how to stop school violence essay

Bipolar Disorder
Therapy Center
When To See a Therapist
Types of Therapy
Best Online Therapy
Best Couples Therapy
Best Family Therapy
Managing Stress
Sleep and Dreaming
Understanding Emotions
Self-Improvement
Healthy Relationships
Student Resources
Personality Types
Guided Meditations
Verywell Mind Insights
2024 Verywell Mind 25
Mental Health in the Classroom
Editorial Process
Meet Our Review Board
Crisis Support

How to Identify and Prevent School Violence

Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

Ann-Louise T. Lockhart, PsyD, ABPP, is a board-certified pediatric psychologist, parent coach, author, speaker, and owner of A New Day Pediatric Psychology, PLLC.

Yasser Chalid / Getty Images

Recognizing the Signs of School Violence

School violence refers to violence that takes place in a school setting. This includes violence on school property, on the way to or from school, and at school trips and events. It may be committed by students, teachers, or other members of the school staff; however, violence by fellow students is the most common.

An estimated 246 million children experience school violence every year; however, girls and gender non-conforming people are disproportionately affected.

"School violence can be anything that involves a real or implied threat—it can be verbal, sexual, or physical, and perpetrated with or without weapons. If someone is deliberately harming someone or acting in a way that leaves someone feeling threatened, that‘s school violence,” says Aimee Daramus , PsyD, a licensed clinical psychologist.

This article explores the types, causes, and impact of school violence and suggests some steps that can help prevent it.

Types of School Violence

School violence can take many forms. These are some of the types of school violence:

Physical violence , which includes any kind of physical aggression, the use of weapons, as well as criminal acts like theft or arson.
Psychological violence , which includes emotional and verbal abuse . This may involve insulting, threatening, ignoring, isolating, rejecting, name-calling, humiliating, ridiculing, rumor-mongering, lying, or punishing another person.
Sexual violence , which includes sexual harrassment, sexual intimidation, unwanted touching, sexual coercion, and rape .
Bullying , which can take physical, psychological, or sexual forms and is characterized by repeated and intentional aggression toward another person.
Cyberbullying , which includes sexual or psychological abuse by people connected through school on social media or other online platforms. This may involve posting false information, hurtful comments, malicious rumors, or embarrassing photos or videos online. Cyberbullying can also take the form of excluding someone from online groups or networks.

Causes of School Violence

There often isn’t a simple, straightforward reason why someone engages in school violence. A child may have been bullied or rejected by a peer, may be under a lot of academic pressure, or may be enacting something they’ve seen at home, in their neighborhood, on television, or in a video game.

These are some of the risk factors that can make a child more likely to commit school violence:

Poor academic performance
Prior history of violence
Hyperactive or impulsive personality
Mental health conditions
Witnessing or being a victim of violence
Alcohol, drug, or tobacco use
Dysfunctional family dynamic
Domestic violence or abuse
Access to weapons
Delinquent peers
Poverty or high crime rates in the community

It’s important to note that the presence of these factors doesn’t necessarily mean that the child will engage in violent behavior.

Impact of School Violence

Below, Dr. Daramus explains how school violence can affect children who commit, experience, and witness it, as well as their parents.

Impact on Children Committing Violence

Children who have been victims of violence or exposed to it in some capacity sometimes believe that becoming violent is the only way they‘ll ever be safe.

When they commit violence, they may experience a sense of satisfaction when their emotional need for strength or safety is satisfied. That‘s short-lived however, because they start to fear punishment or retribution, which triggers anger that can sometimes lead to more violence if they’re scared of what might happen to them if they don’t protect themselves.

Children need help to try and break the cycle; they need to understand that violence can be temporarily satisfying but that it leads to more problems.

Impact on Children Victimized by School Violence

Victims of school violence may get physically injured and experience cuts, scrapes, bruises, broken bones, gunshot wounds, concussions, physical disability, or death.

Emotionally speaking, the child might experience depression , anxiety, or rage. Their academic performance may suffer because it can be hard to focus in school when all you can think about is how to avoid being hurt again.

School violence is traumatic and can cause considerable psychological distress. Traumatic experiences can be difficult for adults too; however, when someone whose brain is not fully developed yet experiences trauma, especially if it’s over a long time, their brain can switch to survival mode, which can affect their attention, concentration, emotional control, and long-term health.

According to a 2019 study, children who have experienced school violence are at risk for long-term mental and physical health conditions, including attachment disorders, substance abuse, obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and respiratory conditions.

The more adverse childhood experiences someone has, the greater the risk to their physical and mental health as an adult.

Impact on Children Who Witness School Violence

Children who witness school violence may feel guilty about seeing it and being too afraid to stop it. They may also feel threatened, and their brain may react in a similar way to a child who has faced school violence.

Additionally, when children experience or witness trauma , their basic beliefs about life and other people are often changed. They no longer believe that the world is safe, which can be damaging to their mental health.

For a child to be able to take care of themselves as they get older, they need to first feel safe and cared for. Learning to cope with threats is an advanced lesson that has to be built on a foundation of feeling safe and self-confident.

Children who have experienced or witnessed school violence can benefit from therapy, which can help them process the trauma, regulate their emotions, and learn coping skills to help them heal.

Impact on Parents

Parents react to school violence in all kinds of ways. Some parents encourage their children to bully others, believing that violence is strength. Some try to teach their children how to act in a way that won’t attract bullying or other violence, but that never works and it may teach the child to blame themselves for being bullied.

Others are proactive and try to work with the school or challenge the school if necessary, to try and keep their child safe.

It can be helpful to look out for warning signs of violence, which can include:

Talking about or playing with weapons of any kind
Harming pets or other animals
Threatening or bullying others
Talking about violence, violent movies, or violent games
Speaking or acting aggressively

It’s important to report these signs to parents, teachers, or school authorities. The child may need help and support, and benefit from intervention .

Preventing School Violence

Dr. Daramus shares some steps that can help prevent school violence:

Report it to the school: Report any hint of violent behavior to school authorities. Tips can be a huge help in fighting school violence. Many schools allow students to report tips anonymously.
Inform adults: Children who witness or experience violence should keep telling adults (parents, teachers, and counselors) until someone does something. If an adult hears complaints about a specific child from multiple people, they may be able to protect other students and possibly help the child engaging in violence to learn different ways.
Reach out to people: Reach out to children or other people at the school who seem to be angry or upset, or appear fascinated with violence. Reach out to any child, whether bullied, bullying, or neither, who seems to have anxiety, depression, or trouble managing emotions. Most of the time the child won’t be violent, but you’ll have helped them anyway by being supportive.

A Word From Verywell

School violence can be traumatic for everyone involved, particularly children. It’s important to take steps to prevent it because children who witness or experience school violence may suffer physical and mental health consequences that can persist well into adulthood.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Preventing school violence .

UNESCO. What you need to know about school violence and bullying .

UNESCO. School violence and bullying .

Nemours Foundation. School violence: what students can do .

Ehiri JE, Hitchcock LI, Ejere HO, Mytton JA. Primary prevention interventions for reducing school violence . Cochrane Database Syst Rev . 2017;2017(3):CD006347. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD006347.pub2

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Understanding school violence .

Ferrara P, Franceschini G, Villani A, Corsello G. Physical, psychological and social impact of school violence on children . Italian Journal of Pediatrics . 2019;45(1):76. doi:10.1186/s13052-019-0669-z

By Sanjana Gupta Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

How to Prevent School Violence Essay

Introduction, selected solutions to school violence.

Today no special mechanism is standard for preventing school violence due to diversity in social status, economical status, and location. Schools implement various measures to prevent violence such as warning signals, checklists and, policies for zero tolerance but the dangers still persists, because some of these measures end up exacerbating the issue.

Hypothetically, the school-based violence has a close link to poverty, which is the key factor for discontent and frustration and consequently the anger especially in developing nation. Other cases have a close link to the experiences and development. The domestic violence also has a close link to behavioural and learning problems.

During development, a child may feel the need for retaliation. Other possible sources may include discrimination, the societal background, the common school drug related problems, cultural imagery on the television and audio shows, materialism, competitiveness and lack of identity.

A good example of the school violence is the April 16, 2007 tragedy at Virginia Tech University, which remains a big sear for the hearts of those who were directly involved as well as those affected such as the victims’ families or friends. On that terrible day, the struggling loss of lives due to one disturbed young man make many people ask what made Cho to act in a beastly manner like he did, and likewise, what can be done to prevent such kind of massacre form happening again.

According to Hauser of “The New York Times” newspaper on the day of the tragedy, thirty-three people were involved in a mass murder at the university after one of the student: Cho went round the bend to a shooting rampage, in a close link to the reports made by federal law enforcement officials at the site. Many of the victims were students shot in classrooms and dorms.

In a close link to Feldman (2009), we can only stop inquiring ways of preventing such scenarios or why they occur if we realize that all the requirements for prevention are within reach. There is need for commitment over the facts and full transparency concerning logical understanding.

The universities need to be on the forefront in ensuring they are well equipped with required facilities to handle health related matters. This may include the student’s counselling centres, mental health programs or support groups, procedures for making referrals and, emergency psychiatric services to encourage students to seek and share feelings before they are out of hand.

There is an urgent need for the educators and parents to have the initiatives of pursuing this issue through a coordinated procedure. It is possible to implement the violence prevention programs based on the specific school setups through solicited funds and, the government or sponsors grants.

Secondly, it is promising to utilize the intelligent and well-planned campaigns to stop the violence issue and thus the need for proper and critical considerations over such crusades. This is an awareness program to fight violence especially among the teenagers.

Teachers need to consider the strategy of enhancing the responsibility aspects in the minds of the learners in the effort of making them understand the importance of stopping the violence at all costs. The learners should know that the act is illegal and immoral. Today the youth have tightly embraced the extremely dynamic and advancing technology.

This means that the “websites, television and radio programs, public service announcements are some vital aspects the campaigns against violence in schools ought to focus” (Prinstein and Dodge, 2008).

The government/sponsors also need to tighten use of technology as a teaching aid through ample sponsorship since the youth are today highly conversant with technology. Learning programs or curriculums should avail access to information on bullying prevention and support implementation of activities that support unity at school or community level.

Violence in schools is an act that erodes the learning atmosphere by impairing the teaching and learning processes. The act is very tactless to individual inner being or conscious and thus often lead to short-term and long-term consequences such as suicide and homicide as experienced at the Virginia Tech a couple of years back. For this reason, it is the responsibility of every person to work aggressively to reduce the wicked act.

According to Webb and Terr (2007), healthy and productive education process cannot occur in an environment full of fear. All students have a right to a safe learning environment without the worry of attendance for the fear of unfriendly treatments or worst still abusive acts.

The educators cannot fully depend on the government to solve all the cases or provide full protection. It would therefore be wise for everyone in the society to take initiative and commit to the issue. This can highly reduce or better still demise of the offense and the schools will thus be safe and enjoyable for everyone.

Feldman, R.S. (2009) Discovering the Life Span . (First Ed). Pearson/Prentice Hall Publishers.

Hauser, Christine. (2007). Virginia Tech Shooting . The New York Times. Web.

Prinstein M and Dodge K, (2008), Understanding Peer Influence in Children and Adolescents. Guilford Press publishers, P. 239.

Webb N and Terr L, (2007), Play Therapy with Children in Crisis: Individual, Group, and Family Treatment. Guilford Press publishers, P. 251.

Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, May 10). How to Prevent School Violence. https://ivypanda.com/essays/preventing-school-violence/

"How to Prevent School Violence." IvyPanda , 10 May 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/preventing-school-violence/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'How to Prevent School Violence'. 10 May.

IvyPanda . 2018. "How to Prevent School Violence." May 10, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/preventing-school-violence/.

1. IvyPanda . "How to Prevent School Violence." May 10, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/preventing-school-violence/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "How to Prevent School Violence." May 10, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/preventing-school-violence/.

Chapters 10-13 of “Your Paradise” by Yi Chong-jun
Media Attention to the Virginia Tech Shooting
Applied Nutrition for Health, Exercise and Sports Performance
Where Rampages Begin: The Issue with the School Shootings
Innovation in History: How Guns Changed the World
What are the Stages of Group Development?
Self-Reliance: The Communal Past as a Model for the Future
Public Speaking in a Democracy

School shootings: What we know about them, and what we can do to prevent them

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, robin m. kowalski, ph.d. robin m. kowalski, ph.d. professor, department of psychology - clemson university @cuprof.

January 26, 2022

On the morning of Nov. 30, 2021, a 15-year-old fatally shot four students and injured seven others at his high school in Oakland County, Michigan. It’s just one of the latest tragedies in a long line of the horrific K-12 school shootings now seared into our memories as Americans.

And we have seen that the threat of school shootings, in itself, is enough to severely disrupt schools. In December, a TikTok challenge known as “ National Shoot Up Your School Day ” gained prominence. Although vague and with no clear origin, the challenge warned of possible acts of violence at K-12 schools. In response, some schools nationwide cancelled classes, others stepped up security. Many students stayed home from school that day. (It’s worth noting that no incidents of mass violence ended up occurring.)

What are the problems that appear to underlie school shootings? How can we better respond to students that are in need? If a student does pose a threat and has the means to carry it out, how can members of the school community act to stop it? Getting a better grasp of school shootings, as challenging as it might be, is a clear priority for preventing harm and disruption for kids, staff, and families. This post considers what we know about K-12 school shootings and what we might do going forward to alleviate their harms.

Who is perpetrating school shootings?

As the National Association of School Psychologists says, “There is NO profile of a student who will cause harm.” Indeed, any attempt to develop profiles of school shooters is an ill-advised and potentially dangerous strategy. Profiling risks wrongly including many children who would never consider committing a violent act and wrongly excluding some children who might. However, while an overemphasis on personal warning signs is problematic, there can still be value in identifying certain commonalities behind school shootings. These highlight problems that can be addressed to minimize the occurrence of school shootings, and they can play a pivotal role in helping the school community know when to check in—either with an individual directly or with someone close to them (such as a parent or guidance counselor). Carefully integrating this approach into a broader prevention strategy helps school personnel understand the roots of violent school incidents and assess risks in a way that avoids the recklessness of profiling.

Within this framework of threat assessment, exploring similarities and differences of school shootings—if done responsibly—can be useful to prevention efforts. To that end, I recently published a study with colleagues that examined the extent to which features common to school shootings prior to 2003 were still relevant today. We compared the antecedents of K-12 shootings, college/university shootings, and other mass shootings.

We found that the majority of school shooters are male (95%) and white (61%) –yet many of these individuals feel marginalized. Indeed, almost half of those who perpetrate K-12 shootings report a history of rejection, with many experiencing bullying. One 16-year-old shooter wrote , “I feel rejected, rejected, not so much alone, but rejected. I feel this way because the day-to-day treatment I get usually it’s positive but the negative is like a cut, it doesn’t go away really fast.” Prior to the Parkland shooting, the perpetrator said , “I had enough of being—telling me that I’m an idiot and a dumbass.” A 14-year-old shooter stated in court, “I felt like I wasn’t wanted by anyone, especially my mom. ” These individuals felt rejected and insignificant.

Our study also found that more than half of K-12 shooters have a history of psychological problems (e.g., depression, suicidal ideation, bipolar disorder, and psychotic episodes). The individuals behind the Sandy Hook and Columbine shootings, among others, had been diagnosed with an assortment of psychological conditions. (Of course, the vast majority of children with diagnosed psychological conditions don’t commit an act of mass violence. Indeed, psychologists and psychiatrists have warned that simply blaming mental illness for mass shootings unfairly stigmatizes those with diagnoses and ignores other, potentially more salient factors behind incidents of mass violence.) For some, the long-term rejection is compounded by a more acute rejection experience that immediately precedes the shooting. While K-12 school shooters were less likely than other mass shooters to experience an acute, traumatic event shortly before the shooting, these events are not uncommon.

Many shooters also display a fascination with guns and/or a preoccupation with violence. They play violent video games, watch violent movies, and read books that glorify violence and killing. Several of the shooters showed a particular fascination with Columbine, Hitler, and/or Satanism. They wrote journals or drew images depicting violence and gore. The continued exposure to violence may desensitize individuals to violence and provide ideas that are then copied in the school shootings.

To reiterate, however, there is no true profile of a school shooter. Plenty of people are bullied in middle and high school without entertaining thoughts of shooting classmates. Similarly, making and breaking relationships goes along with high school culture, yet most people who experience a break-up do not think of harming others. Anxiety and depression are common, especially in adolescence, and countless adolescents play violent video games without committing acts of violence in real life. Even if some commonalities are evident, we must recognize their limits.

What can we do?

Understanding the experiences of school shooters can reveal important insights for discerning how to prevent school shootings. So, what might we do about it?

First, the problems that appear to underlie some school shootings, such as bullying and mental-health challenges, need attention—and there’s a lot we can do. School administrators and educators need to implement bullying prevention programs, and they need to pay attention to the mental-health needs of their students. One way to do this is to facilitate “ psychological mattering ” in schools. Students who feel like they matter—that they are important or significant to others—are less likely to feel isolated, ostracized, and alone. They feel confident that there are people to whom they can turn for support. To the extent that mattering is encouraged in schools, bullying should decrease. Typically, we don’t bully people who are important or significant to us.

Second, because most of the perpetrators of K-12 shootings are under the age of 18, they cannot legally acquire guns. In our study , handguns were used in over 91% of the K-12 shootings, and almost half of the shooters stole the gun from a family member. Without guns, there cannot be school shootings. Clearly more needs to be done to keep guns out of the hands of youth in America.

Third, students, staff, and parents must pay attention to explicit signals of an imminent threat. Many shooters leak information about their plans well before the shooting. They may create a video, write in a journal, warn certain classmates not to attend school on a particular day, brag about their plans, or try to enlist others’ help in their plot. Social media has provided a venue for children to disclose their intentions. Yet, students, parents, and educators often ignore or downplay the warning signs of an imminent threat. Students often think their peers are simply expressing threats as a way of garnering attention. Even if the threats are taken seriously, an unwritten code of silence keeps many students from reporting what they see or hear. They don’t want to be a snitch or risk being the target of the would-be shooter’s rage. With this in mind, educators and administrators need to encourage reporting among students—even anonymously—and need to take those reports extremely seriously. Helpful information for teachers, administrators, and parents can be found at SchoolSafety.gov . In addition, Sandy Hook Promise provides information about school violence and useful videos for young people about attending to the warning signs that often accompany school shootings.

Fourth, school leaders should be aware that not every apparent act of prevention is worth the costs. Some people believe that lockdown drills, metal detectors, school resource officers, and the like are useful deterrents to school shootings and school violence more broadly. However, researchers have also demonstrated that they can increase anxiety and fear among students . Students may also become habituated to the drills, failing to recognize the seriousness of an actual threat should it arise. Additionally, most K-12 shooters are students within the school itself. These students are well-versed in the security measures taken by the school to try to deter acts of violence by individuals such as themselves. While few would suggest getting rid of lockdown drills and other security measures, educators and administrators need to be mindful of the rewards versus the costs in their selection of safety measures.

Ultimately, our goal should be creating an environment in which school shootings never occur. This is an ambitious aim, and it will be challenging work. But addressing some key issues, such as mental health, will go a long way toward preventing future tragedies in our schools. As so aptly demonstrated in the Ted Talk, “ I was almost a school shooter ,” by Aaron Stark, making someone feel that they have value and that they matter can go a long way toward altering that individual’s life and, consequently, the lives of others.

NASP: The National Association of School Psychologists

School Violence Prevention

In This Section

Talking to Children About Violence: Tips for Families and Educators
Best Practice Considerations for Schools in Active Shooter and Other Armed Assailant Drills
School Safety Drills and Exercises for Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): Tips and Resources for Educators
Threat Assessment at School
Bullying Prevention
Recovery From Large-Scale Crises: Guidelines for Crisis Teams and Administrators
Responding to a Mass Casualty Event at a School: General Guidance for the First Stage of Recovery
Mitigating Psychological Effects of Lockdowns
Reunification

Brief Facts and Tips

All schools work to prevent school violence and schools are very safe places. Students, staff, and parents all have an important role in promoting school safety. Adults can provide leadership by reassuring students that schools are generally very safe places for children and youth and reiterating what safety measures and student supports are already in place in their schools. Adults can:

Create a safe, supportive school climate (e.g., school-wide behavioral expectations, caring school climate programs, positive interventions and supports, and psychological and counseling services).
Encourage students to take responsibility for their part in maintaining safe school environments, including student participation in safety planning.
Reiterate the school rules and request that students report potential problems to school officials.
Remind students of the importance of resisting peer pressure to act irresponsibly.
Create anonymous reporting systems (e.g., student hot lines, suggestion boxes, and “tell an adult” systems).
Control access to the school building (e.g., designated entrance with all other access points locked from the exterior).
Monitor school guests.
Monitor school parking lots and common areas, such as hallways, cafeterias, and playing fields.
Include the presence of school resource officers, security guards, or local police partnerships.
Use security systems.
Develop crisis plans and provide preparedness training to all staff members.
Develop threat-assessment and risk-assessment procedures and teams for conducting the assessments.
Hold regular school-preparedness drills (e.g., intruder alerts, weather, fire, lockdown, evacuation).
Create school-community partnerships to enhance safety measures for students beyond school property.
Cite school safety incident data. Many school districts have local data that support a declining trend in school violence. When possible, citing local data helps families and students feel more at ease.
Be a visible, welcoming presence at school, greeting students and parents and visiting classrooms.
Conduct an annual review of all school safety policies and procedures to ensure that emerging school safety issues are adequately covered in current school crisis plans and emergency response procedures.
Review communication systems within the school district and with community responders. This should also address how and where parents will be informed in the event of an emergency.
Highlight violence prevention programs and curricula currently being taught in school. Emphasize the efforts of the school to teach students alternatives to violence including peaceful conflict resolution and positive interpersonal relationship skills.

