013 North Carolina Youth Risk Behavior Survey (NCYRBS) was developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and adapted by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) to monitor the health-risk behaviors and to measure progress toward achieving Healthy North Carolina 2020 objectives. The survey, administered…

We sought to investigate the nature, causes and effects of school violence in four South African high schools. A purposive sample of five principals, 80 learners and 20 educators was selected from the four schools used in the study. A sequential mixed method approach was used in this study; both questionnaires and interviews were used. The design…

This article presents an interview with Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education Kevin Jennings on his ideas about school safety. In this interview, Jennings describes his plans for making schools safer for students and for developing a way to measure school climate that can drive such changes. Bullied in school, Jennings now devotes his life to…