References:

Brock, S.E., Nickerson, A.B., Reeves, M.A., Jimerson, S.R., Lieberman, R.A., & Feinberg, T.A. (2009). School crisis prevention and intervention: The PREPaRE model . Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.

Cowan, K., and Paine, C., (2015). School safety: What really works. Principal Leadership , 13(7), 12. Retrieved from http://www.nasponline.org/resources/principals/March_13_School_Safety.

Related Resources

Gun Violence Research Summary (PDF) This document summarizes existing data that indicates the need for improved strategies that keep guns out of the hands of children and youth and those who would harm them.

Talking to Children About Violence: Tips for Parents and Teachers This handout provides guidance for talking to children after high profile violent acts. It includes suggestions based on age and grade level, as well as suggested points to emphasize.

School Violence Prevention: Tips for Parents and Educators All schools work to prevent school violence and schools are very safe places. Students, staff, and parents all have an important role in promoting school safety.

School Violence Prevention: Guidelines for Administrators and Crisis Teams School administrators and crisis team members can create safe, secure, and peaceful schools free from the destructive influence of violence in all of its forms.

Responding to School Violence: Tips for Administrators Administrators can reinforce the importance of creating a caring school community in which adults and students respect and trust each other and all students feel connected, understand expectations, and receive the behavioral and mental health support they need.

Talking to Children About Violence: Tips for Parents and Teachers

Share this handout, Talking to Children About Violence: Tips for Parents and Teachers in the following languages:

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Making Schools Safe for Students

High-profile school shootings, like the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, have raised concerns that schools can be dangerous places for students. Yet the data suggest that school crime rates have dropped nationwide since the early 1990s and that the student victimization rate declined by 70% from 1992 to 2013 ( see exhibit 1 ). [1]

To the general public, though, thoughts on school safety are often shaped by high-profile school shootings and other tragic incidents that dominate a news cycle. For educators, however, issues such as bullying, harassment, and school discipline policies are at the forefront of their thoughts and can affect school safety on a daily basis.

“It is very important that we continue working to understand and prevent mass shooter events,” said Phelan Wyrick, director of the Crime and Crime Prevention Research Division within NIJ’s Office of Research and Evaluation. “However, we cannot allow the saliency of mass shooter events to overshadow the importance of a wide range of more common safety issues that schools face.”

Image containing statistics related to school safety

Shootings are just one of many traumatic events that children may face at school. They may also be threatened or injured by a weapon, be bullied, be physically assaulted, or be affected by natural disasters.

In support of stakeholder efforts to ensure that students are safe in school, NIJ has funded numerous initiatives over the years that evaluate school safety practices. These efforts range from how to prevent tragic incidents like school shootings to how to promote a positive school environment where day-to-day challenges, like bullying and harassment, can be reduced.

Historical School Safety Efforts

Although federal programs and policies related to school safety can be traced to the early 1970s, the United States did not begin collecting national data on school violence until 1989, [2] when the School Crime Supplement was added to the National Crime Victimization Survey. The School Crime Supplement was conducted for a second time in 1995 and then became a biannual survey starting in 1999.

A series of school shootings in the late 1990s, including the one that occurred at Columbine High School, led to new programs that examined the thinking, planning, and other pre-attack behaviors of school shooters. One such program was the Safe School Initiative led by the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Secret Service.

As part of this initiative, NIJ supported a 2002 study that explored the behavior of student-attackers in an effort to identify information that could help communities prevent future attacks. [3] The study evaluated 37 incidents of targeted school violence in the United States between December 1974 and May 2000. It found that these 37 attacks were rarely sudden or impulsive. In 95% of the cases, the attacker had developed the idea to harm before the attack.

Perhaps most importantly, the study found that 93% of the evaluated attackers behaved in a way that caused others to be concerned or that indicated a need for help. In fact, in more than 75% of the cases examined, the attacker had told a friend, schoolmate, or sibling about the idea before taking action. But the person who was told about the attack rarely brought the information to an adult’s attention.

“That’s the critical element if we’re going to prevent, reduce, or head off these types of incidents from occurring,” Wyrick said. “We need to have mechanisms in place, school cultures amenable to folks reporting that information.”

The study also showed that there was no accurate profile of a school shooter. The shooters came from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds and ranged in age from 11 to 21 years old. Some came from intact families with ties to the community and others came from foster homes with histories of neglect. The academic performance of attackers ranged from excellent to failing.

Evaluating School Safety Technology

School security measures have increased since the Columbine shooting. Today, nearly 100% of schools serving 12- to 18-year-olds use at least one safety or security measure. [4] This includes locked doors, security cameras, hallway supervision, controlled building access, metal detectors, and locker checks. However, use of these measures varies by factors such as the school’s population and location.

NIJ has long supported studies on school safety technology, including one by Sandia National Laboratories. Released in 1999, The Appropriate and Effective Use of Security Technologies in U.S. Schools covered the effectiveness of a variety of school safety technologies. The report also provided basic guidelines for law enforcement agencies and school administrators as they decide which security technologies should be considered when developing safe school strategies. It helped schools and law enforcement partners analyze their vulnerability to violence, theft, and vandalism, and suggested possible technologies to address these problems effectively.

Overall, the report stated that security technologies are not the answer to all school security problems. No two schools will have identical and successful security programs, meaning that a security solution for one school cannot just be replicated at other schools with complete success. However, many pieces of technology can be excellent tools if applied appropriately.

More recently, NIJ has supported other school safety technology evaluations through the Comprehensive School Safety Initiative (CSSI). This initiative includes a report from the Library of Congress outlining federal school safety efforts between 1990 and 2016 and two complementary projects by the RAND Corporation and Johns Hopkins University, which assess current school technology and outline school needs.

These CSSI reviews of school safety technology shared a major conclusion: No one technology, school climate intervention, or other school safety strategy can guarantee school security or eliminate the underlying cause of school violence. An integrated approach that includes emergency response plans, drills, a positive school climate, and situational awareness is called for, and school security plans must be tailored to the needs of each individual school.

Comprehensive School Safety Initiative

Safety and security technology is just one tool in a comprehensive program that each school should develop to create a safe learning environment for students and staff. NIJ’s CSSI aims to make clear that there is no one solution to ensuring students are safe in school.

Developed following the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, CSSI is one of NIJ’s latest and largest investments in school safety research. Projects funded through CSSI examine different factors from the individual, school, community, and family levels that affect school safety.

A unique program of research for NIJ, CSSI provided funding for both implementation and evaluation as well as research projects that examine root causes. Under a directive from Congress, NIJ allocated approximately $75 million per year between fiscal years 2014 and 2017. Two-thirds of that funding went toward implementing school safety projects, and one-third went toward studying the impact of each program and the causes and consequences of school-related violence. Some CSSI projects have concluded and some are ongoing. They have covered or aim to address a wide range of school safety subjects, including school resource officer training, assessments of social media threats, bullying prevention, and positive behavioral interventions, among other topics.

This initiative will compile a large amount of information over a very short period of time, but the next few years will bring a wealth of knowledge on the effectiveness of school safety practices.

“We’re trying to move the field further and more quickly with so much information in such a short period of time,” said Mary Carlton, an NIJ social science analyst.

Through CSSI, NIJ has funded 96 studies with a focus on K-12 schools. These grant-funded projects are taking place in more than 30 states and more than 2,700 schools. The initial projects are still in the final stage, so it is too soon to assess the impact of the initiative. It may take six to seven years, if not longer, for the projects to reach their conclusions and for the results to be disseminated. Even after the last set of findings is published, taking that body of work and synthesizing it for the field may require another year or so of work, said Nadine Frederique, an NIJ senior social science analyst.

Moving Forward

School shootings are frightening and make headlines. However, today’s students are less likely to be threatened or injured with a weapon at school, including a gun, than they were 10 years ago.

But educators and public safety officials continue to grapple with the challenge of creating and maintaining a safe and healthy learning environment for students. Threats to schools and student safety continue from both inside and outside the school and from adults and other individuals, including students.

NIJ has sponsored numerous studies on the issues of school safety and school climate over the past 25 years and continues to support efforts to improve the safety of students in school. The outcomes of CSSI-funded research will provide valuable context for school officials in the coming years. The 96 projects funded through this effort examine a variety of school safety issues and offer an opportunity for educators, the community, and law enforcement to better understand the factors that most affect school safety.

About This Article

This article was published as part of NIJ Journal issue number 281 , released June 2019

[note 1] National Institute of Justice, “ School Safety: By the Numbers ,” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, November 2017, NCJ 251173.

[note 2] Mary Poulin Carlton, Summary of School Safety Statistics , Comprehensive School Safety Initiative Report, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, July 2017, NCJ 250610.

[note 3] Robert Fein et al., Threat Assessment in Schools: A Guide to Managing Threatening Situations and to Creating Safe School Climates , Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program, and U.S. Secret Service, National Threat Assessment Center, July 2004.

[note 4] Carlton, Summary of School Safety Statistics .

About the author

Blair Ames is a digital journalist and contractor with Leidos.

Cite this Article

What you need to know about school violence and bullying

Bullying in schools deprives millions of children and young people of their fundamental right to education. A recent UNESCO report revealed that more than 30% of the world's students have been victims of bullying, with devastating consequences on academic achievement, school dropout, and physical and mental health.

The world is marking the first International Day against Violence and Bullying at School Including Cyberbullying , on 5 November. Here is what you need to know about school violence and bullying.

What is school violence?

School violence refers to all forms of violence that takes place in and around schools and is experienced by students and perpetrated by other students, teachers and other school staff. This includes bullying and cyberbullying. Bullying is one of the most pervasive forms of school violence, affecting 1 in 3 young people.

What forms may school violence take?

Based on existing international surveys that collect data on violence in schools, UNESCO recognizes the following forms of school violence:

Physical violence, which is any form of physical aggression with intention to hurt perpetrated by peers, teachers or school staff.
Psychological violence as verbal and emotional abuse, which includes any forms of isolating, rejecting, ignoring, insults, spreading rumors, making up lies, name-calling, ridicule, humiliation and threats, and psychological punishment.
Sexual violence, which includes intimidation of a sexual nature, sexual harassment, unwanted touching, sexual coercion and rape, and it is perpetrated by a teacher, school staff or a schoolmate or classmate.
Physical bullying, including hitting, kicking and the destruction of property;
Psychological bullying, such as teasing, insulting and threatening; or relational, through the spreading of rumours and exclusion from a group; and
Sexual bullying, such as making fun of a victim with sexual jokes, comments or gestures, which may be defined as sexual ‘harassment’ in some countries.
Cyberbullying is a form of psychological or sexual bullying that takes place online. Examples of cyberbullying include posting or sending messages, pictures or videos, aimed at harassing, threatening or targeting another person via a variety of media and social media platforms. Cyberbullying may also include spreading rumours, posting false information, hurtful messages, embarrassing comments or photos, or excluding someone from online networks or other communications.

Who perpetrates school violence?

School violence is perpetrated by students, teachers and other school staff. However, available evidence shows that violence perpetrated by peers is the most common.

What are the main reasons why children are bullied?

All children can be bullied, yet evidence shows that children who are perceived to be “different” in any way are more at risk. Key factors include physical appearance, ethnic, linguistic or cultural background, gender, including not conforming to gender norms and stereotypes; social status and disability.

What are the consequences of school violence?

Educational consequences: Being bullied undermines the sense of belonging at school and affects continued engagement in education. Children who are frequently bullied are more likely to feel like an outsider at school, and more likely to want to leave school after finishing secondary education. Children who are bullied have lower academic achievements than those who are not frequently bullied.

Health consequences: Children’s mental health and well-being can be adversely impacted by bullying. Bullying is associated with higher rates of feeling lonely and suicidal, higher rates of smoking, alcohol and cannabis use and lower rates of self-reported life satisfaction and health. School violence can also cause physical injuries and harm.

What are the linkages between school violence and bullying, school-related gender-based violence and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression?

School violence may be perpetrated as a result of gender norms and stereotypes and enforced by unequal power dynamics and is therefore referred to as school-related gender-based violence. It includes, in particular, a specific type of gender-based violence that is linked to the actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity or expression of victims, including homophobic and transphobic bullying. School-related gender-based violence is a significant part of school violence that requires specific efforts to address.

Does school-related gender-based violence refer to sexual violence against girls only?

No. School-related gender-based violence refers to all forms of school violence that is based on or driven by gender norms and stereotypes, which also includes violence against and between boys.

Is school violence always gender-based?

There are many factors that drive school violence. Gender is one of the significant drivers of violence but not all school violence is based on gender. Moreover, international surveys do not systematically collect data on the gendered nature of school violence, nor on violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.

Based on the analysis of global data, there are no major differences in the prevalence of bullying for boys and girls. However, there are some differences between boys and girls in terms of the types of bullying they experience. Boys are much more exposed to physical bullying, and to physical violence in general, than girls. Girls are slightly more exposed to psychological bullying, particularly through cyberbullying. According to the same data, sexual bullying the same proportion of boys and girls. Data coming from different countries, however, shows that girls are increasingly exposed to sexual bullying online.

How does UNESCO help prevent and address school violence and bullying?

The best available evidence shows that responses to school violence and bullying that are effective should be comprehensive and include a combination of policies and interventions. Often this comprehensive response to school violence and bullying is referred to as a whole-school approach. Based on an extensive review of existing conceptual frameworks that describe that whole-school approach, UNESCO has identified nine key components of a response that goes beyond schools and could be better described as a whole-education system or whole-education approach. These components are the following:

Strong political leadership and robust legal and policy framework to address school violence and bullying;
Training and support for teachers on school violence and bullying prevention and positive classroom management
Curriculum, learning & teaching to promote, a caring (i.e. anti- school violence and bullying) school climate and students’ social and emotional skills
A safe psychological and physical school and classroom environment
Reporting mechanisms for students affected by school violence and bullying, together with support and referral services
Involvement of all stakeholders in the school community including parents
Student empowerment and participation
Collaboration and partnerships between the education sector and a wide range of partners (other government sectors, NGOs, academia)
Evidence: monitoring of school violence and bullying and evaluation of responses

More on UNESCO’s work to prevent and address school violence and bullying

Read UNESCO's publication Behind the numbers: Ending school violence and bullying

Photo: Eakachai Leesin/Shutterstock.com

More on this subject

Sixth International Conference on Learning Cities

Event International Conference of the Memory of the World Programme, incorporating the 4th Global Policy Forum 28 October 2024 - 29 October 2024

Global Network of Learning Cities webinar ‘Countering climate disinformation: strengthening global citizenship education and media literacy’

How to Prevent School Violence: Analysis of Causes and Solutions

Categories: Bullying Youth Violence

About this sample

Words: 1017 |

Published: Mar 1, 2019

Words: 1017 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Primary causes of school violence, potential solutions, works cited:.

Alpher, R. A., Bethe, H. A., & Gamow, G. (1948). The Origin of Chemical Elements. Physical Review, 73(7), 803-804.
Hawking, S. (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam.
Hubble, E. (1929). A Relation between Distance and Radial Velocity among Extra-Galactic Nebulae. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 15(3), 168–173.
Liddle, A. R. (2003). An Introduction to Modern Cosmology. Wiley.
Penrose, R. (1965). Gravitational collapse and space-time singularities. Physical Review Letters, 14(3), 57–59.
Planck Collaboration, Ade, P. A. R., Aghanim, N., Armitage-Caplan, C., Arnaud, M., Ashdown, M., ... & Zonca, A. (2015). Planck 2015 results—XIII. Cosmological parameters. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 594, A13.
Rees, M. J. (2003). Our Cosmic Habitat. Princeton University Press.
Riess, A. G., Filippenko, A. V., Challis, P., Clocchiatti, A., Diercks, A., Garnavich, P. M., ... & Tonry, J. (1998). Observational evidence from supernovae for an accelerating universe and a cosmological constant. The Astronomical Journal, 116(3), 1009-1038.
Silk, J. (2001). The Big Bang. W. H. Freeman.
Weinberg, S. (1972). Gravitation and cosmology: principles and applications of the general theory of relativity. Wiley.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Karlyna PhD

Verified writer

Expert in: Social Issues

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

3 pages / 1534 words

4 pages / 1610 words

6 pages / 2711 words

3 pages / 1351 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

How to Prevent School Violence: Analysis of Causes and Solutions Essay

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Youth Violence

Violence has been around forever now. It’s everywhere. So what is violence? Violence is 'the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy.' Most will assume there is only one type of violence that people use, [...]

Acland, C. (1995) Youth, Murder, Spectacle: The Cultural Politics of ‘Youth in crisis’, Boulder: Westview Press.Cohen, S. (1972/2002) Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers, London: Routledge.Travis, [...]

Violence has been a pervasive presence in various aspects of my life, leaving lasting impacts on my emotions, perspectives, and relationships. This essay delves into my personal experiences with violence, exploring how [...]

School bullies represent a persistent and troubling issue in educational institutions worldwide. The negative consequences of bullying extend beyond the classroom, affecting the well-being and academic performance of both [...]

School violence is a pervasive issue affecting students, teachers, and the larger community. The cause and effect of school violence essay aims to explore the factors that contribute to violent behavior in schools, [...]

Across the world this has been the major issue, rising rate of youth crime. Over the past decades in the United States, there have been reports about the growing problems with youth engaging in crime in large cities. In the [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

Checklist to Help Prevent Violence in Schools

In This Section

Family Resources /
School Safety /

10 Things You Can Do to Prevent Violence in Your School Community

1. talk to your children.

Keeping the lines of communication open with your children and teens is an important step to keeping involved in their schoolwork, friends, and activities.

Ask open-ended questions and use phrases such as " tell me more " and " what do you think? " Phrases like these show your children that you are listening and that you want to hear more about their opinions, ideas, and how they view the world.

Start important discussions with your children—about violence, smoking, drugs, sex, drinking , death—even if the topics are difficult or embarrassing (read more about substance abuse ). Don't wait for your children or teens to come to you. View our tips for discussing difficult situations with your child .

2. Set Clear Rules and Limits for Your Children

Children need clearly defined rules and limits set for them so that they know what is expected of them and the consequences for not complying. When setting family rules and limits, be sure children understand the purpose behind the rules and be consistent in enforcing them.

Discipline is more effective if children have been involved in establishing the rules and, oftentimes, in deciding the consequences. Remember to be fair and flexible—as your children grow older, they become ready for expanded rights and changes in rules and limits. Show your children through your actions how to adhere to rules and regulations, be responsible, have empathy toward others, control anger, and manage stress.

3. Know the Warning Signs

Knowing what's normal behavior for your son or daughter can help you recognize even small changes in behavior and give you an early warning that something is troubling your child.

Sudden changes—from subtle to dramatic—should alert parents to potential problems. These could include withdrawal from friends, decline in grades, abruptly quitting sports or clubs the child had previously enjoyed, sleep disruptions, eating problems, evasiveness, lying, and chronic physical complaints (stomachache or headaches). Learn more about emotional & mental health .

4. Don't Be Afraid to Parent; Know When to Intervene

Parents need to step in and intervene when children exhibit behavior or attitudes that could potentially harm them or others. And you don't have to deal with problems alone—the most effective interventions have parent, school, and health professionals working together to provide on-going monitoring and support.

5. Stay Involved in Your Child's School

Show your children you believe education is important and that you want your children to do their best in school by being involved in their education. Get to know your child's teachers and help them get to know you and your child. Communicate with your child's teachers throughout the school year, not just when problems arise.

Stay informed of school events, class projects, and homework assignments. Attend all parent orientation activities and parent-teacher conferences. Volunteer to assist with school functions and join your local PTA .

Help your children seek a balance between schoolwork and outside activities. Parents also need to support school rules and goals.

6. Join Your PTA or a Violence Prevention Coalition

According to the National Crime Prevention Council, the crime rate can decrease by as much as 30 percent when a violence prevention initiative is a community-wide effort. All parents, students, school staff, and members of the community need to be a part of creating safe school environments for our children. Many PTAs and other school-based groups are working to identify the problems and causes of school violence and possible solutions for violence prevention. View National PTA's Position Statement on Gun Safety and Violence Prevention .

7. Help to Organize a Community Violence Prevention Forum

Parents, school officials, and community members working together can be the most effective way to prevent violence in our schools.

8. Help Develop A School Violence Prevention and Response Plan

School communities that have violence prevention plans and crisis management teams in place are more prepared to identify and avert potential problems and to know what to do when a crisis happens. The most effective violence prevention and response plans are developed in cooperation with school and health officials, parents, and community members. These plans include descriptions of school safety policies, early warning signs, intervention strategies (including district-wide policies that ensure secure firearm storage education), emergency response plans, and post-crisis procedures.

9. Know How to Deal With the Media in a Crisis

Good public relations and media relations start with understanding how the media works and what they expect from organizations that issue press releases, hold press conferences, and distribute media kits.

10. Work to Influence Lawmakers

Writing an editorial for the local newspaper, holding a petition drive, speaking before a school board meeting, or sending a letter to your legislator can be effective ways to voice your opinion and gain support from decision makers for violence prevention programs in your community. Working with other concerned parents, teachers, and community members, you can influence local, state and even federal decisions that affect the education, safety, and well-being of our children.

Advocate for violence prevention and write your officials .

Additional Resources

Top Tips for Discussing Difficult Situations with Your Child
What You Can Do about Substance Abuse (Watch our new Webinar on Vaping )
Learn the Facts about Emotional Health and How to Address Mental Health in Schools
View National PTA's Position Statement on Gun Safety and Violence Prevention
Take Action and Write Your Members of Congress
Pass a Secure Storage Resolution in your community

Creative samples from the experts

↑ Return to Essay Samples

Cause & Effect Essay: School Violence

School violence is a major problem around the world. The effects of school violence can lead to division and severe mental and physical trauma for both perpetrators and victims alike. The main cause of school violence is a combination of weak community relations and a lack of a firm hand within both schools and communities. To effectively deal with the issue, both of these need addressing.

The beginnings of school violence often stem from differences between teenagers. Children are natural herd creatures and will gravitate towards people who are similar in looks, mentality, and those who have the same interests. Other groups are seen as enemies, and this is where conflict begins.

A lack of education is one of the main causes of school violence. If young people aren’t taught from an early age about the consequences and wrongs of violence there’s a high chance they’ll indulge in it later. Education must occur in the home, alongside parents, and in the classroom.

Furthermore, when violence does happen, a lack of will to punish the perpetrators encourages them to participate in it again later. Teachers and law enforcement officers must stamp down on violence. It’s simple mentality. A punishment says mentally and physically violence is wrong. Allowing them to get away with it says to them they haven’t done anything wrong. This is a trend we have seen replicated in UK prisons and the high reoffending rates.

Weak community relations start school violence. Inter-racial schools where students come from different backgrounds sow the seeds of conflict. Many students haven’t come into contact with people from these backgrounds before, and this creates suspicion and wariness. It’s highly unlikely violence will occur if they have been in contact with people from these backgrounds before.

Divisive communities are more likely to suffer from violence than harmonious ones. It’s why schools in East London and international cities like Los Angeles have a reputation for violence in schools and between schools. Too often, schools act on violence within schools, but they fail to work with other schools and community representatives to tackle the problem between academic facilities.

Parental guidance in the home has a large effect on school violence. If a student’s parents are violent or prejudiced, they are likely to develop the same aggressive characteristics. Even if there’s only one person like this in a school, it can still lead to violence in the classroom.

Overall, it’s not so much the risk factors of violence which become the problem. It’s the lack of will to act on it when it does happen. It’s impossible to stamp out all types of violence. Children make mistakes and it will happen. To stop it happening again, schools and community officers must act.

Follow Us on Social Media

Get more free essays

Send via email

Most useful resources for students:.

Free Essays Download
Writing Tools List
Proofreading Services
Universities Rating

Contributors Bio

Find more useful services for students

Free plagiarism check, professional editing, online tutoring, free grammar check.

School Violence - Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

School violence encompasses physical violence, bullying, and any other form of aggressive behavior in educational settings. Essays on school violence could explore the psychological, social, and systemic factors contributing to violent behaviors, prevention and intervention strategies, and the impacts on academic and social outcomes for students. Moreover, discussions might delve into policy implications, community involvement, and global comparisons of school violence prevention programs. We’ve gathered an extensive assortment of free essay samples on the topic of School Violence you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Growing Problem of School Violence

School Violence has been something that has changed the way we experience school. School violence has been something that's been going on for a long time. School violence has been happening around the world and has just changed the way our safety is at school. School violence is very dangerous and very deadly. In this case school violence may refer to school shootings, stabbings, bullying, sexual harassment , fights and or any harm that causes harm to anyone in the […]

Be Aware of School Violence

Violence in school is a big problem, there should be no reason our kids should be scared to come to school; according to the CDC, kids grades K-12th are constantly at risk of potential violent outbreaks from gang memberships, hazing, peer pressure, and drug usage. Cyber-bullying has been a popular cause with the rise of technology and social platforms in the past few years; usually the culprit to the war between social acceptance. Mostly teens resort to being included in […]

Gerard Jones’ Biased Evaluation of Violence in Media

In the essay "Violent Media Is Good for Kids", Gerard Jones is arguing that violent media is more beneficial than harmful to children. In his essay, Jones explains how it is important for children to have a medium in which they can express their feelings in, instead of repressing them deep within themselves. Jones maintains that children need an outlet to release feelings that they tend to suffocate within themselves, because society has made rage and other feelings such as; […]

We will write an essay sample crafted to your needs.

Dealing with School-Based Weapon Violence

Weapon-based violence in school can be traced back to the 19th century. According to an article by Matthew Pearl, the very first school shooting occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1840 when a student named Joseph Semmes shot professor John Anthony who after three days had died from his injuries. In this case, the trend shows that violence was more common because violence was what slaveholders used against their slaves. Thus from 1840 to 1966 there were only small casualties at […]

Problem of Violence in Schools

Some ways we could stop school violence. The first thing we could do is to take guns away from households that have kids at an impressionable age. Something else we could do is show young kids the effects of bullying, not just emphasize that "you will hurt other people's feelings and make them sad." While we obviously need to teach young kids how to be kind, this message needs to be modified in a way that they can understand. We […]

Tragedy and the Meaning of School Shootings

""The phenomenon referred to as ""school shootings"" pertains mainly to those shootings where the school is deliberately chosen as the site of violence, the violence is perpetrated by a current or former student, and the targets are chosen symbolically or at random with the intention of causing as many deaths as possible"" (Travers, McDonagh & Elklit, 2018). One of the most recent concerns in education today is school safety protocols to prohibit an intruder. Over the past few decades, school […]

Effects of School Shootings

School shootings has only recently become a national concern. Just in the past few years' school shootings have become almost ""normal"" and many people will agree with that statement. There are people who believe that those who commit the school shootings are actually victims themselves, and have been bullied. Others believe there is no correlation between the students who do the school shootings because they believe they grew up in a supportive family, with no significant family issues. Within this […]

Students Violence in Moroccan High Schools

Teachers’ perceptions of Students’ Violence in Moroccan High school Introduction School violence is an educational psychological issue that has seen a considerable increase over the last decade. School violence is an activity that causes a dispute in the educational setting. It encompasses verbal and physical altercation. Besides, it is bullying through electronic ways or social media, threats, weapon use, or gang activity .School Violence can be defined as a physical or verbal harm inside the school, on the way to […]

Effects of Multi Media on Violence in School

School violence on students can cause psychological and physical pain. The physical pain they get can cause them to be hospitalized. Sometimes that school violence cause students to shoot up schools. People's aggressive behavior increased watching aggressive programs on TV. Students that watch aggressive TV show start to become tougher and less emotional. TV mainly effect students because in the show they watch they become aggressive with other people. Research has also shown that the viewers who watch violent shows […]

Gun Violence and the Second Amendment

According the Cornell Law Studies Institute, the second amendment states, "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The Second Amendment of the constitution is one of the most misunderstood and confusing sentences in the history of America. The 27-word sentence has a partial collectivist ora while still maintaining the individualistic right to keep and bear arms. Before discussing the reasons behind […]

Issues of Violence in Schools

With an increased rate in juvenile delinquency, I chose to discuss the violence in schools; underlining the root of the issue, what policies are currently in place, and what steps are needed to create a more effective policy to resolve the issue. Some of the risk factors of school and youth violence come from prior history of violence, drug, alcohol and tobacco use, association with delinquent peers, poor family function, poor grades in school and poverty in the community. "Data […]

Violence Caused by Media

Literature Review Violence in media such as, in television, video games, or movies has raised a substantial amount of concern regarding its effects on certain populations. Media violence portrays various graphic images and scenes that convey criminal acts or horror-like graphics such as, blood. Through studies of violence in mass media, there has been a correlation between themes of violence in media sources with real-world aggression and violence over time. Many social scientists have been able to support this correlation. […]

Gang Violence in Schools

Violence in schools, particularly gang violence, has increased in the past XX years (citation). Gang membership was once considered an issue only facing urban inner-city schools, however, gangs are now spread throughout suburban neighborhoods (Sharkey, 2011). Research has found that gang membership among students can significantly impact educational, social and emotional attainment (citation). In schools, minority children are the primary perpetrators of violence (Soriano & Soriano, 1994), including gang violence; however, this does not indicate that a student's ethnic and […]

Rise of School Shootings

School shootings have been on the rise and are more prevalent than ever before. "In less than 18 years, we have already seen more deaths related to school shootings than in the whole 20th century. One alarming trend is that the overwhelming majority of 21st-century shooters were adolescents, suggesting that it is now easier for them to access guns, and that they more frequently suffer from mental health issues or limited conflict resolution skills,". (Katsiyannis et al., 2018) This leaves […]

Reasons of Violence in Schools

Violence in schools can start from anything and studies show that public schools have the most violence compared to private schools. Safety in schools is very important all students should be able to walk in a school knowing that no one will be there to harm them but that will never happen violence is everywhere and that includes schools. Bullying has been around for a long time and this can cause fighting and sometime to the point of committing suicide […]

Does Multi Media have an Impact on Violence in Schools

Instagram, snapchat, facebook etc... are forms of social media, a place where young teens and children can go on to express themselves. At first, it was a positive and safe space where everybody can go onto and say/do whatever they wanted. Now problems such as cyberbullying, distraction, depression and even narcissism has arised out of technology. Social medias are a great platform to raise awareness and explore self expression but it is also a place where bullies can anonymously troll […]

Witnessing Violence in High School Predicts Student Impairment

The University of Montreal recently completed a longitudinal research study to determine if there is a correlation between witnessing school violence and future behavior impairment. They also looked at if the correlations depended on what kind of violence was observed. The researchers hypothesized that "witnessing violence will be associated with psychosocial impairment risk and will be proportional to the observed intensity." (Janosz et al., 2018) This study provided information about the outcomes of school violence which had not been looked […]

Horror of Violence in Schools

Violence in schools is really bad for students. In Central for Disease Control and Prevention it says "Acts of violence can disrupt the learning process and have a negative effect on students, the school itself, and the broader community." Even though it will be bad for the people that are doing violent things but the people around them also. So it is not good for any of us. Violence can happen in so many different ways. It can happen by […]

An Analysis of Violence in Public Schooling

The foundation of a child's life is their education and the experience they had. A child's life can be drastically altered by the events that take place during their schooling years. Many forms of violence are in public schools and are disrupting the lives of the students. With all of these incidents in the news, students are becoming desensitized to it all. From school fights, shootings, and teen suicides. Growing up and being a student is already a hard task, […]

Significance of School Uniform – why it should be Required

More often than we may know, people struggle to feel comfortable in clothing for the fear that they will be judged. That is why uniform is a perfect solution. It is a great way to avoid any issues associated with fashionable preferences among individuals. Students encounter these difficulties from when they pick out clothes to showing up at school with their choice of clothing. The use of uniforms increase the attention of students as they are not concerned with other’s […]

Additional Example Essays

What A Streetcar Named Desire lost in the film
What is the Importance of Professionalism?
A Letter From The Trenches
Animal Testing Should Be Banned
The Mental Health Stigma
Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner
Substance Abuse and Mental Illnesses
Personal Philosophy of Leadership
The Importance of Professional Bearing in the Military
Reasons Why I Want to Study Abroad
Reasons Why Hamlet Is Not Insane
Marriage and Symbolism in "A Doll's House"

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

What Are the Best Ways to Prevent Bullying in Schools?

All 50 U.S. states require schools to have a bullying prevention policy.

But a policy, alone, is not enough. Despite the requirement, there’s been a slight uptick in all forms of bullying during the last three years. Bullying can look like experienced basketball players systematically intimidating novice players off the court, kids repeatedly stigmatizing immigrant classmates for their cultural differences, or a middle-school girl suddenly being insulted and excluded by her group of friends.

Bullying occurs everywhere, even in the highest-performing schools, and it is hurtful to everyone involved, from the targets of bullying to the witnesses—and even to bullies themselves. October is National Bullying Prevention Month, so it’s a good time to ask ourselves: What are the best practices for preventing bullying in schools? That’s a question I explored with my colleague Marc Brackett from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, in a recent paper that reviewed dozens of studies of real-world bullying prevention efforts.

As we discovered, not all approaches to bullying prevention are equally effective. Most bullying prevention programs focus on raising awareness of the problem and administering consequences. But programs that rely on punishment and zero tolerance have not been shown to be effective in the U.S.; and they often disproportionately target students of color. Programs like peer mediation that place responsibility on the children to work out conflicts can increase bullying. (Adult victims of abuse are never asked to “work it out” with their tormentor, and children have an additional legal right to protections due to their developmental status.) Bystander intervention, even among adults, only works for some people—extroverts, empaths, and people with higher social status and moral engagement. Many approaches that educators adopt have not been evaluated through research; instead, educators tend to select programs based on what their colleagues use.

We found two research-tested approaches that show the most promise for reducing bullying (along with other forms of aggression and conflict). They are a positive school climate, and social and emotional learning.

Building a positive school climate

School climate can be difficult to define, though possible to measure . It is the “felt sense” of being in a school, which can arise from a greeting, the way a problem is resolved, or how people work together; it is a school’s “heart and soul,” its “quality and character.” Schools with a positive climate foster healthy development, while a negative school climate is associated with higher rates of student bullying, aggression, victimization, and feeling unsafe.

GGSC Online Courses for Educators

A suite of practical, self-paced courses to help build kinder, happier schools

The elements of a positive climate may vary, but may often include norms about feelings and relationships, power and how it is expressed, and media consumption. Social norm engineering is a conscious process that builds a positive culture among student peers and school adults that becomes self-reinforcing. Like a healthy immune system, a positive school climate promotes optimal health and reduces the chances of dysfunction or disease.

Leadership is key to a positive climate. Is bullying minimized as a “normal rite of childhood,” or is it recognized as the harmful peer abuse that it is? Do leaders understand that uninterrupted, severe bullying can confer lifelong negative consequences on targets of bullies, bullies, and witnesses? Are school leaders committed to promoting all children’s positive psychological health, or do they over-rely on punishing misbehavior? Can they discern between typical developmental processes that need guidance versus bullying that needs assertive intervention? Are educators empathic to their students, and do they value children’s feelings?

Next, are teachers prepared to deal with bullying? Students consistently report that teachers miss most incidents of bullying and fail to help students when asked. A majority of teachers report that they feel unprepared to deal with classroom bullying. Some teachers bully students themselves , or show a lack of empathy toward children who are bullied. Teachers report that they receive little guidance in “classroom management,” and sometimes default to the disciplinary strategies they learned in their own families growing up.

However, reforming school climate should involve all stakeholders—students and parents, as well as the administrators and teachers—so a school’s specific issues can be addressed, and the flavor of local cultures retained. School climate assessments can be completed periodically to track the impact of improvements.

Advancing social and emotional learning

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is well known, and involves teaching skills of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, responsible decision making, and relationships management. (Full disclosure: Brackett and I are affiliated with the SEL program RULER .)

Evidence-based SEL approaches have been shown to deliver cost-effective, solid results. Numerous meta-analyses , research reviews , and individual studies of hundreds of thousands of K-12 students show that SEL improves emotional well-being, self-regulation, classroom relationships, and kind and helpful behavior among students. It reduces a range of problems like anxiety, emotional distress, and depression; reduces disruptive behaviors like conflicts, aggression, bullying, anger, and hostile attribution bias ; and it improves academic achievement, creativity, and leadership.

A study of 36 first-grade teachers showed that when teachers were more emotionally supportive of students, children were less aggressive and had greater behavioral self-control, compared to the use of behavior management, which did not improve student self-control. One meta-analysis showed that developing emotional competence was protective against becoming a victim of bullying; social competence and academic performance were protective against becoming a bully; and positive peer interactions were protective against becoming a bully-victim (one who has been bullied and bullies others). A series of longitudinal studies showed positive effects into midlife (e.g., fewer divorces, less unemployment) and even cross-generational effects of early SEL. Compared to a matched control group, the children of the adults who participated in the Perry Preschool Project had less criminal involvement and higher educational and employment achievement. A cost-benefit analysis of six SEL programs found them to be good investments, with $11 saved for every $1 spent.

Teachers also benefit from SEL. Those with emotional and social skills training have higher job satisfaction and less burnout, show more positive emotions toward their students, manage their classrooms better, and use more strategies that cultivate creativity, choice, and autonomy in their students. Teachers report that they want more SEL support to cultivate their own emotional and social skills, and to better understand their students’ feelings. But few teacher training programs focus on growing the teachers’ emotion regulation skills.

Bullying at different age levels

SEL approaches should be developmentally wise , since what is salient and possible for children changes at different ages.

For example, preschoolers are expelled from school at the highest rates of all, but the neurological hardware for their self-control is only just developing. Only then are the connections between the emotion circuitry and the more thinking regions of the prefrontal cortex beginning to be myelinated (insulated for faster connectivity), something that will take until the mid 20s to complete. An SEL program like PATHS or RULER that teaches young children language for feelings, and strategies for thinking before acting, can develop better self-regulation.

Online resources on bullying

Learn more about SEL programs .

Read your state’s legislation and policies on bullying .

Read your state’s legislation and policies on cyberbullying .

Schools can refer to this summary of legal issues on bullying .

Many states have laws that outlaw sexting, and most states outlaw revenge porn. Find out your state laws .

Discover tip sheets for preventing and responding to cyberbullying in middle and high school educators, parents, and teens.

Discover more tip sheets for parents and teens .

Sometimes, adults confuse normal developmental processes with bullying. For example, children begin to reorganize their friendships midway through elementary school, something that can naturally create hurt feelings and interpersonal conflict. It should not be misconstrued as bullying, though, which involves intentional, repeated aggression within an imbalance of power. Normal development also includes experimenting with power, and these normal dynamics should be guided safely toward developing a healthy sense of agency, rather than a hurtful exertion of power over someone else.

Finally, the onset of puberty marks the beginning of heightened sensitivity to social relationships, an especially important time to cultivate skills for kinder, gentler relationships. Unfortunately, this is the period when bullying spikes the highest. And while some strategies work well for younger children (for example, advising them to “tell a trusted adult”), this option may fail with teens, and the breakpoint seems to be around the eighth grade. Older teens require approaches that are less didactic and leverage their need for autonomy, while affirming their values and search for meaning. Physiologically, the brain changes during puberty confer a second chance for recalibrating their stress regulation system. That opportunity should be constructively seized.

Approaches should also take into account individual differences between children. Even SEL programs can stumble here, over-relying on just one or two emotion regulation strategies, like breathing or mindfulness. But children vary in their temperaments, sensitivities, strengths, and vulnerabilities. The best SEL approaches guide students toward discovering strategies that work best for them—strategies that are emotion- and context-specific, personalized, and culturally responsive. This approach requires unconventional flexibility on the part of the educators.

And, finally, approaches work best if they are not standalone pedagogies or from kits that end up in the classroom closet at the end of the year. In order to be effective, skills should become fully embedded across the curricula and the entire day, in all settings, and implemented by all adults—in other words, infiltrating the ecosystem. Only approaches used and taught as intended are successful.

Schools can’t do this alone

Families matter, too. Bullying in schools sometimes arises from harsh parenting practices or sibling bullying at home.

Even parents’ workplaces matter. Adults experience bullying in their workplaces at about the same rate as children in schools, and it’s even found among teachers and in senior living communities . In other words, bullying is not just a childhood problem; it is a pervasive human problem. And children are not buffered from the wider social world—bullying of children who belong to groups targeted in the national political discourse has spiked on playgrounds nationwide.

Ultimately, we need a substantial shift in our mindsets about the importance of children and their feelings. Children are more likely to thrive when we nurture their humanity, and offer them language and strategies and values to help them identify, express, and, thus, regulate their feelings. When parents, teachers, and administrators gain new awareness into the complex roots of bullying and adopt new strategies for addressing it, schools can lead the way. The kids are counting on us.

Courage in Education: Facing Challenges with Strength, Determination, and Hope

A new online course to help educators cultivate courage in schools and classrooms.

About the Author

Diana Divecha

Diana Divecha, Ph.D. , is a developmental psychologist, an assistant clinical professor at the Yale Child Study Center and Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and on the advisory board of the Greater Good Science Center. Her blog is developmentalscience.com .

You May Also Enjoy

Eight Keys to End Bullying

How bullied children grow into wounded adults.

Could Gay-Straight Alliances Reduce Bullying?

Playground Heroes

The Bully Problem

How to Bullyproof Your Kid

Our peacebuilding work is built on research and conflict analysis that enables us to understand the root causes of violence and long-term solutions to conflict, and to work with our partners to support peaceful change.

Conflict and gender sensitivity

Conflict Hub
Influencing
Partnerships
Climate crisis and natural resource management
Conflict-sensitive media
Early warning of violence

Gender and peacebuilding

Peace economies
Preventing gender-based violence
Preventing violent extremism
Reconciliation and transitional justice
Security and governance

We help people to find peaceful solutions to conflict in over 20 countries around the world.

Alert Europe
South Caucasus

Find articles, stories, research and publications on peacebuilding around the world to understand the drivers of conflict and build sustainable peace.

Blogs & op-eds
Guides & toolkits
Publications

Find out about International Alert, our people and networks, our governance and what we do.

Our mission, strategy and history
What is peacebuilding?
Русский
العربية

Six ways to prevent violence against children in schools

Published May 2022

Lebanon Middle East and North Africa

Cite this article

Share this article.

Internationally, one billion children experience violence every year, with those living in crisis disproportionately likely to be affected. Violence against children is particularly widespread in educational settings, with half of the world’s students aged 13-15 experiencing peer-to-peer violence in and around school. After Lebanon endorsed the global Safe to Learn Call to Action, International Alert in partnership with Basmeh & Zeitooneh , the Center for Lebanese Studies (CLS), Damma Foundation and Sawa for Development and Aid tested six strategies to reduce incidences of violence against children.

New research led by International Alert in Lebanon has revealed that 75% of children aged 7-12 have directly witnessed violence in the past 12 months, and 50% experienced bullying. What makes these findings especially alarming is that the students who were part of the research attended classes in the centres of NGOs, where children are generally safer than in public schools. NGOs that provide non-formal education classes, such as basic literacy and numeracy lessons to Syrian refugee children, have child protection policies which are regularly reviewed and updated, and typically have more qualified staff than public educational facilities.

Image shows a sad looking girl leaning on a fence

Violence against children is a complex phenomenon. Therefore, a combination of actions is required to meaningfully improve protection for children: to empower teachers to work on prevention, to engage parents and caregivers, and to shift social norms that often dictate that violence is a fact of life – or even a useful disciplinary tool. Although the following strategies to reduce violence against children (including bullying), can be applied separately, it is recommended that they are implemented together for maximum impact.

Peace education

Peace education can encompass many different themes and approaches. The model that Alert’s partner Basmeh & Zeitooneh uses with vulnerable Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian children includes sessions on understanding oneself as well as understanding one’s relationship with others, the group and the wider community.

Following a 24-week course of peace education classes, 97% of the 6-11 year old participants learned the necessary skills to resolve conflicts peacefully. In Tripoli, a city which has been marred by violent episodes between neighbourhoods of different backgrounds, children from previously opposing communities started regularly attending joint activities. Eventually, the children of the two neighbourhoods started playing together on the street, and teachers reported that the cases of violence among both groups of children dropped, and that tension between the wider families decreased. Some mothers even reported that relations at home improved after the peace education classes.

Integrated sessions on violence prevention

However, for some parents and students, peace education classes may not initially appear very appealing. This is because progress in school is sometimes viewed as an absolute priority, alongside learning languages, computer or vocational skills that are seen as being important in helping the child to find employment later. Despite their benefit, the time taken for violence prevention sessions can be interpreted as limiting the potential of students to participate in these more traditional educational activities. For NGOs, fundraising for peace education classes may also be challenging, especially when compared to seeking funding for non-formal education and psycho-social support, for which there is an urgent need. It is therefore often more feasible and efficient to integrate activities on the prevention of violence into regular classes. For such activities to be impactful, educators and administrators need to develop positive class dynamic and trust as a necessary first step to preventing violence and bullying among students. Toolkits, such as the one developed by Alert , along with other online resources including videos and games, are proven to encourage teachers to plan and deliver effective holistic sessions.

Image shows students sitting in a classroom looking at a teacher, who is standing next to a whiteboard.

Teacher training and peer-learning

In addition to developing context-specific resources, teacher trainings remain a standard intervention to build skills and influence the attitudes of educators. In addition to introducing new tools and resources, and developing teaching, facilitation and communication skills, trainings should focus on building teachers’ skills to plan sessions and adapt existing materials (such as activities available in toolkits) to the needs of a specific class.

These needs are not only age and culture specific, but also depend on the coherence of the class, the relations among students, and the relationship students have with the teacher. For example, working with a new group of students, in which children do not know each other well, will require from the teacher efforts to help students get to know each other and build a sense of belonging to the class and the centre.

Peer-to-peer reflection sessions offer another opportunity for teachers to learn how to prevent violence. Exchanging experiences with confronting and preventing violence in school and sharing materials and exercises teachers created themselves not only build skills and trust among colleagues. They also empower teachers to be pro-active and use incidents as an opportunity to discuss bullying and violence in class.

Through Alert’s programming in Lebanon, teachers chose to focus on classroom management, working with children with learning difficulties who are often subject to bullying, as well as teacher wellbeing in their peer-to-peer learning circles. Teacher wellbeing was found to be an essential and often overlooked aspect of prevention of violence in times of crises.

Linking child protection and the prevention of violence

Creating a safe learning environment is vital for children’s physical, emotional wellbeing, and learning journey. NGO-run non-formal education centres in Lebanon have made a lot of progress with developing child protection policies and mechanisms, training staff on child protection, having dedicated staff to receive complaints, conduct investigations and make referrals. These centres follow a more efficient system than the one in public schools as trainings are regularly updated, and incident reporting channels are shorter and more transparent.

A strong child protection system however does not automatically translate into effective prevention. In centres with strong child protection teams, teachers reported it was the job of their child protection colleagues to deal with fights or bullying incidents. Students were told to report any complaints or concerns to the child protection officers, although research shows that students tend to trust their teachers more than any other adults outside the family.

It is therefore necessary to work with both teachers and child protection staff in NGO-run centres to strengthen collaboration on prevention. Specifically, teachers need to be empowered to step in if they see students bullying each other or using other forms of violence in the classroom, during breaks or on the way to school. And perhaps most importantly, while referring incidents to the protection team for investigation and follow up, teachers should take every opportunity after an incident to work with the students on prevention.

Engaging caregivers and communities to shift social norms

Changing social norms is a lengthy process that requires consistency, building alliances with influential figures in the communities and demonstrating the value of alternative behaviours. Therefore NGO-run education centres often involve parents in awareness sessions and try to keep them engaged in the learning of their children.

After attending “positive parenting” sessions, for example focused on listening and dialogue, parents proudly confirmed feeling better understood and accepted by their children. In addition, some NGO centres have started holding joint activities and events for children and their parents on topics related to violence. Such activities both increase parents’ understanding of the risks faced by children (such as cyberbullying or sexual harassment) and increase likelihood of children seeking help if in trouble.

Activities organised by the education centres, such as children’s performances and exhibitions, crafts, games, and traditional storytelling, are attractive for students and parents, while also creating a bridge to the community. Inviting neighbours or children from the nearby schools to such events can be a gateway to addressing issues related to violence in the community or harassment of refugee children while outside of the centres. Community-based activities are also a great vehicle for mobilising support from influential figures. As part of one such initiative, a local youth organisation approached religious leaders and asked them to talk about the negative effects of using violence for disciplining children during their Friday prayer. Other activities at the community level have brought together Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian children to football games, library visits and small discussion on violence and bullying.

Image shows a man and a young boy. The man has his arm around the child. They are both smiling.

Generating and sharing evidence

To help further the work on prevention of violence against children in and around school, more evidence is needed – both on the prevalence of violence and on what works to prevent it.

Alert’s action research demonstrated the alarming level of violence children are exposed to. It also concluded that activities focused on violence prevention have increased awareness and the likelihood of children seeking help from an adult.

However, many children still choose not to report violence which they experience, due to a combination of the normalisation of violence, fear of incomprehension and even punishment in the event of “annoying” the adults. This demonstrates the need for all organizations working with children – be it on education, child protection or peacebuilding – to put the prevention of violence in the heart of their programmes. In addition to creating safe learning spaces, holistic child-centred programmes need to help children learn non-violent ways of expression and communication, empower teachers to work on prevention and engage caregivers and communities to build a culture, in which violence against children is no longer tolerated.

To find out more, read our action research and children’s and educators’ perspectives on the subject.

You can also read our Safe to Learn papers , which capture and collate lessons learned from the project in Lebanon to support educators and promote safe environments in non-formal education learning centres.

Related insights

Published May 2024

Published March 2024

Published February 2024

An image showing page 1 of the impact brief, including a map of Lebanon

Published January 2024

Published November 2023

Cover image of the Qudra 2 Note number 1

Sign up for updates

To receive updates from International Alert, including about our latest toolkits, reports, campaigns and webinars, and examples of how peacebuilders are making real change in their communities, please enter your details.

Enter your email
Organisation name
Your location
I would like to receive emails from International Alert

We will treat your information with respect. For more information about our privacy practices please read our privacy policy .

A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

About Youth Violence
Risk and Protective Factors
School-Associated Violent Death Study
Youth Violence Prevention Centers

About School Violence

School is the location where the violence occurs, not a type of violence.
Prevention efforts by teachers, administrators, parents, community members, and students can reduce violence and improve the school environment.

What is school violence?

School violence is violence that occurs in the school setting, such as on school property or on the way to or from school, or during a school-sponsored event or on the way to or from a school-sponsored event. It describes violent acts that disrupt learning and have a negative effect on students, schools, and the broader community.

Examples of school violence include:

Bullying and cyberbullying.
Fighting (e.g., punching, slapping, kicking).
Weapon use.
Gang violence.
Sexual violence .

Quick facts and stats

In 2019, CDC's nationwide Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) was administered to high school students across the United States. According to YRBS results from 13,677 students:

About one in five high school students reported being bullied on school property in the last year.
8% of high school students had been in a physical fight on school property one or more times during the 12 months before the survey.
More than 7% of high school students had been threatened or injured with a weapon (e.g., a gun, knife, or club) on school property one or more times during the 12 months before the survey.
Almost 9% of high school students had not gone to school at least one day during the 30 days before the survey because they felt they would be unsafe at school or on their way to or from school.

All students have the right to learn in a safe school environment. The good news is school violence can be prevented. Many factors contribute to school violence. Preventing school violence requires addressing the factors that put people at risk for or protect them from violence. Research shows that prevention efforts by teachers, administrators, parents, community members, and even students can reduce violence and improve the school environment.

CDC developed Resources for Action , formerly known as "technical packages," to help communities and states prioritize prevention strategies based on the best available evidence. The strategies and approaches in the Resources for Action are intended to shape individual behaviors as well as the relationship, family, school, community, and societal factors that influence risk and protective factors for violence. They are meant to work together and to be used in combination in a multi-level, multi-sector effort to prevent violence.

Youth Violence Prevention

Youth violence affects thousands of young people each day, and in turn, their families, schools, and communities. CDC works to understand the problem of violence experienced by youth and prevent it.

For Everyone

Public health.

You are leaving

You will be redirected momentarily.

Share on Twitter
Share on Facebook
Email this page
See the Research

At least one firearm is stolen from a car every nine minutes in the US. But these thefts are preventable.

How To Stop Shootings and Gun Violence in Schools

A Plan to Keep Students Safe

Learn More:

Child & Teen Gun Safety
Educate Gun Owners of Risks
Guns in Public
Guns in Schools
Keep Guns Off Campus
Mass Shootings
Reconsider Active Shooter Drills
Responsible Gun Ownership
Secure Gun Storage
Stop Arming Teachers
Threat Identification and Assessment Programs in Schools

Leer en Español

Cómo detener los tiroteos y la violencia armada en las escuelas: un plan para mantener seguros a los estudiantes.

On May 24, 2022, a gunman shot and killed at least 21 victims—including 19 children and two teachers—and wounded at least 17 others at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a predominantly Latinx community. 1 “Uvalde School Shooting,” Texas Tribune, accessed August 11, 2022, https://www.texastribune.org/series/uvalde-texas-school-shooting/ .

School is the last place where kids should have to worry about gun violence. Our children deserve better. Our country deserves better.

For the last 20 years, students, educators, and parents have lived with the reality of increasingly frequent school shootings. The worst period for this violence has been in the 2021–2022 school year, which saw nearly quadruple the average number of gunfire incidents since 2013. From an average of 49 incidents in every school year since 2013, this past school year saw 193 incidents of gunfire on the grounds of preschools and K–12 schools. 2 Everytown for Gun Safety collects information on an ongoing basis on all incidents where a gun was discharged in or onto a school’s campus or grounds, using news reports from reputable media sources and verifying these incidents with an independent research firm. School year defined as August 1 to May 31. Meanwhile, America’s gun violence epidemic, in the form of mass shootings, gun homicides and suicides, and unintentional shootings, has been infecting America’s schools. The failure to address the root causes of school gun violence from all angles has lasting consequences for millions of American children.

We need meaningful actions to keep our schools and surrounding communities safe, actions that address what we know about gun violence in America’s schools. It’s time for our leaders to adopt a multifaceted approach that provides school communities with the tools they need to prevent school-based gun violence. This includes using the billions of dollars available in the recently passed Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to invest in proven solutions to keep schools safe from violence. This report focuses on approaches that have been proven most effective, such as keeping guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them in the first place, fostering safe and trusting school environments, crisis intervention programs, access and lock upgrades, and trauma-informed emergency planning. Without a doubt, schools need to take the necessary steps to be safe places for educators and students.

We can’t let risky ideas, like arming teachers, dominate the debate. An armed teacher cannot transform into a specially trained law enforcement officer in a moment of extreme duress and confusion. In reality, an untrained, armed teacher introduces risks to student safety on a daily basis. Schools may choose to have security personnel to intervene in violent and dangerous situations, but those personnel must have a limited role and be carefully selected and trained in order to limit undue harm to students, particularly students of color who have disproportionately suffered from over-policing.

In partnership with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA)—two of the largest education-related member organizations collectively representing millions of teachers, school personnel, and administrators—Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund (Everytown) is working to ensure our approach to safer schools is driven by evidence, expertise, and care.

Key recommendations of this report are as follows:

Enact and enforce secure firearm storage laws, pass extreme risk laws.

Raise the Age to Purchase Semi-automatic Firearms

Require Background Checks on All Gun Sales

Foster a safe and trusting school climate.

Build a Culture of Secure Gun Storage
Create Evidence-Based Crisis Assessment/Prevention Programs in Schools
Implement Expert-Endorsed School Security Upgrades: Entry Control and Locks

Initiate Trauma-Informed Emergency Planning

Avoid Practices That Can Cause Harm and Traumatize Students

Introduction

In this report, the nation’s largest education unions and its largest gun safety organization are joining together to present a plan that combines school-based intervention strategies with carefully tailored gun safety policies.

Using data to present the full picture of what gun violence on school grounds looks like and drawing upon research from school safety experts, Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA have crafted a comprehensive plan focusing on interventions to prevent mass shooting incidents and help end gun violence in America’s schools.

The aim of this report is threefold:

1. Paint a Detailed Picture of What Gun Violence in America’s Schools Looks Like

Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA want to provide policymakers and the public with an understanding of how gun violence impacts America’s schools. We analyze information that Everytown has collected on gun violence on school grounds in addition to research from other respected organizations. Through this data and analysis, we have learned the following: Those committing gun violence on school grounds, especially active shooters, often are connected to the school. Guns used in school-based violence generally come from the shooter’s home or the homes of family or friends. Shooters nearly always exhibit warning signs of potential violence that concern people around them. Gun violence in America’s schools has a disproportionate impact on students of color.

2. Outline a Plan to Prevent Gun Violence in Schools

The report provides a proactive plan to prevent active shooter incidents and, more broadly, address gun violence in all its forms in America’s schools. Using what we know about school gun violence, our organizations have put together a plan that focuses on intervening before violence occurs. These solutions work hand in hand to foster safe and nurturing schools , to address violence at its earliest stages , and to block easy access to firearms by those who would do harm.

The first part of this plan focuses on preventing shooters from getting their hands on guns by enacting sensible laws, including secure firearm storage laws and practices, to address the primary source of guns used in school gun violence (home); Extreme Risk laws, so that law enforcement and family members can act on warning signs of violence and temporarily prevent access to firearms; raising the age to purchase semi-automatic firearms to 21; and requiring background checks on all gun sales so that minors and people with dangerous histories can’t evade gun laws.

The second part of the plan focuses on expert-endorsed actions that schools can take. These solutions empower educators and law enforcement to intervene to address warning signs of violence, to provide the support that students in crisis need, and to keep shooters out of schools. These actions must be taken with due consideration for potential racial disparities and ensure that students of color or with disabilities are not negatively affected. They include fostering safe and trusting school environments that can prevent violent incidents, creating evidence-based crisis intervention programs in schools to identify and support students who may be in crisis, implementing evidence-based security upgrades to prevent shooters’ access to schools and classrooms, and initiating trauma-informed emergency planning protocols so that staff can secure schools and law enforcement can respond quickly.

3. Educate Decisionmakers on Practices That Can Cause Harm and Traumatize Students

Third, this report provides an overview of several practices that research shows are ineffective in preventing school gun violence or protecting the school community when shootings do occur, while introducing new risks and causing harm to students and school communities. We share the desire to respond to unthinkable tragedy with strong solutions. But as this report details, arming teachers is an ineffective and risky approach that does not stop gun violence in our schools. A wealth of research demonstrates that allowing teachers to carry guns in schools increases the everyday risks to students. A second practice, frequent school shooter drills involving students, particularly those that simulate a real shooting, are having measurable impacts on the stress and anxiety levels of students, parents, and educators alike. Finally, the traditional model of law enforcement working in schools has not been shown to reduce school shootings or gun incidents, but the presence of law enforcement has played a heavy role in criminalizing students, particularly students of color, and can have a negative impact on learning outcomes for all students. Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA urge our leaders to instead adopt solutions that are proven to address what we know about school gun violence.

A Detailed Picture of Gun Violence in America’s Schools

Everytown’s database of Gunfire on School Grounds details the myriad ways in which gun violence manifests in America’s schools. Following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, Everytown began tracking all cases of gunfire on school grounds in order to build a detailed national database to include all scenarios when a gun discharges a live round inside or into a school building, or onto a school campus or grounds. The database includes preschools; elementary, middle, and high schools; and colleges and universities. 3 Everytown collects detailed information on an ongoing basis on all incidents where a gun was discharged in or onto a school campus or grounds, including demographic details of shooters and victims, the shooter’s or shooters’ intention, location, school population and racial demographic, and, where available, the original source of the firearm. To gather this material, Everytown relies on news reports from reputable media sources. Where necessary, inquiries are made to law enforcement and school officials. All incidents used in this report were confirmed by an independent research firm. In addition, where appropriate, Everytown used publicly available databases and studies from the Naval Postgraduate School and the New York City Police Department to supplement original analyses and findings. Preschools include daycare.

What Happened in 2021?

As students returned to in-person learning in the fall of 2021, schools saw a sharp increase in the number of incidents of gunfire on school grounds. The 2021–2022 school year had the highest number of incidents in preschools and K–12 schools since Everytown began tracking school gun violence in 2013.

Between August 1, 2021, and May 31, 2022, there were 193 incidents of gunfire at preschools and K–12 schools—nearly four times the average during these months in all other years. These incidents left 59 people shot and killed and 138 people shot and wounded. At least six in 10 of the victims killed (59%) and four in 10 of the victims wounded (42%) were current or former students of the school where the gunfire occurred.

Gunfire at Preschools and K-12 by School Year

From 2013 through 2021, Everytown identified a total of 848 incidents of gunfire on school grounds. Of these incidents, 573 occurred on the grounds of a preschool, elementary, middle, or high school, 4 Everytown’s Gunfire on School Grounds database includes 275 incidents on the campuses of colleges and universities during this time frame. These incidents were excluded from analyses in order to focus on gunfire on preschools and K–12 school grounds. resulting in 188 deaths and 392 people wounded. Nearly half (at least 46 percent) of the victims in these incidents were students. While Everytown’s database includes gunfire on the grounds of higher-education institutions, for the purposes of this report all numbers and analyses reflect only those incidents that occurred on the grounds of preschools and K–12 schools.

This analysis shows that mass shootings (in which four or more people are shot and killed, not including the shooter) on school grounds—like the incidents at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Santa Fe High School, Marysville Pilchuck High School, and, in November 2021, Oxford High School—are not common. They represent less than 1 percent of overall school gun violence incidents. 5 Between 2013 and 2021, four incidents out of 573 total resulted in more than four people being shot and killed in an incident of gunfire on school grounds. Because the period for this analysis ends in 2021, the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, is not counted here. However, these incidents account for a disproportionate share of the overall deaths and of people wounded from school gun violence. Moreover, these mass shootings are imposing trauma on a generation of students and communities.

The analysis also demonstrates that gun violence other than mass shootings is occurring in our schools with distressing frequency. All of these incidents of gun violence, regardless of their intent or victim count, compromise the safety of our schools—safety that directly impacts learning outcomes and the emotional and social development of our students. 6 Dewey G. Cornell and Matthew J. Mayer, “Why Do School Order and Safety Matter?,” Educational Researcher 39, no. 1 (January 1, 2010): 7–15, https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X09357616 . A growing body of research shows that the lingering trauma from exposure to gun violence affects everything from the ability to maintain attention 7 Patrick T. Sharkey et al., “The Effect of Local Violence on Children’s Attention and Impulse Control,” American Journal of Public Health 102, no. 12 (December 2012): 2287–93, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2012.300789 . to overall enrollment numbers and performance on standardized tests. 8 Louis-Philippe Beland and Dongwoo Kim, “The Effect of High School Shootings on Schools and Student Performance,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 38, no. 1 (March 2016): 113–26, https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373715590683 . To address all incidents of gun violence at schools and their detrimental effects, a broader platform of solutions is required.

Tracking Gunfire on School Grounds Starting in 2013

Incidents where guns are fired on school grounds come about as a result of various situations, ranging from homicides and assaults to unintentional shootings, suicide deaths or attempts, and mass shootings. 9 The “Other” intent category shown in the graphics include those incidents in which a firearm was discharged into the air, discharged but harm was caused to a person through other means, or discharged with intent to damage buildings or other property; incidents where the intent of the shooter is unknown or unclear; and incidents where law enforcement, school resource officers, or school security shot someone in a case where that victim did not harm others with a gun. These 144 incidents resulted in 54 people shot, 20 fatally.

Gunfire on School Grounds: Incidents By Intent

Gun Homicides and Nonfatal Gun Assaults: Over half of the gun violence incidents in schools (53 percent) are homicides, nonfatal assaults, or attempted assaults. These types of gunfire on school grounds can emerge from a range of causes, such as arguments that escalated, acts of domestic violence, parking lot altercations, and robberies where the school was an unfortunate backdrop. Between 2013 and 2021, there were 302 incidents of homicides, nonfatal assaults, and attempted assaults with a firearm on school grounds resulting in at least 361 victims: 96 deaths and 265 people shot and wounded. At least 133 of the victims were students at the time.
Mass Shootings: Everytown identified four mass shootings—incidents where a shooter killed four or more people—in a preschool or K–12 school between 2013 and 2021. 10 Between 2013 and 2021, mass shootings occurred at Marysville Pilchuck High School in Marysville, Washington; Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida; Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas; and Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan. These shootings resulted in at least 73 victims shot, 35 fatally. Of them, at least 66 (90 percent) were students at the time. Because the period for this analysis ends in 2021, the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, is not counted here. While mass shootings in schools are rare, 11 This aligns with research from other organizations that have developed comparable databases of incidents in schools. The Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS) at the Naval Postgraduate School, for example, maintains a public database of gun violence incidents in K–12 schools dating back to 1970. According to the CHDS database, 12 mass shootings that resulted in the deaths of four or more people not including the shooter occurred on school grounds. The CHDS database also includes more than 1,900 other incidents of school gun violence that occurred over the same time period. Center for Homeland Defense and Security, K–12 School Shooting Database, https://www.chds.us/ssdb/ . they accounted for about a fifth (19 percent) of overall gun deaths and 10 percent of all people shot and wounded in schools in the period from 2013 through 2021. And the statistics do not begin to capture the collective impact these shootings have on entire communities in which they occur as well as on school communities across our country.

2021 Oxford High School Shooting

On November 30, 2021, a 15-year-old student opened fire at Oxford High School in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. Four students were shot and killed and seven other people were shot and wounded. 1 Michigan School Shooting: Student Kills Four and Wounds Seven,” BBC News, December 1, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59484333 .

The shooter was taken into custody and charged with multiple counts, including first-degree murder, assault with intent to murder, terrorism, and possession of a firearm. 2 Jack Nissen, “Ethan Crumbley in Court Friday on Oxford High School Shooting Charges—What to Know,” Fox 2 Detroit , January 6, 2022, https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/oxford-high-school-shooter-ethan-crumbley-back-in-court-jan-7-what-to-know .

He used a firearm that his father had purchased for him days earlier, and which was kept unsecured in the home. His parents were charged with involuntary manslaughter for failing to secure the handgun he used in the shooting. 3 Becky Sullivan, “Parents of Michigan School Shooting Suspect Are Charged with Involuntary Manslaughter,” NPR , December 4, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/12/03/1061190344/michigan-school-shooting-parents-oxford-charged .

Lawsuits alleging negligence to heed the shooter’s behavioral warning signs were later filed against the school district. 4 Robert Snell, “Oxford School Leaders Let Crumbley Accelerate ‘Murderous Rampage,’ Lawsuit Claims,” Detroit News , January 8, 2022, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/oakland-county/2022/01/08/oxford-school-shooting-lawsuit-ethan-crumbleys-rampage-geoffrey-fieger/9142326002/ .

Gun Deaths on School Grounds by Intent

Gun injuries on school grounds by intent.

Unintentional Shootings: Approximately 15 percent of gunfire incidents on school grounds were unintentional, whether resulting in injury or death or when no one was shot. These 85 incidents resulted in at least four deaths and 50 people wounded. At least 31 of those victims were students at the time.
Suicide Deaths and Attempts: Seven percent of incidents involved suicide deaths and attempts where events indicate that the shooter did not intend to harm others. These 38 incidents resulted in 33 deaths and five people wounded. 12 For this category, the number of deaths and people wounded includes the shooter’s nonfatal wounds or death only in the event that the shooter did not intend to harm another. At least 28 of those victims were students at the time.

Four Key Facts about School Gun Violence

Understanding basic lessons learned from incidents of gun violence in schools is integral to creating a comprehensive plan to address their threat and effects. Analyzing Everytown’s Gunfire on School Grounds dataset and studies from other widely cited organizations yields several critical lessons that guide our school safety proposals.

1. Those Discharging Guns on School Grounds Often Have a Connection to the School

In the Everytown database, 60 percent of school-age shooters were current or former students, including all shooters involved in mass shootings and nearly all in self-harm incidents (96 percent) and in unintentional discharges of a gun (91 percent). 13 Information about the shooter’s relationship to the school is often not publicly reported in the immediate aftermath of a shooting. Everytown was able to identify the relationship of 80 percent of shooters in the preschool–Grade 12 age range, a total of 178 of the 222 shooters. Of the 222 shooters ages 5 to 19, 56 percent were current students, 4 percent were former students, 8 percent were other minors, 12 percent were other adults, less than 1 percent were school staff, and the relationship was unknown for 20 percent of the shooters.

An Everytown analysis of the New York City Police Department’s review of active shooter incidents in K–12 schools over the five-decade period from 1966 to 2016 found that in three in four of these incidents, the shooter or shooters were school-age and were current or former students. 14 New York City Police Department, “Active Shooter: Recommendations and Analysis for Risk Mitigation,” 2016, https://on.nyc.gov/2nWHM4O . The New York City Police Department (NYPD) defines an active shooter as “a person(s) actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.” In its definition, The Department of Homeland Security notes that, “in most cases, active shooters use firearm(s) and there is no pattern or method to their selection of victims.” Everytown limited its analysis of this data to incidents that took place in K–12 schools and defined school-age as under the age of 21. Similarly, an analysis by National Institute of Justice–funded researchers found that in the six mass school shootings 15 Columbine High School, Red Lake Senior High School, West Nickel Mines School, Sandy Hook Elementary School, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and Santa Fe High School. and 39 attempted mass school shootings 16 Defined as incidents where a person came to a school heavily armed and fired indiscriminately at numerous people. in the two decades between 1999 and 2019, more than nine in 10 shooters were current or former students at the school. 17 Jillian Peterson and James Densley, “School Shooters Usually Show These Signs of Distress Long before They Open Fire, Our Database Shows,” The Conversation , February 8, 2019, https://bit.ly/2vBTA3J . These data suggest that school-based interventions to support students in crisis and act on warning signs are vital for addressing school gun violence.

2. The Guns Generally Come from Home, Family, or Friends

Research suggests that, as with the Oxford High School shooting, school-age shooters predominantly obtain their guns from family, relatives, or friends—they generally do not purchase them.

The US Secret Service has undertaken two studies of targeted school violence, covering nearly 40 years of incidents. They found that three-quarters of school shooters acquired their firearm from the home of a parent or close relative (73 percent in the first study and 76 percent in the second study). The Secret Service’s second study of incidents, from 2008 to 2017, revealed that in nearly half of the shootings, the firearm was easily accessible or was not stored securely. 18 National Threat Assessment Center, “Protecting America’s Schools: A US Secret Service Analysis of Targeted School Violence,” US Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security, 2019, https://bit.ly/2U7vnwa .

This is a notably difficult characteristic of school violence to study because while law enforcement generally does ascertain the source of the gun, authorities often do not release this information publicly and the media rarely report this information after the incident. Yet knowing how the weapon was obtained is absolutely essential for those tasked with keeping schools safe from potential school shooters in the future.

School districts can help prevent school shootings by issuing notices to families about the critical importance of secure firearm storage in keeping schools and students safe. Presently, nearly three million students across the country live in a school district that issues such notices. 19 As of August 2022, roughly 2.8 million students live in a school district with a secure storage notification policy. Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, “Major Milestone: More Than Two Million Students Nationwide Now Attend Schools with Secure Firearm Storage Awareness Policies,” press release, December 15, 2021, https://momsdemandaction.org/major-milestone-more-than-two-million-students-nationwide-now-attend-schools-with-secure-firearm-storage-awareness-policies/ . But there is more work to be done–this amounts to only 6 percent of the United States’ nearly 50 million public schoolchildren. 20 The National Center for Education Statistics, “Back-to-School Statistics,” 2021, https://tinyurl.com/jnxyjh2d .

3. There Are Nearly Always Warning Signs

When it comes to school shootings, there are nearly always advance indications. These warning signs, if appropriately identified, can offer an opportunity for intervention. The Secret Service study of incidents from 2008 to 2017 found that 100 percent of the perpetrators showed concerning behaviors, and that 77 percent of the time at least one person, most often a peer, knew about their plan. 21 National Threat Assessment Center, “Protecting America’s Schools.”

These data suggest that fostering a trusting and emotionally safe school climate—where students are willing to both ask adults for help and to report any destructive thoughts and behaviors, such as gun threats on social media or weapons carrying—can be effective tools for prevention. Taking immediate action on those warning signs is essential.

4. Gun Violence in American Schools Has a Disproportionate Impact on Students of Color

While perpetrators of mass shootings in schools have tended to be white and are portrayed in media coverage as occurring in predominantly white schools, the larger context of gunfire on school grounds presents a very different picture. In the shooting incidents where Everytown was able to identify the racial makeup of the student body, two in three incidents (67 percent) occurred in majority-minority schools. 22 Everytown gathered demographic information on the student population of each school included in our Gunfire on School Grounds database for which data were available, comprising 552 of 569 incidents. A majority-minority school is defined as one in which one or more racial and/or ethnic minorities constitute a majority of the student population. The burden of gun violence has a particularly outsized impact on Black students. Although Black students represent approximately 15 percent of the total K–12 school population in America, 23 US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, “State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary and Secondary Education, 1998–99 through 2018–19; National Elementary and Secondary Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity Projection Model, 1972 through 2029,” Common Core Data (CCD), September 2020, https://bit.ly/3HI5tVf . Everytown averaged the student population size, both total and Black student populations, for the years 2013 to 2021. Data at the national level for demographics of the student population at preschools is not available. they make up 30 percent of the average population at schools that have been impacted by a fatal shooting. This suggests that creating safe and equitable schools and supporting community-oriented intervention programs in communities with high rates of gun violence can help address these broader trends.

Racial Demographics at K-12 Schools with Gunfire Incidents

Solutions to prevent school gun violence.

In order to effectively address violence in our schools, we must first acknowledge that school violence is, in part, a gun violence problem. Many “comprehensive” school safety plans have been proposed over the last 20 years. Few have thoroughly addressed the issue common in all school shootings: easy access to guns for those at risk of committing harm. Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA firmly believe that any effective school safety plan must involve an effort to enact gun safety policies that enable intervention before a prospective shooter can get their hands on a gun. These policies work hand in hand with school-based interventions to create safer school climates and to intervene before a student becomes a shooter.

Gun Safety Policies

As with the shooter at Oxford High School, the most common sources of guns used in school shootings and across all school gun violence incidents are the shooter’s home or the homes of friends or relatives. This is unsurprising, as nearly 4.6 million American children live in homes with at least one gun that is loaded and unlocked. 24 Matthew Miller and Deborah Azrael, “Firearm Storage in US Households with Children: Findings from the 2021 National Firearm Survey,” JAMA Network Open 5, no. 2 (2022): e2148823, https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.48823 . Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA recommend that states enact and enforce secure firearm storage laws . In addition, policymakers should promote public awareness programs that can encourage secure gun storage and induce behavior change.

These laws require that people store firearms securely when they are not in their possession in order to prevent unauthorized access. Under these laws, generally, when a person accesses a firearm and does harm with it, the person who failed to securely store the firearm is responsible. A common form of secure storage laws, child access prevention laws, are narrower, and they hold individuals liable only when minors access firearms that are not securely stored. Most states and the District of Columbia currently have some form of secure storage law . In addition, several cities, including New York City and San Francisco, have passed secure storage laws. 25 New York City Administrative Code 10-312; San Francisco Police Code 4512; Seattle, Wash. Mun. Code Section 10.79.010, et seq. (effective February 2019); Edmonds, Wash. Mun. Code Section 5.26.010, et seq. (effective March 2019).

Secure Storage or Child Access Prevention Required

26 states have adopted this policy, alabama has not adopted this policy, alaska has not adopted this policy, arizona has not adopted this policy, arkansas has not adopted this policy, california has adopted this policy, colorado has adopted this policy, connecticut has adopted this policy, delaware has adopted this policy, florida has adopted this policy, georgia has not adopted this policy, hawaii has adopted this policy, idaho has not adopted this policy, illinois has adopted this policy, indiana has not adopted this policy, iowa has adopted this policy, kansas has not adopted this policy, kentucky has not adopted this policy, louisiana has not adopted this policy, maine has adopted this policy, maryland has adopted this policy, massachusetts has adopted this policy, michigan has adopted this policy, minnesota has adopted this policy, mississippi has not adopted this policy, missouri has not adopted this policy, montana has not adopted this policy, nebraska has not adopted this policy, nevada has adopted this policy, new hampshire has adopted this policy, new jersey has adopted this policy, new mexico has adopted this policy, new york has adopted this policy, north carolina has adopted this policy, north dakota has not adopted this policy, ohio has not adopted this policy, oklahoma has not adopted this policy, oregon has adopted this policy, pennsylvania has not adopted this policy, rhode island has adopted this policy, south carolina has not adopted this policy, south dakota has not adopted this policy, tennessee has not adopted this policy, texas has adopted this policy, utah has not adopted this policy, vermont has adopted this policy, virginia has adopted this policy, washington has adopted this policy, west virginia has not adopted this policy, wisconsin has adopted this policy, wyoming has not adopted this policy.

Studies show that these laws save lives, especially as they reduce unintentional shootings and firearm suicides. One study found that households that locked both firearms and ammunition were associated with a 78 percent lower risk of self-inflicted firearm injuries and an 85 percent lower risk of unintentional firearm injuries among children and teenagers than those that locked neither. 26 David C. Grossman et al., “Gun Storage Practices and Risk of Youth Suicide and Unintentional Firearm Injuries,” JAMA 293, no. 6 (2005): 707–14, https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.293.6.707 . Another study estimated that if half of households with children that contain at least one unlocked gun switched to locking all of their guns, one-third of youth gun suicides and unintentional deaths could be prevented, saving an estimated 251 young lives in a single year. 27 Michael C. Monuteaux, Deborah Azrael, and Matthew Miller, “Association of Increased Safe Household Firearm Storage with Firearm Suicide and Unintentional Death among US Youths,” JAMA Pediatrics 173, no. 7 (2019): 657–62, https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2019.1078 . Given what is known about the source of guns in school gun violence, these laws can help prevent underage shooters from accessing unsecured guns in homes and prevent mass shootings and other violent incidents.

Enforcement and public awareness are essential components in making sure that secure gun storage laws work. Only one in three gun owners living in states with child access prevention laws know that their state requires secure storage of guns. 28 Ali Rowhani-Rahbar et al., “Knowledge of State Gun Laws among US Adults in Gun-Owning Households,” JAMA Network Open 4, no. 11 (November 2021): e2135141, https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.35141 . To facilitate effective enforcement, state legislatures need to make sure their laws are precisely written to cover access by anyone under age 18 and are well known among gun owners. It is also crucial to collect data on and monitor the implementation of these laws to ensure that they are not enforced in a discriminatory manner toward overpoliced communities or lead toward increased incarceration in communities.

As with most active shooter incidents in schools, there were warning signs prior to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. Nearly 30 people knew about the shooter’s previous violent behavior, 29 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, “Initial Report Submitted to the Governor, Speaker of the House of Representatives and Senate President,” January 2, 2019, 264, https://bit.ly/37Gaoop . and law enforcement had been called to incidents involving the shooter on dozens of occasions. 30 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, “Initial Report,” 234–39. However, the shooter legally bought the gun he used, as he had never been convicted of a crime, and his mental health history did not legally prohibit him from buying or having guns. Accounts of the shooting show that law enforcement and the shooter’s family had no legal mechanism in the state of Florida to prevent the shooter’s easy access to guns.

To fill this critical gap in our laws, Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA recommend that states enact Extreme Risk laws . These laws create a legal process by which law enforcement, family members, and, in some states , educators can petition a court to temporarily prevent a person from having access to firearms when there is evidence that they are at serious risk of harming themselves or others, giving them the time they need to get help.

In cases where a student poses a threat, these orders can be used to prevent a student from buying a firearm even if otherwise they would legally be allowed to do so. These orders can also be used with minors, who may not be legally allowed to buy or have guns, but who may still have access to them at home.

Extreme Risk laws provide a civil procedure that gives key community members a way to intervene without going through the criminal court system. These Extreme Risk protection orders, sometimes also called red flag orders or gun violence restraining orders , can be issued only after a legal determination is made that a person poses a serious threat to themselves or others. They also contain strong due process protections to ensure that a person’s rights are balanced with public safety. Once an order is issued, a person is required to relinquish any guns they have and is prohibited from buying new guns temporarily, for a period generally lasting one year.

There is substantial evidence that these laws can prevent acts of violence in schools. In Maryland, leaders of the Maryland Sheriffs’ Association pointed to at least four cases where an Extreme Risk law was invoked involving “significant threats” against schools. 31 Luke Broadwater, “Sheriff: Maryland’s ‘Red Flag’ Law Prompted Gun Seizures after Four ‘Significant Threats’ against Schools,” Baltimore Sun , January 15, 2019, https://bit.ly/2Gdf6Qi . In Florida, a Red Flag law passed in 2018 has been invoked in multiple cases of potential school violence, including one case of a student who was accused of stalking an ex-girlfriend and threatening to kill himself 32 Emma Kennedy, “Tate Student’s AR-15, Father’s 54 Guns Removed under New Red Flag Law,” Pensacola News Journal , July 9, 2018, https://bit.ly/2UHmaba . and another in which a potential school shooter said killing people would be “fun and addicting.” 33 Jessica Lipscomb, “Florida’s Post-Parkland ‘Red Flag’ Law Has Taken Guns from Dozens of Dangerous People,” Miami New Times , August 7, 2018, https://bit.ly/2ORW56U . A study in California details 21 cases in which a gun violence restraining order, California’s name for an extreme risk protection order, was used in efforts to prevent mass shootings, including five instances where schools or children were targeted. 34 Garen J. Wintemute et al., “Extreme Risk Protection Orders Intended to Prevent Mass Shootings: A Case Series,” Annals of Internal Medicine 171, no. 9 (2019), https://doi.org/10.7326/M19-2162 .

Because Extreme Risk laws are a proven tool with strong due process protections, they enjoy strong bipartisan support. Fourteen states, including Florida, as well as Washington, DC, have passed Extreme Risk laws since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018; five of them were signed by Republican governors. 35 CO, DE, FL, HI, IL, MA, MD, NJ, NM, NV, NY, RI, VA, and VT. FL, IL, MA, MD, and VT had Republican governors at the time of signing. In all, 19 states and DC now have Extreme Risk laws on the books. 36 The 19 states are CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, HI, IL, IN, MA, MD, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OR, RI, VA, VT, and WA.

For states that have already enacted Extreme Risk laws, awareness among the public is a key component for their success. Currently, use of these laws varies enormously by state, as shown in this table . Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA recommend that these states train law enforcement on the availability and use of these laws and that public awareness campaigns help to make knowledge of this option widely known. School officials also need to know that this tool is available to them as part of a comprehensive intervention with a student who is at serious risk to themselves or others. Overall, these laws are a commonsense method for acting on the warning signs too often found in active shooter incidents.

Raise the Age to Purchase Semi-Automatic Firearms

Despite the evidence that most active shooters are school-age and have a connection to the school, few states have stepped in to close gaps that allow minors to legally purchase high-powered firearms. Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA believe states and the federal government should raise the minimum age to purchase or possess handguns and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns to 21 in order to prevent school-age shooters from easily obtaining firearms.

Under federal law, in order to purchase a handgun from a licensed gun dealer, a person must be 21. 37 18 U.S.C.§ 922(b)(1). Yet to purchase that same handgun in an unlicensed sale (online or from a private individual), or to purchase a rifle or shotgun from a licensed dealer, a person only has to be 18. 38 18 U.S.C.§ 922(b)(1); 18 U.S.C. § 922(x)(2). Only a few states have acted to close these gaps. 39 Only five states and DC require a person to be 21 to possess a handgun: DC, IL, MA, MD, NJ, and NY. Only IL and DC require a person to be 21 to possess a rifle or shotgun, and only six states require a person to be 21 to purchase a rifle or shotgun from a licensed gun dealer: CA, DC, FL, HI, IL, VT, and WA.

These deficiencies in the law leave an easy path for active shooters to obtain firearms. Because he was under 21, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter could not have gone into a gun store and bought a handgun, but he was able to legally buy the AR-15 assault-style rifle he used in the shooting. Following the shooting, Florida changed its law to raise the age to purchase all firearms to 21. 40 Fla. Stat. § 790.065(13). Minimum-age laws can work in tandem with secure storage and Extreme Risk laws to cut off an easy way for shooters to obtain firearms.

Background checks are the key to enforcing US gun laws and are an effective tool for keeping guns out of the hands of people with dangerous histories. As part of a comprehensive plan to prevent gun violence in schools, Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA recommend that states and the federal government act to pass laws that require background checks on all gun sales so that potential shooters cannot easily purchase firearms.

Current federal law requires that background checks be conducted whenever a person attempts to purchase a firearm from a licensed gun dealer, to ensure that the prospective buyer is not legally prohibited from possessing guns. 41 18 U.S.C. § 922(t). For example, when a person becomes subject to an extreme risk protection order, that record is entered into the federal background check database, and a background check at the point of sale prevents that person from buying a firearm at a gun store. However, current federal law does not require background checks on sales between unlicensed parties, including those at gun shows or online. As such, people with dangerous histories can easily circumvent the background check system simply by purchasing their firearm online or at a gun show.

A 2021 Everytown investigation showed that as many as one in nine people looking to buy a firearm on Armslist.com, the nation’s largest online gun marketplace, are people who cannot legally have firearms, including because they are under age 18. And the unlicensed sales marketplace is large: The same investigation found that 1.2 million online ads offering firearms for sale are listed annually that would not legally require a background check to be completed. 42 Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, “Unchecked: An Investigation of the Online Firearm Marketplace,” February 1, 2021, https://everytownresearch.org/report/unchecked-an-investigation-of-the-online-firearm-marketplace/ .

Background checks are an important part of any school safety plan because they are our most comprehensive strategy to prevent minors, people subject to extreme risk protection orders, and other people who shouldn’t have guns from accessing them. Without background checks, guns are easily accessible in the online and gun show markets without any questions asked, making it difficult for law enforcement to detect violations of the law and undermining other strategies to keep guns out of the hands of shooters.

Background checks are proven to reduce gun violence. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia already require a background check on all handgun sales. 43 CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, HI, IL, MA, MD, MI, NC, NE, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OR, PA, RI, VA, VT, and WA. State laws requiring background checks for all handgun sales—by point-of-sale check and/or permit—are associated with lower firearm homicide rates, 44 Michael Siegel and Claire Boine, “What Are the Most Effective Policies in Reducing Gun Homicides?,” Rockefeller Institute of Government, March 2019, https://bit.ly/2YPAz7P . lower firearm suicide rates, 45 Eric W. Fleegler et al., “Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Fatalities in the United States,” JAMA Internal Medicine 173, no. 9 (2013): 732–40, https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.1286 . and lower firearm trafficking. 46 Daniel W. Webster, Jon S. Vernick, and Maria T. Bulzacchelli, “Effects of State-Level Firearm Seller Accountability Policies on Firearm Trafficking,” Journal of Urban Health 86, no. 4 (July 2009): 525–37; Daniel W. Webster et al., “Preventing the Diversion of Guns to Criminals through Effective Firearm Sales Laws,” in Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 109–21.

After Connecticut passed a law requiring background checks for a handgun purchase permit and at the point of sale, its firearm homicide rate decreased by 40 percent, 47 Kara E. Rudolph et al., “Association between Connecticut’s Permit-to-Purchase Handgun Law and Homicides,” American Journal of Public Health 105, no. 8 (2015): e49–e54, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302703 . and its firearm suicide rate decreased by 15 percent. 48 Cassandra K. Crifasi et al., “Effects of Changes in Permit-to-Purchase Handgun Laws in Connecticut and Missouri on Suicide Rates,” Preventive Medicine 79 (2015): 43–49, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2015.07.013 . Background checks reduce gun violence and are a crucial backbone for any school gun violence prevention strategy.

School-Based Interventions

Supportive and trusting school environments are the strongest way to prevent school violence. When communities are focused on student well-being, schools can be places of care and compassion for the challenges kids face, while also creating the conditions for preventing school shootings and other violence. Given the evidence discussed above that most school shooters are current or former students and that they nearly always show warning signs, the locus of school violence prevention must necessarily center around schools.

One means of creating safe schools is to support them to become “community schools”—the focal point and heart of their communities. Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA recommend that schools utilize district, state, and federal funding to help schools partner with community members to move beyond the normal confines of a school, particularly in communities that experience high rates of gun violence.

Community schools work with local partners to provide valuable services that help uplift the entire community. They not only become centers of education but fulfill a broader purpose of contributing to stable, healthy, and safe neighborhoods. In schools facing high levels of violence in and outside of the school building, a community school might fund programs such as creating safe passages to and from school, granting alternatives to out-of-school suspensions that offer meaningful educational opportunities for students, providing family counseling, increasing access to mentoring both in and outside of school, and incorporating restorative justice into discipline policies.

School and Community Partnership

One example of a partnership between schools and a promising community program is an initiative that offered cognitive behavioral therapy for at-risk young people in schools in the West and South Sides of Chicago. Evaluation of the impacts on over 5,000 students in a randomized controlled trial found that participation in the program reduced violent crime arrests by 45 to 50 percent and juvenile justice system readmissions by 80 percent. This was a partnership with Chicago’s Being a Man program in school years during the period from 2009 to 2015. 1 Sara B. Heller et al., “Thinking, Fast and Slow? Some Field Experiments to Reduce Crime and Dropout in Chicago,” Working Paper Series, National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2015, https://doi.org/10.3386/w21178 .

Zero-tolerance policies are those that, in an earnest attempt to make schools safe and orderly, can end up punishing students who exhibit behavior that actually requires compassionate intervention. In addition, these policies can create a threatening climate that instills fear and erodes student trust, reducing the chances that students will share information when they are concerned about classmates. The zero-tolerance approach has also had a profoundly negative effect on students of color. Schools need to review their discipline policies to make sure they are not unduly punishing students for normal adolescent behavior nor creating a climate that reduces the willingness of students to share concerning information, and that staff are trained on appropriate ways to manage their classrooms and implicit biases. As part of a comprehensive strategy, Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA recommend that school communities look inside their schools to make sure they are encouraging effective partnerships between students and adults.

Students thrive in positive school environments. Supportive schools foster an affirming academic climate while also maintaining secure physical settings. Safe schools are built on trusting relationships among students, staff, and administrators. 49 National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments, “School Climate Improvement,” accessed April 4, 2022, https://safesupportivelearning.ed.gov/school-climate-improvement .

Significant resources must also be provided to assist students impacted by gun violence. Our students see their friends, parents, siblings, cousins, and neighbors shot in Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, New York, Philadelphia, and countless other communities where the violence does not make the national news. Gun violence is among our nation’s most significant public health problems, not only because of death and injury, but also due to the long-term psychological toll that gun-related incidents inflict on those who survive shootings or whose friends or family members are wounded or killed by gun violence. Educators see that the trauma and anxiety that gun violence creates does not simply vanish. Students carry this trauma and fear with them inside and outside the classroom. All levels of government must invest resources to ensure that every school has the appropriate number of mental health professionals on staff and that other mental health support programs are in place.

Build a Culture of Secure Gun Storage

In addition to enacting secure storage laws, policymakers and educators should encourage a culture of secure gun storage by increasing awareness of secure storage practices . For years, Moms Demand Action has run a program called Be SMART. 50 For more information, visit http://besmartforkids.org/ . This program focuses on fostering conversations with adults about gun storage to facilitate behavior change and address the hundreds of unintentional shootings committed and experienced by children every year. The acronym SMART stands for S ecure guns in homes and vehicles, M odel responsible behavior, A sk about unsecured guns in homes, R ecognize the role of guns in suicide, and T ell your peers to be SMART. Governors, federal 51 Everytown for Gun Safety, “Everytown Renews Calls on Biden-Harris Administration to Promote Secure Firearm Storage, Releases New School Shooting Data in Wake of Oxford High School Shooting,” press release, December 1, 2021, https://www.everytown.org/press/everytown-renews-calls-on-biden-harris-administration-to-promote-secure-firearm-storage-releases-new-school-shooting-data-in-wake-of-oxford-high-school-shooting/ . and state departments of health and education, legislatures, nonprofit organizations, and local officials should also work together to develop and fund programs that increase awareness of the need to store firearms securely. Schools should distribute information to parents about the importance of secure storage, 52 Students Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, “How to Pass a Secure Storage Resolution at Your School,” December 17, 2021, https://studentsdemandaction.org/report/how-to-pass-a-secure-storage-resolution-at-your-school/ . as school officials are already doing in Los Angeles , San Diego , Houston , Denver , Clark County, Nevada , and throughout Tennessee, among other places. 53 Stephen Sawchuk, “More Schools Are Reminding Parents to Secure Their Guns,” Education Week, December 8, 2021, https://www.edweek.org/leadership/more-schools-are-reminding-parents-to-secure-their-guns/2021/12 . Thus far, school districts comprising nearly three million students have taken this vital action. 54 Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, “Major Milestone.”

Encouraging secure storage practices can make an enormous difference in reducing gun violence in school communities and would address the most common source of firearms used in school gun violence incidents.

Create Trauma-Informed Crisis Intervention Practices in Schools

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Benjamin Franklin

The most important thing that schools can do to prevent active shooter incidents—and gun violence overall—is to intervene before a person commits an act of violence. Students who commit violent acts have almost always previously shown signs that concerned other people around them. 55 National Threat Assessment Center, “Protecting America’s Schools.” The key is to identify students who may be in crisis and provide behavioral and mental health support to prevent the crisis from becoming violent. To do this in a manner that serves students and protects the community, Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA recommend that schools, concurrent with other community partners, create trauma-informed crisis intervention practices involving the convening of a multidisciplinary team that responds when a student shows they may be in crisis. These teams receive information about a student in crisis, evaluate the situation, and design interventions to prevent violence and provide appropriate treatment, support, and resources. State legislatures should also make funding available for schools to invest in personnel training and the mental health-care resources needed to promote the restorative justice and de-escalation practices that trauma-informed crisis intervention requires. Based on what we know about school violence, it is critical to respond to many forms of student crises, such as housing instability or substance abuse, not only threats of violence.

Building on recent concerns about an overreliance on a punitive response to students in crisis and the undue harm of this approach for students of color and students with disabilities, education experts are placing emphasis on intervening to prevent violence but also on building out resources to support students in crisis. This can include issues of mental health, housing, parental and family support, juvenile court representation, and more. There is also greater emphasis on ongoing follow-up on the student’s progress following the immediate period of crisis, including connecting with family members or teachers to ensure a student’s ultimate success in school. One program that offers a step-by-step approach that emphasizes this supportive, less punitive alternative is the R-Model, developed in partnership with the Minnesota School Safety Center. 56 Jillian Peterson, James Densley, and Missy Dodds, “The R-Model: Ready–Respond–Refer–Revisit—K–12 School Crisis Response Teams,” off-ramp, https://off-ramp.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/R-Model-Protocol-Final-2.pdf . This model emphasizes the difference between disruptive and truly dangerous behavior, and offers solutions that do not escalate concerning acts or punish typical adolescent behavior. Such models are essential for creating emotionally safe environments and keeping students in school and out of the criminal justice system.

Most students facing crises will never commit an act of violence and must not be treated like criminals. Our recommended practice is the opposite of “zero tolerance” and is not based on a punitive or criminal justice approach, and should not rely on exclusionary discipline as a means of intervention. A school needs to be a trusted place where students feel safe to share when they or someone else is in crisis, knowing that it will lead to help and support rather than punishment or prison. Schools must also be transparent on the type of threats that are so imminent, actionable, and severe that law enforcement must be engaged to investigate.

Crisis intervention practices offer members of the entire school community the ability to share concerns and connect students in crisis with ongoing support to build safer, more supportive environments for children and adults alike. Effective programs have a mechanism in place to collect information about potential violence, including a means to anonymously report it. 57 Schools can also consider using a program like Sandy Hook Promise’s “Know the Signs” and “Say Something” campaigns, which train students on warning signs and encourage them to report potentially violent behavior. Sandy Hook Promise, “Know the Signs Programs,” accessed February 1, 2020, https://bit.ly/2S9fgPa . Crisis intervention programs allow a school to have a coordinated and collaborative approach that involves everyone who interacts with students—from school administrators and teachers to counselors, nurses, social workers, hall and lunchroom monitors, and bus drivers. In addition, school communications staff should be included as they play an essential role in creating socially just crisis intervention practices.

Any crisis intervention program must be paired with a rigorous assessment of efficacy and collateral harms to prevent disproportionate or unwarranted interventions. Any decision that leads to punitive action or law enforcement engagement requires thorough review by school district leaders as these instances need to be the rare exception to a healthy program based on supportive intervention.

Implement Access Control Measures and Door Locks

Physical security is a critical intervention point to keep guns out of schools. The most effective physical security measures—the ones on which most experts agree—are access control measures that keep shooters out of schools in the first place. As a secondary measure, internal door locks, which enable teachers to lock doors from the inside, can work to deter active shooters who are able to access the school, protecting students and allowing law enforcement time to neutralize any potential threat.

2018 MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS HIGH SCHOOL SHOOTING

In 2018, as the shooter arrived on the campus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, several critical access control failures gave him easy access to the school. The outside perimeter fence of the campus had a gate that was open and left unstaffed. As he entered Building 12, where the shooting happened, he exploited another critical safety failure as the door to the building was left unlocked. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission concluded, “The overall lack of uniform and mandated physical site security requirements resulted in voids that allowed [the shooter] initial access to MSDHS and is a system failure.” 1 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, “Initial Report,” 42.

Most experts, including members of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission and the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, agree that the ability to control access should be a component of any school security plan. 58 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, “Initial Report,” 42; Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, “Final Report of the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission: Presented to Governor Dannel P. Malloy, State of Connecticut,” March 6, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/yaufdwbp . Preventing unauthorized access to schools through fencing, single access points, and simply ensuring that doors are locked can keep shooters out of schools. State legislatures should provide funding for access control measures for schools to ensure that would-be shooters cannot have easy access.

At Sandy Hook Elementary School and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, lack of locks on classroom doors exposed educators and students to danger. School safety experts, including the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, agree that schools should make sure that classroom doors lock from the inside as well as the outside. 59 Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, “Final Report.” Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA recommend that all schools equip doors with interior door locks to help prevent shooters from gaining access to classrooms.

Of course, one of the biggest challenges with security upgrades is maintaining a welcoming school environment. Schools cannot become fortresses or prisons. Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA endorse basic security measures universally recommended by school safety experts, like access control and internal door locks, while recommending that schools also consider other expert-endorsed security measures, such as preparedness planning, based on local conditions.

Planning and preparation are key to ensuring an effective response if an incident of gun violence does occur on school grounds. Security experts universally agree that school personnel need to have an effective emergency plan in place to respond quickly to and neutralize any threat. The Federal Emergency Management Agency maintains a six-point guide for developing high-quality emergency response plans for schools. This guide stresses collaboration and advance planning to help mitigate emergency incidents. 60 US Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Safe and Healthy Students, “Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans,” 2013, https://bit.ly/2Gnz764 . Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA recommend that school personnel, in collaboration with law enforcement, plan for the unlikely event of a gun violence emergency or active shooter incident through regular practice.

Recommendations for effective planning include efforts to ensure that schools work with law enforcement and first responders to provide information about the school’s layout and security measures, that staff and law enforcement work together to ensure that they can identify the nature of a threat, and that schools make a detailed plan for their lockdown and evacuation procedures. 61 US Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Safe and Healthy Students, “Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans,” 57, 2013, https://bit.ly/2Gnz764 . Emergency procedures must be trauma-informed, meaning that their design should reflect several key elements: “a realization of the widespread prevalence and impact of trauma, a recognition of the signs of traumatic exposure, and a response grounded in evidence-based practices that resist retraumatization of individuals.” 62 Stacy Overstreet and Sandra M. Chafouleas. “Trauma-Informed Schools: Introduction to the Special Issue,” School Mental Health 8, no. 1 (March 2016): 1–6, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-016-9184-1 . This means emergency planning should be buttressed by trigger warnings and access to mental health counseling and should never simulate an active shooter event. Trauma-informed emergency planning requires that the staff involved have tools to change emergency and evacuation planning in real time, should any activities prove harmful to anyone participating.

Practices That Can Harm and Traumatize Students

Arming teachers puts children at greater risk.

One of the most dangerous ideas in the American education system is that arming teachers or school staff is an effective solution to an active shooter incident. While the desire for action is understandable, the popular notion of a well-trained teacher acting as a last line of defense in a situation of a school shooting is not based on any experience or research. Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA strongly urge, as a matter of student safety, that schools reject attempts to arm teachers and instead focus on proven solutions that intervene to prevent shootings before they start.

Is an armed teacher supposed to protect their children in their classroom? Will they be able to identify and shoot one of their own students? How will they react in a crisis? Will they be able to shoot accurately? In a shooter situation, how will law enforcement be able to distinguish between a lawfully carrying teacher and a shooter? While those who implement the idea may be sincere in their search for a solution, arming teachers raises more questions than answers. It is argued that armed teachers are cost-effective replacements for law enforcement, but arming teachers would cost billions of dollars for training, equipment, and insurance, and armed teachers are never acceptable replacements for trained law enforcement.

Most parents, teachers, and members of law enforcement oppose arming teachers. Law enforcement officials, those we charge with protecting our schools, strongly oppose arming teachers. The National Association of School Resource Officers and a then-president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association have each indicated their opposition to arming teachers. 63 National Association of School Resource Officers, “NASRO Opposes Arming Teachers,” press release, February 22, 2018, https://bit.ly/2RdOq55 ; Greg Toppo, “132 Hours to Train Teachers on Guns: Is It Enough?,” USA Today , March 8, 2018, https://bit.ly/2SvCdes ; Brandon E. Patterson, “America’s Police Chiefs Call Bullshit on Arming Teachers,” Mother Jones , March 8, 2018, https://bit.ly/2HjsDT3 .

Parents and teachers also oppose arming teachers. A March 2018 survey of almost 500 US teachers found that 73 percent oppose proposals to arm school staff. 64 Megan Brenan, “Most U.S. Teachers Oppose Carrying Guns in Schools,” Gallup, March 16, 2018, https://bit.ly/2MPTRV5 . Another survey found that 63 percent of parents of K–12 school students oppose arming teachers. 65 PDK Poll, “School Security: Is Your Child Safe at School?,” September 2018, https://bit.ly/2FHli0u .

However, evidence indicates that the message about “well-trained” teachers is catching on with policymakers and some schools. The Federal School Safety Commission under the Trump administration became the first federal entity to endorse arming teachers and school staff. 66 Federal Commission on School Safety, “Final Report of the Federal Commission on School Safety: Presented to the President of the United States,” December 18, 2018, https://bit.ly/2SVPqK6 . A number of state legislatures are considering the idea of armed teachers, and many schools have looked to arming teachers or school staff as a solution to school gun violence.

The notion that only highly trained teachers will be carrying guns in schools is a myth. Law enforcement personnel who carry guns on a daily basis receive hundreds of hours of initial training and are generally required to continue their training regularly throughout their careers. The average number of initial training hours that a law enforcement officer receives at a basic training academy is 840. 67 Brian A. Reaves, “State and Local Law Enforcement Training Academies, 2013,” US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, July 2016, https://bit.ly/2pg0whI . On average, recruits receive 168 hours of training on weapons, self-defense, and the use of force. 68 Reaves, “State and Local Law Enforcement Training Academies.”

In the 10 states that have laws designed to allow for armed school personnel, those armed personnel receive significantly less training. The laws vary widely, but none of them require teachers or school staff to undergo training that is akin to that completed by a full-time law enforcement officer. In fact, some states don’t have any minimum hourly training requirement. In Kansas, school districts are free to set their own policy regarding training of staff carrying guns. 69 K.S.A. § 75-7c10(d)(1). Georgia law stipulates that armed school personnel must be trained but does not require any minimum number of training hours. 70 O.C.G.A. § 16-11-130.1. Several school districts exploit vagaries in the law to arm teachers with no state oversight. For example, a gap in Texas law led to the establishment of “Guardian” programs, which allow school districts to set policy on what qualifications and training are required for armed teachers and staff, without any required training minimum. 71 Alex Samuels, “Texas Schools That Want to Arm Their Employees Have Two Choices,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram , July 14, 2018, https://bit.ly/2MNh2PT .

Even some of the most highly trained law enforcement officers in the country, those of the New York City Police Department, see their ability to shoot accurately decrease significantly when engaged in gunfights with perpetrators. 72 Bernard D. Rostker et al., “Evaluation of the New York City Police Department Firearm Training and Firearm-Discharge Review Process,” RAND Corporation, 2008, https://bit.ly/2U9bk0t . To expect a teacher to make split-second, life-or-death decisions to protect children and themselves or try to take down an active shooter is unrealistic.

One of the most grievous risks of arming teachers is that more access to firearms is strongly correlated with additional risk of gun violence. Research strongly supports the finding that if teachers carry guns into schools, children are more likely to access those guns. Studies consistently show that the majority of children are aware of where their parents store their guns and have handled them without their parents’ knowledge. 73 Frances Baxley and Matthew Miller, “Parental Misperceptions about Children and Firearms,” Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine 160, no. 5 (2006): 542–47, https://doi.org/10.1001/archpedi.160.5.542 . The same is true in schools: when teachers and staff bring guns into schools, children too often know where the guns are and will access them. And we know that when children access guns, the risks of death or harm significantly increase. In fact, irrespective of age, access to a firearm triples the risk of death by suicide and doubles the risk of death by homicide. 74 Andrew Anglemyer, Tara Horvath, and George Rutherford, “The Accessibility of Firearms and Risk for Suicide and Homicide Victimization among Household Members: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Annals of Internal Medicine 160, no. 2 (2014), https://doi.org/10.7326/M13-1301 .

Incidents appear in the media regularly in which guns brought in by armed adults were misplaced or students accessed them—guns left in bathrooms, 75 Becky Metrick, “Ex-Teacher Charged for Leaving Gun in School Bathroom, Police Say,” USA Today , September 13, 2016, https://bit.ly/2G9jlfF . locker rooms, 76 Associated Press, “No Charges after Isabella Co. Sheriff Accidentally Leaves Gun at School,” Detroit Free Press , April 3, 2018, https://bit.ly/2GtNfeb . even a gun that fell out when a teacher did a backflip. 77 Josh Rojas, “Student: Substitute Teacher Was Doing Back Flip When Gun Fell Out,” Bay News 9 , October 24, 2018, https://bit.ly/2t4SlFF. There are also multiple cases where guns were stolen and later found in the hands of students. 78 David Harten, “Police: Jacksonville High Student Steals Gun from Teacher,” Arkansas Democrat Gazette , January 17, 2012, https://bit.ly/2V3psWX ; Roche Madden, “Police Find Teacher’s Stolen Gun with Student,” Fox 2 Now , October 25, 2018, https://bit.ly/2S9hqy7 .

Arming teachers can further create a culture of fear for students of color, who are already subject to harsher discipline than their white classmates. The US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights found that during the 2015–16 school year, Black students comprised 15 percent of the total students enrolled in public school but accounted for 31 percent of students referred to or arrested by police.“ 79 Data Highlights on School Climate and Safety in Our Nation’s Public Schools,” 2015–2016 Civil Rights Data Collection: School Climate and Safety, US Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 2018, https://bit.ly/3aVDJgx . Students of color can be severely disadvantaged if more guns are brought into schools.

Another serious concern about armed staff is the degree to which they can complicate law enforcement’s response. Responding to an active shooter incident can be very complex. Reports and analyses of mass shootings continually show communication errors, narrowly avoided friendly-fire incidents, and a lack of coordination during responses to active shooter incidents. To introduce a new variable—armed teachers—into this equation would serve only to further complicate the law enforcement response. As then–Dallas police chief David Brown said following the shooting of five law enforcement officers in Dallas where the response was complicated by people openly carrying firearms, “We don’t know who the good guy is versus who the bad guy is if everyone starts shooting.” 80 Molly Hennessy-Fiske, “Dallas Police Chief: Open Carry Makes Things Confusing during Mass Shootings,” Los Angeles Times , July 11, 2016, https://lat.ms/2GpxGUw .

Schools that have armed teachers and staff or are considering doing so must examine the many legal liabilities they can incur. Such policies, which are often developed behind closed doors, are frequently poorly drafted and inadequately vetted, leaving teachers and school districts legally exposed. Not only may they be civilly liable, but teachers who carry guns on the basis of a school policy may also expose themselves to criminal liability if the policy is in any way inconsistent with state law. Assuming there is an inconsistency, it is also unlikely that a school’s insurance policy would indemnify the school from monetary claims. Further, even if the policy is crafted with legal precision, the likelihood is high that a school district, school, or teacher would be sued if an armed teacher hurt a student or another person.

Some states have sought to address this issue by specifically immunizing armed teachers or staff from liability claims or by arguing that existing school immunity provisions bar claims against them or cap the amount of damages for which they would be liable. In fact, these provisions do not operate as a complete bar to lawsuits. States also cannot exempt schools from federal civil rights liability. Schools can and will be sued in federal court, and they will not be able to use state immunity provisions to protect themselves from claims.

School Resource Officers Don’t Stop School Shootings but Can Harm Students and Criminalize Typical Adolescent Behavior

School resource officers (SROs) are sworn law enforcement officers who work in schools. SROs have the power to arrest students, and nearly all are armed. Funding sources for these officers range widely, coming from school district funds, law enforcement budgets, or state or federal grants.

Relentless and frightening school gun violence has given districts, teachers, and communities an earnest desire to protect against school shootings. But the practice of policing in schools, including the traditional SRO model, has not been shown to reduce school shooting deaths. Partnership with law enforcement and security personnel in schools both certainly play vital roles in school safety. However, they must be used with training and guardrails to make sure they are making schools safe places for all teachers and students.

To date, placing armed officers in schools has not delivered results in terms of reducing school gun violence. One study examined 179 shootings on school grounds over a nearly two-decade period (from 1999 through 2018) and found no evidence that SROs in schools reduced deaths or injuries from school shooting incidents. 81 Melvin D. Livingston, Matthew E. Rossheim, and Kelli Stidham Hall, “A Descriptive Analysis of School and School Shooter Characteristics and the Severity of School Shootings in the United States, 1999–2018,” Journal of Adolescent Health 64, no. 6 (June 2019): 797–99, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2018.12.006 . Another study of US public schools nationwide from 2014 to 2018 showed that while SROs may reduce school fights—certainly a desirable outcome—they do not prevent gun-related incidents in schools. 82 Lucy C. Sorensen et al., “The Thin Blue Line in Schools: New Evidence on School-Based Policing across the US,” EdWorkingPaper 21-476, October 2021, https://doi.org/10.26300/heqx-rc69 . In fact, a National Institute of Justice-funded study of every school shooting/attempted school shooting from 1980 to 2019 in US K–12 schools found that the rate of death in these incidents was 2.83 times greater in schools with armed guards on the scene than in those without. 83 Jillian Peterson, James Densley, and Gina Erickson, “Presence of Armed School Officials and Fatal and Nonfatal Gunshot Injuries during Mass School Shootings, United States, 1980–2019,” JAMA Network Open 4, no. 2 ( 2021) e2037394, https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.37394 .

While a number of rigorous studies have concluded that SROs do not reduce gun violence in schools, research has identified conclusive evidence of three types of negative effects: criminalizing students, repercussions on student learning, and negative impact on students from historically marginalized groups, including students of color, students with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ students.

The mandate of SROs in schools tends to vary from district to district based on agreements with local police departments. In some school districts, police officers may receive additional training to equip them for working specifically with children. But many do not, resulting in increases in types of disciplinary actions and criminalizing measures, often for common adolescent behaviors such as being arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for cursing. 84 Amir Whitaker et al., “Cops and No Counselors: How the Lack of School Mental Health Staff Is Harming Students,” American Civil Liberties Union, March 2019, https://bit.ly/3xzz0fF . Research has identified increases in a range of disciplinary actions when police are in schools, including suspensions, expulsions, police referrals, and arrests. 85 Sorensen et al., “The Thin Blue Line in Schools.” A national report using US Department of Education data from 2015–2016 found that having police in schools is associated with 3.5 times as many arrests as in schools without police. 86 Whitaker et al., “Cops and No Counselors.” This research does not negate the fact that there are violent situations in which educators or administrators may want to rely on security personnel to mediate, de-escalate and protect students and educators.

Another concerning by-product of armed police officers in schools is their impact on educational outcomes. A national public school study found that they can increase chronic absenteeism, which in turn can contribute to class failure and high school dropout. 87 Sorensen et al., “The Thin Blue Line in Schools.” A 2018 study of over 2.5 million Texas schoolchildren found that exposure to policing significantly decreased graduation rates for both Latinx and white high school students, and college-going among low-income Black, Latinx, and white students in schools that had a federal grant for school police. 88 Emily K. Weisburst, “Patrolling Public Schools: The Impact of Funding for School Police on Student Discipline and Long-Term Education Outcomes,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 38, no. 2 (2019): 338–65, https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22116 .

Finally, police in schools have particular ramifications for students of color, with mounting evidence of more severe consequences for both of the impacts described: criminalization of students and worsened academic outcomes. In Texas, for example, there were almost 2,500 incidents in which SROs used force against students between 2011 and 2015. Over this period, Black students made up just 13 percent of the Texas public school student body yet were victims in 40 percent of SRO use-of-force incidents. 89 Deborah Fowler et al., “Dangerous Discipline: How Texas Schools Are Relying on Law Enforcement, Courts, and Juvenile Probation to Discipline Students,” Texas Appleseed and Texans Care for Children, December 14, 2016, https://report.texasappleseed.org/dangerous-discipline/ .

Beyond use of force, students of color also often face other disproportionate impacts of policing in schools. 90 Emily M. Homer and Benjamin W. Fisher, “Police in Schools and Student Arrest Rates across the United States: Examining Differences by Race, Ethnicity, and Gender,” Journal of School Violence 19, no. 2 (April 2, 2020): 192–204, https://doi.org/10.1080/15388220.2019.1604377 . Black students are three times more likely to be arrested than white students, while Indigenous students are twice as likely as white students to be arrested. Latinx students were also more likely to be arrested than their white counterparts. 91 Whitaker et al., “Cops and No Counselors.”

The disproportionate treatment of students of color is not due to disproportionate misconduct. There is, in fact, no evidence that higher rates of misbehavior among these students account for the far higher likelihood of their being disciplined by school police compared with their white peers. 92 Fowler et al., “Dangerous Discipline”; Nora Gordon, “Disproportionality in Student Discipline: Connecting Policy to Research,” Brookings (blog), January 18, 2018, https://brook.gs/3dlLak7 .

Policing in schools disproportionately affects other students belonging to historically marginalized groups as well. Students with disabilities are almost three times more likely to be subject to school arrest than students without disabilities. 93 Whitaker et al., “Cops and No Counselors.” Research has also found that LGBTQ+ and gender-nonconforming students often report feeling hostility from law enforcement in schools and have a higher likelihood of being stopped by police, suspended, expelled, or arrested. 94 Lambda Legal, “Protected and Served?,” 2015, https://www.lambdalegal.org/protected-and-served/ ; Kathryn E. W. Himmelstein and Hannah Brückner, “Criminal-Justice and School Sanctions against Nonheterosexual Youth: A National Longitudinal Study,” Pediatrics 127, no. 1 (January 1, 2011): 49–57, https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2009-2306 .

All members of school staff play a role in creating a safe and orderly school environment. Using police for general discipline and to make up for staffing shortages in terms of hall, playground, and lunchroom monitors as well as mental health and guidance counselors, can have consequences for students on multiple levels. Given the potential for harmful interaction between students and security personnel, SROs, including armed law enforcement, should be seen as a last resort in school safety priorities.

Students, as well as all members of the school community, deserve schools that are safe and secure, and the necessary function of school safety should be separated from policing and police forces. This may mean that a school retains security personnel to maintain safety in the school environment and confront armed intruders. And also that schools invest in proven school interventions, such as crisis assessment/prevention programs, emergency planning, robust mental health support for students in crisis, and building a trusting school environment where students are willing to come forward when they hear something concerning as means of reducing school shootings.

In districts where schools choose to or are required to have the presence of some sort of security, for the reasons outlined here, Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA recommend that they have an exclusively protective role and be integrated within the school community, be answerable directly to school leaders, and receive training as peace officers with extensive focus on interacting with the school population and de-escalation and minimum use of force techniques.

Student-Involved Shooter Drills Cause Harm to Entire School Communities

In response to concerns about school shootings, many schools elect or are required to perform school shooter drills. These drills typically require students and school staff to go into lockdown and to practice specific emergency procedures, which often include staying quiet, locking the door, and turning off lights.

Since the 1999 Columbine shooting, active shooter drills have proliferated in America’s schools, with school-based shooting drills currently required in at least 40 states. 95 Everytown survey of state laws. But state statutes on this type of drill are often vague and leave the content and identification of who participates up to school administrators. As a result, drills vary dramatically across schools, from some that involve advance parental notification of trauma-sensitive, developmentally appropriate exercises, to others that do not notify parents in advance, deploy “masked gunmen” actors, simulate gunfire, require students as young as three and four years old to be confined in a space for long periods, and fail to inform children that they are in a drill until it is over. 96 Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, and James Doubek, “Experts Worry Active Shooter Drills in Schools Could Be Traumatic for Students,” NPR , November 10, 2019, https://n.pr/2GFX3Ag .

Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA support trauma-informed training for school staff on how to respond to active shooter situations, with instruction in such areas as lockout and evacuation procedures and emergency medical training. However, there is no strong conclusive evidence affirming the value of school shooter drills involving students for either preventing school shootings or protecting the school community when shootings do occur. 97 Cheryl Lero Jonson, “Preventing School Shootings: The Effectiveness of Safety Measures,” Victims & Offenders 12, no. 6 (2017): 956–73, https://doi.org/10.1080/15564886.2017.1307293 . And while the proof of their effectiveness is limited, evidence is mounting on their harm to entire school communities.

In order to examine these concerns using scientific methods, Everytown partnered with the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Social Dynamics and Wellbeing Lab to study the immediate and long-term impacts of active shooter drills on the health and well-being of students, teachers, and parents. Study of activity in over 100 K–12 schools found that school shooter drills can lead to alarming and sustained increases in depression, stress, anxiety, and fear of death among students, parents, and educators. 98 Mai ElSherief et al., “Impacts of School Shooter Drills on the Psychological Well-Being of American K–12 School Communities: A Social Media Study,” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 8, no. 315 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00993-6 .

Further, school drills with students may be ineffective because the preparedness procedures are being shared with the very individuals most likely to perpetrate a school shooting: former and current students. Therefore, while training for teachers and staff on how to respond to an active shooter threat is essential, our organizations do not recommend training for students as a preventative measure. If schools choose to include students in these exercises, Everytown, the AFT, and the NEA recommend, at a minimum, that

Schools should create age- and developmentally-appropriate drill content with the involvement of school personnel, including school-based mental health professionals.
Schools should couple drills with trauma-informed approaches to address students’ well-being.
Drills should not include simulations that mimic an actual incident.
Parents should have advance notice of drills.
Drills should be announced to students and educators prior to the start.
Schools should track data about the efficacy and effects of these drills.

Using the comprehensive plan outlined in this report, policymakers and school communities can work together to prevent active shooter incidents—and gun violence more broadly—in their classrooms. These solutions form a thorough strategy by providing points of intervention at each level of a shooter’s escalation to violence and by creating a system where people with dangerous histories cannot easily access guns. Targeted gun violence prevention policies are designed to intervene when a shooter is intent on getting their hands on a gun. School-based strategies work to provide holistic support for students and intervene in situations where warning signs are showing a student in crisis. Finally, the planning and security strategies present a last opportunity for intervention and ensure that a school is prepared to quickly respond to and neutralize any threat.

Unlike reactive solutions focused on arming staff and teachers, which put US schoolchildren in more danger, the strategies recommended in this report are widely supported by experts and backed by evidence. Our leaders must take responsible action to keep our schools safe; this report offers them a framework for doing so.

Additional Resources

Minimizing the trauma of school shooter drills: a resource for educators and school staff.

Everytown Research & Policy is a program of Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, an independent, non-partisan organization dedicated to understanding and reducing gun violence. Everytown Research & Policy works to do so by conducting methodologically rigorous research, supporting evidence-based policies, and communicating this knowledge to the American public.

In partnership with

American federation of teachers.

The American Federation of Teachers is a union of professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families and our communities.

National Education Association

The National Education Association is the largest labor union in the United States, representing public school teachers and other support personnel, faculty and staffers at colleges and universities, retired educators, and college students preparing to become teachers.

Gun Thefts from Cars: The Largest Source of Stolen Guns

Hospital-based violence intervention programs: a guide to implementation and costing, freedom from fear of hate-fueled violence: preventing transgender homicides.

The statistics make it clear: violence against transgender people is a gun violence issue.

Those Who Serve: Addressing Firearm Suicide Among Military Veterans

Did you know?

Every day, more than 120 people in the United States are killed with guns, twice as many are shot and wounded and countless others are impacted by acts of gun violence.

Everytown Research analysis of CDC, WONDER, Underlying Cause of Death , 2018–2022; Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) nonfatal firearm injury data, 2020; and SurveyUSA Market Research Study #26602 , 2022.

Last updated: 5.7.2024

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Student, Teachers, and Officers Preventing (STOP) School Violence Program

The STOP School Violence Act of 2018 seeks to improve school security by providing students and teachers with the tools they need to recognize, respond quickly to, and prevent acts of violence. Both the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) offer grants to improve security within our Nation's schools and on school grounds through evidence-based programs.

How BJA Supports the STOP School Violence Act of 2018

BJA provides grants to states, units of local government, and Indian tribes to:

Train school personnel and educate students on preventing student violence against others and themselves.
Develop and operate technology solutions, such as anonymous reporting systems for threats of school violence, including mobile telephone applications, hotlines, and internet websites.
School threat assessment and intervention teams that may include coordination with law enforcement agencies and school personnel
Specialized training for school officials in responding to mental health crises
Support any other measure that, in the determination of the BJA Director, may provide a significant improvement in training, threat assessments and reporting, and violence prevention.

Evidence-based Strategies and Programs

Award recipients must use evidence-based strategies and programs such as those identified by the National Institute of Justice's Comprehensive School Safety Initiative . Specifically, the STOP Violence Act requires that any programs, practices, technologies, or equipment funded by BJA demonstrate a statistically significant effect on outcomes based on:

Strong evidence from at least one well-designed and well-implemented experimental study
Moderate evidence from at least one well-designed and well-implemented quasi-experimental study

Promising evidence from at least one well-designed and well-implemented correlational study with statistical controls for selection bias.

Guidelines for Using Technology

All technology must be consistent with best practices for school security, including:

Applicable standards for school security established by a federal or state government agency
Findings and recommendations of public commissions and task forces established to make recommendations or set standards for school security
Compliance with all applicable codes, including building and life safety codes

Eligibility (Who May Apply)

The following entities are eligible to apply:

State governments
City or township governments
County governments
Units of local governments
Federally recognized Native American tribal governments
Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
Private institutions of higher education
Independent school districts
Public and state-controlled institutions of higher education

Applicants may propose to use the grant to contract with, or make one or more subawards to:

Local educational agencies
Nonprofit organizations
Units of local government or tribal organizations

NOTE: Under the STOP School Violence Act, BJA funds cannot be used for the purchase of target hardening equipment to secure schools such as cameras, security systems, fencing, locks, etc. In addition, these funds cannot be used to hire armed security officers or school resource officers. Applicants interested in funding for target hardening equipment should see the COPS School Violence Prevention Program .

See the Funding page for information about current opportunities available from BJA through this program.

Educate your inbox

Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.

Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.

What do you think? Leave a respectful comment.

Elizabeth Englander, Bridgewater State University Elizabeth Englander, Bridgewater State University

Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/analysis-10-ways-we-can-prevent-school-shootings-right-now

Analysis: 10 ways we can prevent school shootings right now

After a shooter killed 17 people at a Florida high school, many have expressed frustration at the political hand-wringing over gun control and calls for prayer .

As a parent, I understand the desire for practical responses to school shootings. I also absolutely believe the government should do more to prevent such incidents. But the gun control debate has proven so divisive and ineffective that I am weary of waiting for politicians to act.

I study the kind of aggressive childhood behavior that often predates school shootings. That research suggests what communities and families can start doing today to better protect children. Here are 10 actions we can all take while the federal government drags its heels.

What schools can do

Because educators observe students’ emotional and behavioral development daily, they are best positioned to detect troubled behaviors and intervene. In Los Angeles, for example, schools have successfully used outreach and training to identify potentially violent students before problems occur.

1. Teach social and emotional skills

Children learn social skills from everyday interactions with each other. Playtime teaches young people how to control their emotions, recognize others’ feelings and to negotiate. Neighborhood “kick the can” games, for example, require cooperation to have fun – all without adult supervision.

Today, frequent social media use and a decrease in free play time has reduced children’s opportunities to learn these basic social skills .

But social and emotional skills can – and should – be taught in school as a way to prevent student violence. Students with more fluent social skills connect better with others and may be more able to recognize troubled peers who need help.

2. Hire more counselors and school resource officers

Due to budget cuts, many schools have few or no trained school psychologists, social workers or adjustment counselors on staff . These mental health professionals are society’s first line of defense against troubled students – especially with the current increase in adolescent depression and anxiety .

In my opinion, school resource officers – trained police officers who work with children – are also helpful for students. While untrained officers may pose a threat to students , well-trained school resource officers can connect with kids who have few other relationships, acting as a support system. They are also on hand to respond quickly if crime or violence erupts.

Putting trained school resource officers and counselors in every school will cost money, but I believe it will save lives.

3. Use technology to identify troubled students

Technology may challenge kids’ social development, but it can also be harnessed for good. Anonymous reporting systems – perhaps text-message based – can make it easier for parents and students to alert law enforcement and school counselors to kids who seem disconnected or disturbed. That enables early intervention.

In Steamboat Springs, Colorado, one such tip appeared to prevent extreme violence in May 2017. Police took a young man who’d threatened to harm his peers into protective custody before he could act on his words.

What communities can do

Communities also help raise children. With many eyes and ears, they can detect often smaller problems before young people grow into violence.

4. Doctors should conduct standard mental health screenings

Extreme violence is almost always preceded by certain behavioral problems. These typically include a propensity toward aggression , a marked lack of social connectedness , indications of serious mental illness and a fascination with violence and guns .

Doctors could detect these problems early on with a standardized screening at health checkups. If concerns arise, referrals to counseling or other mental health professionals might follow.

5. Enlist social media companies in the effort to detect threats

Most young people today use social media to express their feelings and aspirations. In the case of school shooters, these posts are often violent . A single violent post is hardly a guarantee of homicidal acts, of course. But evidence strongly indicates that repeated expressions of this nature can be a sign of trouble .

I would like to see companies like Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat create algorithms that identify repeated online threats and automatically alert local law enforcement.

What parents can do

Parents and guardians are often the first to detect their child’s emotional struggles. Here are some tips for monitoring and promoting healthy emotional development at home.

6. Think critically about your child’s social media use

From virtual war games to cruel trolls, the internet is full of violence. The relationship between violent content and aggression hasn’t been consistent in research: Some studies see no relationship at all , while others find some correlation between violent video games and violent behavior.

This mixed evidence suggests that online content affects children differently , so parents must assess how well their child handles it. If your daughter likes “Assassin’s Creed” but is gentle, socially successful and happy, the onscreen violence may not be strongly impacting her.

But if your child is drawn to violent games and tends to be aggressive or troubled, discuss the situation with your pediatrician or school counselor.

7. Consider what your child is missing out on

Is your child sleeping properly? Do your kids socialize with other young people? These two behaviors are linked to mental health in children , and excessive screen time can reduce or diminish the quality of both .

Make sure digital devices aren’t disrupting your kids’ sleep , and schedule play dates if your kids don’t make plans on their own.

8. Assess your child’s relationships

Like adults, children need confidants to feel invested in and connected with their community. The trusted person can be parent, a family member or a friend – just make sure someone’s playing that role.

For children who struggle to make friends and build relationships, there are programs that can help them learn how.

9. Fret productively about screen time

Research shows that excessive screen time can damage kids’ brains . That’s alarming in part because parents can’t realistically keep kids entirely off devices.

So rather than just fret over screen time, focus instead on how children can benefit from a variety of activities . Evidence shows that children who experience different pursuits over the course of their day – from sports and music to an after-school job – are happier and healthier for it.

10. Talk with your child

This is both the easiest and hardest way to make sure your kids are doing OK. Children, especially teenagers, don’t always want to talk about how life is going. Ask anyway.

My research shows that simply asking children about their friends, their technology use and their day is an important way to show you care. Even if they don’t respond, your interest demonstrates that you’re there for them.

Try this one now. Ask your children what they’re thinking about the shooting in Florida and how they like their friends and school. Then listen.

Elizabeth Englander , Professor of Psychology, and the Director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center (MARC), Bridgewater State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation . Read the original article .

Professor of Psychology, and the Director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center (MARC), Bridgewater State University

Support Provided By: Learn more

Commentary | Educating kids about school violence begins at…

Commentary | Educating kids about school violence begins at home | GUEST COMMENTARY

Spectators run for cover as multiple shots ring out during the kickoff of the 2023-2024 varsity football season between the Dunbar Poets and the Loyola Blakefield Dons at William F. "Sugar" Cain Field in Baltimore Friday Sept. 1, 2023. FILE (Karl Merton Ferron/Baltimore Sun Staff)

Maryland has not been spared from such violence and last year reported a rise in incidents of cyberbullying, harassment, intimidation, physical aggression and other behavior threats. I was recently told by a friend who teaches at a public high school that he looked on in horror and almost disbelief at seeing a female student slam the head of another female student into a locker. Parents have expressed concern that students feel unsafe at school, or on their way to and from school. School violence not only disrupts learning but also has a negative impact on students, school staff and families.

There are no simple solutions. Enacting legislation similar to that recently passed in Tennessee and other states allowing teachers, educators and other staff members to carry concealed handguns on school campuses is not a core solution. Much more is required.

First, there are parental and community roles. Parents, grandparents, guardians, coaches, the faith-based community and others who are in a position to reach and influence young people must be alerted, informed and educated about school violence. It is the parents and those with influence who must communicate and have conversations with students instilling, inculcating and reminding them of the importance of appropriate behavior, responsibility, moral values, respect for others and appreciating the difference between right and wrong. Those closest to students are in a key position to counsel the students as to the dangers of student violence, and to encourage them to contribute to a school environment that fosters safety and growth of all students.

Second, preventing school violence requires that members of the broad education community pay attention to signs of trauma and distress. Often, a multi-disciplinary approach is needed to address the complex challenges of behavior threats. That said, with the support of additional resources and funding, teachers, counselors, security, social workers, mental health professionals and all staff, should be accorded adequate training as to how to effectively identify, report, investigate and address incidents of school violence.

Third, the students themselves must be held accountable. In the last several years, a number of school districts, including Maryland’s, in an effort to consider the rights of students, have reformed their codes of conduct to enact more progressive policies of student conduct and behavior. This is understandable, particularly in view of the disproportional impact that punishment and discipline have imposed on students of color. Nevertheless, students bent on violence must not develop an attitude that “nothing really will happen to me if I insist on fighting or that there are no consequences if I am caught bringing a weapon to school.” Educational policymakers must undertake a fresh review of student codes of conduct and, if necessary, revise them to develop a fair, consistent, effective code of conduct to promote school safety and not undermine or handcuff the school officials from imposing appropriate sanctions and punishment for those committing egregious acts of violence in schools.

Alexander Williams Jr. ([email protected]) is a retired judge for Maryland’s U.S. District Court. He is the founder and executive director of the Judge Alexander Williams Jr. Center for Education, Justice and Ethics within the African American Studies Department at the University of Maryland.

More in Commentary

Leo Wise, seen shaking hands, arrives at Baltimore federal courthouse.

Commentary | Criticism of Leo Wise wrong on facts and the law | READER COMMENTARY

Women need every tool in their toolbox to diagnose cancer as early as possible to drive better health outcomes.

Commentary | Women need to self advocate for their own breast health | GUEST COMMENTARY

Despite how difficult it has been for Black Americans to live through segregation and then integration, integration hasn't even been sustainable.

Commentary | 70 years after Brown v. Board ended school segregation, racial tensions persist | GUEST COMMENTARY

The Preakness Stakes is a national treasure. It attracts spectators to Baltimore from across the country to watch a premiere thoroughbred horse race.

Commentary | Armstrong Williams: Remodeling the Preakness at Pimlico | GUEST COMMENTARY

Skip to main content
Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Your Health

Treatments & Tests
Health Inc.
Public Health

Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Jonathan Lambert

A close-up of a woman's hand writing in a notebook.

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

Is this some kind of joke? A school facing shortages starts teaching standup comedy

In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

Shots - Health News

Feeling artsy here's how making art helps your brain.

"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

handwriting

Former FBI agent: ‘We have to want to have less firearms violence, or we won’t have it.’

LANSING, Mich. (WILX)—On Wednesday, Jackson hosted a discussion about gun violence and how to stop it.

Katherine Schweit is a Jackson native and former Chicago prosecutor turned FBI agent. She was tasked with leading the FBI’s active shooter initiatives immediately after the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting back in 2012. Now, she travels around the country to tell people how they can help stop violence in schools, businesses, and in their daily lives.

“We have to want to have less firearms violence, or we won’t have it. We won’t do a better job at it unless we choose to do it,” said Schweit.

In uncharted territory, she was tasked with how to define what is classified as a shooting that has multiple casualties.

“We worked with the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, we’re going to call these active shooters because active shooters are when an individual is actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a crowded area,” said Schweit.

Now that it’s been defined, she says people are always concerned about sending their kids to school, but people don’t know that active shooter situations happen more often at businesses than anywhere else.

“We found that for every two shootings in a place of business, there was only 1 in a school,” said Schweit, pushing for better mental health resources in schools but also in general nationwide, “We also found that in middle schools and high schools, middle school and high school kids shoot up their own schools. Your problem is inside the school.”

How can normal people stop an active shooter, though? Schweit says to act before the shooting occurs.

“You could be saving your life or the life of a loved one by calling law enforcement, calling a school counselor, calling a pastor, and saying I’m concerned about this person. Of the 160 shootings, 13 percent of those were successfully and safely interrupted by an unarmed civilian, 13%,” said Schweit.

Schweit also brought up the Oxford High School shooting, where she says not only was the trial unprecedented with charging the parents but also that Ethan Crumbley was charged with terrorism. She says this is the first time a school shooter was charged with that, but she doesn’t believe it will be the last.

Subscribe to our News 10 newsletter and YouTube page to receive the latest local news and weather. Looking to hire people, or grow your business through advertising? Gray Digital Media is your one-stop marketing solution. Learn more.

Judge rules dismissal with prejudice in lawsuit between Mel Tucker, Brenda Tracy’s nonprofit

Scottie Scheffler warms up before the second round of the PGA Championship golf tournament at...

Scottie Scheffler, charged with assault after officer dragged near fatal crash, tees off at PGA Championship

Brighton man dies after car crash in Wheatfield Township

Crash on MLK, Southland Ave in Lansing leaves car flipped on side

2 teens injured after truck crashes into them while go-karting in Hillsdale County

Fall trial set for pharmacist in 11 Michigan meningitis deaths after plea deal talks fizzle

From Jackson High to Harvard University, graduating senior is heading to the Ivy League

Local expert: ‘We’re not very far removed’ 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education

Celebrating all things Mid-Michigan: 517 weekend kicks off in downtown Lansing

Lansing area hospitals welcome 517 Day babies

Australia tries to stop a violence against women 'epidemic', starting with schools

"So, let's talk about porn," says Ethan West to the classroom of Australian teenagers. Most look slightly awkward. All are uncharacteristically quiet.

"Do any porn videos start off with a relationship where the actors talk about feelings or consent?" he continues. More silence.

At Kellyville High School, north of Sydney, this is just one tricky conversation the 15-year-olds will be having today.

From sexist jokes and coercive control to sexual assault and brutal jealousy-fuelled assaults - there's not much off limits on the Love Bites programme which national charity Napcan has delivered to thousands of students.

The "respectful relationship education" title sounds a little bland. But it is being delivered against a backdrop of violence against women in this country that has been labelled a "national crisis". At its core: trying to shift attitudes and behaviour that has contributed to that culture.

The high-profile stabbing murders of six people at Sydney's Bondi Junction shopping centre last month - in which police said it seemed "obvious" that attacker Joel Cauchi targeted women - brought the issue into sharper focus.

In the month since then, at least three Australian women have been murdered, allegedly by partners or exes.

So far this year, 28 women have been violently killed in Australia, according to campaign group Destroy the Joint which runs the Counting Dead Women project. At the same point last year it was 15.

In 2023, 64 women were killed by someone known to them. In the UK, a country with more than twice the population, the number was 100, according to the Counting Dead Women project in the UK .

Two weeks ago, tens of thousands of people around Australia took part in marches calling for gendered violence to be declared a national emergency.

"For a young woman growing up in Australia it's scary, knowing these things are happening," says student Shriya, who listens intently at the back of the classroom as the group is given small cards with statements such as "equality", "slut-shaming" and "sending unwanted nudes".

They're asked to place the phrases along a line of masking tape on the floor - labelled "respect and consent culture" at one end, and "violence and abuse culture" at the other.

"Think of the line today as a metaphor for your gut feeling," says Tara Gleig, a student support officer who is helping run Love Bites. "Your body will tell you when something's not right. I want you to be able to know where that is."

As a senior constable with New South Wales Police, Ethan West's experience of attending domestic violence calls made him want to fix what he calls an "epidemic".

"Every two minutes police are called to a domestic violence situation in Australia," he says. And he thinks that for the younger generation, domestic violence is on a "new battlefield".

"Everything's online - there's stalking, harassment. And a lot of the problems with relationships are the sending of intimate images. Young people are sharing nude photos all the time. The relationship may end and they're shared with others. That's a domestic violence offence."

For 16-year-old Kya, who took part in Love Bites a year ago, growing up in Australia leaves her "on edge" - not just the threat of violence but the micro-aggressions of sexist jokes and a feeling she is less valued than the boys in her class and community.

"There are so many new advances in society, but this is still something that's happening," she says. "You have someone making a sexist comment [but] really it's not that difficult to evolve from."

She thinks more boys in her year group need to "step up", though some are clearly committed to doing more.

"As a guy, I feel the need to be more masculine, more strong," says Izaiah - the chattiest of the boys in the session we observe.

"Relationship violence is very serious. Learning about it is a very big part of growing up as an Australian teenager."

Yet change is hard to come by. 10 years ago, Rosie Batty's son Luke was killed by his father, Greg Anderson . Ms Batty went on to become one of the country's top campaigners against family violence, but the national conversation has frequently been reignited by further devastating incidents.

These include the murders of teenagers Jack and Jennifer Edwards, who were shot by their father John Edwards in 2018; the killings of Hannah Clarke and her three young children , whose car was set alight by her estranged husband Rowan Baxter in 2020; and last year's murder of young woman Lilie James by Paul Thijssen, with whom she'd had a fleeting relationship.

So while the recent wave of violence against women has applied pressure on state and federal governments to do more, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's call for change across all of society is alarmingly familiar.

So too are other concerns. A lack of mental health support, historically inadequate police approaches to domestic violence complaints, and the over-representation of indigenous Australians as both perpetrators and victims of family violence are just three of the issues which come up again and again.

"At the end of the day, educating young people and this programme going into schools is one piece of a very, very big puzzle," Tara Gleig says. "To be able to make change and [make] that generational culture, societal change, it has to be a collaborative approach."

Under the floodlights of a chilly Australian Rules football pitch In Melbourne's inner suburbs, another community programme is trying to do just that. They want to inject change into perhaps the most traditionally macho slice of Australian society - the sports field.

"I've played footy since I was a kid," says Matthew Holmes, who at the age of 38 has heard plenty of locker room talk. "I've been at teams where it was very blokey - which in itself was okay - but it did tend to devolve, especially once you got alcohol involved."

He is much happier to be now playing at West Brunswick, a club that has been around for nearly a century but which seven years ago launched a women's team, meeting demand from female players. The change has slowly, and very deliberately, altered the culture there.

New changing rooms are being built to be more inclusive, and they have also brought in some outside help.

"Lots of women and gender-diverse people are wanting to play sport and they're coming into clubs that are traditionally male-dominated," says Dominic Alford of Relationships Australia Victoria, whose Healthy Clubs initiative is trying to tackle gender violence through sport.

"It's a bit of a challenge for those clubs to make the shift to include those people. We talk about respectful relationships and building resilience so they can go out and have those conversations with each other in their sporting clubs but also in their personal life and in their community."

He says the past few weeks of headlines about the high-profile killing of women in Australia has seen a flurry of enquiries from sports clubs and also workplaces.

It's deeply personal for Kristy de Pelligrini, who remembers her younger days around football clubs. "We played netball and ran the canteen and did all the other jobs around the place. The guys got to play footy and that was it." Now she plays for one of three West Brunswick women's teams.

Teammate Nahkita Wolfe was told at 11 that she had to stop playing Australian Rules football because she was a girl.

"Australian culture and Australian identity is so defined by sport," she says. "It's something that unites us, it's something that brings us together, but yet... for half the population we're often not welcomed into those communities and that's obviously really distressing."

It's a chasm which plays into a much bigger problem.

"You speak to any woman pretty much, we'll be able to tell you about experiences of sexual assault, domestic violence, different things that they've experienced and I'm no exception," says Nahkita.

"A lot of the experiences that I've had have been related to men who have been able to get away with it, because they've always been able to get away with everything because they're good at sport."

Change has been slow - but there is movement.

"There were definitely some comments that these days you wouldn't walk past anymore - things like 'girls can't play footy' or 'you play like a girl,'" says 26-year-old Conor Fowler, who's been playing Australian Rules football since he was a boy.

"People are [now] asking a question when they might hear something - so what do you mean by that? And just a simple question like that makes people reflect on what they've said."

While this recent wave of violence has made people think about how to fix the problem, those working in the gender violence space say government-funded projects are not a cure-all.

"Money is always important but this is an everyone issue," says Senior Constable West. "If everyone plays their part it doesn't matter how much money is thrown at it - if we're all working at this together we're going to make a difference. No money can fix a problem that not enough people are taking up and championing."

Campaigners calling for an end to violence against women demonstrated in cities around Australia

Is it time to stop men congregating in groups?

It’s an issue that’s been deemed awful and exhausting and a new idea has been suggested that could really help, however men will not love it.

Labor pledges $1 billion into domestic violence crisis housing

American fires up at ‘weak’ Australians

‘Supernatural’: Big Vatican announcement

19yo Aussie on $300k buys her first house

In the 12-hour window from 6pm to 6am on a State of Origin game night, women and children in NSW are almost 40 per cent more likely to become the victims of domestic violence, according to research from the Foundation for Alcohol Abuse and Education.

In this ‘sporting nation’ of ours, where four out of every five Australians consider sport to be one of the most significant parts of our culture, what happens in the athletic arena is often a microcosm of wider Australian society.

And in Australian society, it is unsafe to be a woman.

This weekend, just a week after AFL clubs donned black armbands and held a minute of silence before their games in Round 8 to take a collective stand against violence against women, players from the Donvale women’s footy team ran onto the field to play the second half of a game at Knox Football and Netball Club.

Here, they discovered just how true that statement is.

Male players from the Knox team allegedly stuck out their feet to try and trip the female players as they entered the field, yelling out ‘ratings’ based on their appearance.

As 3AW’s Jacqui Felgate revealed on air Tuesday morning, “The players were rightly upset but they played out the rest of the game.”

“How utterly awful and how utterly exhausting that we’re still at the point where women can’t play sport without being objectified.”

Knox released a statement on Monday with a letter sent by Knox Football and Netball Club president Paul Blair.

Jacqui Felgate was the first to report the incident. Photo: Facebook and Knox Football Club.

“We have extended our deepest apologies to the Donvale Football club, and will continue to work closely with them and the EFNL to keep them informed on the outcome and actions we will take as a result of our investigation.

“The safety of all players is paramount and we do not tolerate anti-social behaviour or behaviour that is disrespectful to women.”

The club on Thursday stood down the entire team while investigations continue.

But it’s not just the sporting field where groups of men pose a threat to women.

The outrage comes hot on the heels of a scandal out of elite private school Yarra Valley Grammar, where news broke last week that male students had circulated a list ranking female students from “wifey” to “unrapeable”.

It is but the latest in a long line of instances of disturbing behaviour from private schoolboys around the country.

In September 2022, a group of students from Sydney’s Knox Grammar were exposed for sharing sexist, racist, pedophilic and anti-semitic content via a group chat on Discord, much of which was “too graphic” for the Daily Telegraph, which broke the story, to print.

The following month, students from Melbourne all-boys Catholic school, St Bernard’s College, were accused of performing the Hitler salute in class, etching swastikas into whiteboards, making a young female teacher feel concerned about her personal safety and simulating anal sex while on a tram.

A 2021 study from Monash University found female teachers in elite private boys’ schools were particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment because of the “status and unique constructs” of these kind of settings.

All of which begs the question: if we have so many examples of the threat posed to women’s safety by allowing large groups of males to congregate together, should we be considering limiting their ability to do so?

Would it be best to stop men from congregating? Picture: iStock

In 2014, the controversial Sydney lockout laws were introduced in response to three coward punch incidents across the preceding two years in which three young men were punched in three unprovoked attacks, all tragically dying from their injuries.

In 2012, “consorting’ laws were introduced to tackle what Police claimed was a growing threat by outlaw bikie gangs, making it an offence for members to congregate and “intimidate” in certain places or situations.

Perhaps, given the clear and consistent evidence that aggressive and anti-social behaviour is heightened when men congregate in groups, authorities should be looking at ways to curtail this?

Of course it won’t address the sickening number of men who murder women at a rate of more than one per week in this country, or the alarming rate of sexual assaults.

But perhaps it will prevent some of the normalised misogyny so rampant in some of these groups.

Perhaps, without being exposed to the dehumanising of women and other minorities that seems to occur in some groups of men and teenage boys, the portion of those groups who do go on to commit more extreme acts of violence might avoid being radicalised in the first place.

Obviously, the impact on men would be severe.

We’re at an unacceptably heightened risk of violence from men. Picture: iStock.

No footy training. No group chats. No rowdy table of mates at pub trivia.

But if, as a man, the idea of your civil liberties being impinged upon in such a profound way rankles, ask yourself: what civil liberties do you believe women should have when we walk out into the world?

Because whether we’re doing the shopping on an innocuous Saturday afternoon, walking to our car after dark, playing a game of weekend footy or simply doing our jobs, the truth is inescapable: we’re at an unacceptably heightened risk of violence from men.

More Coverage

We duck our heads, we cross the street, we hold our keys in our fists, we smile back (because being ‘nice’ mistakenly makes us feel a bit safer), we don’t make eye-contact, we don’t walk alone, we pretend to be on the phone, we pretend to have a boyfriend, we pretend to laugh, we pretend we’re not scared.

But we are, and it impinges upon our civil liberties every single day. If we’re lucky, that’s all it does, but as we well know, many of us don’t get away so lightly.

And until men in groups start raising their voices against this abuse, rather than staying silent or worse, crying #notallmen, I’m hard-pressed to think of a reason why this lack of personal freedom should be our burden to carry instead of theirs.

An American podcaster has branded Australia “lame” and “weak” after going on an emotional “anti-woke” rant online.

The Vatican has made a huge change to “supernatural phenomena,” such as bleeding crosses, following a spate of bogus apparitions.

A 19-year-old has revealed the “hardest” thing about purchasing her own home and how she’s already paid off 65 per cent of her loan.

Jump to navigation

Search form

DOJ O-BJA-2024-172090: 2024 STOP School Violence Program Competitive Solicitation

Research category, funding type, internal deadline.

Submit ticket request // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1

An applicant may only submit one application in response to the solicitation. An entity may be proposed as a subrecipient (subgrantee) in more than one application.

The STOP School Violence Program is designed to improve school safety by providing students, teachers, and staff with the tools they need to recognize, respond quickly to, and prevent acts of violence. It provides funding to states, units of local government, federally recognized Indian tribes, public agencies (e.g., school districts, towns, cities and municipalities, individual schools, police departments, sheriff’s departments, governmental mental health service providers, and health departments), and nonprofit entities (including private schools). The program implements training that will improve school climate using school-based behavioral threat assessments and/or intervention teams to identify school violence risks among students, technological solutions shown to increase school safety such as anonymous reporting technology, and other school safety strategies that assist in preventing violence.

With this solicitation, the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) seeks to increase school safety by implementing solutions that will improve school climate. Solutions include school-based behavioral threat assessments and/or intervention teams to identify school violence risks among students, technological innovations that are shown to increase school safety such as anonymous reporting technology, and other school safety strategies that assist in preventing violence.

Program URL

External deadline, solicitation type.

Subscribe to the UArizona Impact in Action newsletter to receive featured stories and event info to connect you with UArizona's research, innovation, entrepreneurial ventures, and societal impacts.

Subscribe now

IMAGES

⇉Arm Teachers To Stop School Violence Essay Example
School Violence Essay
Violence Essay
Violence in Schools: Causes and Solutions Free Essay Example
How to Prevent School Violence
School Violence Free Essay Example

COMMENTS

School Violence: Types, Causes, Impact, and Prevention
School violence can take many forms. These are some of the types of school violence: Physical violence, which includes any kind of physical aggression, the use of weapons, as well as criminal acts like theft or arson. Psychological violence, which includes emotional and verbal abuse. This may involve insulting, threatening, ignoring, isolating ...
How to Prevent School Violence
This is an awareness program to fight violence especially among the teenagers. Teachers need to consider the strategy of enhancing the responsibility aspects in the minds of the learners in the effort of making them understand the importance of stopping the violence at all costs. The learners should know that the act is illegal and immoral.
School shootings: What we know about them, and what we can do to
On the morning of Nov. 30, 2021, a 15-year-old fatally shot four students and injured seven others at his high school in Oakland County, Michigan. It's just one of the latest tragedies in a long ...
Fast Fact: Preventing School Violence
According to YRBS results from 13, 677 students: About 1 in 5 high school students reported being bullied on school property in the last year. 8% of high school students had been in a physical fight on school property one or more times during the 12 months before the survey. More than 7% of high school students had been threatened or injured ...
School Violence Prevention
Hold regular school-preparedness drills (e.g., intruder alerts, weather, fire, lockdown, evacuation). Create school-community partnerships to enhance safety measures for students beyond school property. Cite school safety incident data. Many school districts have local data that support a declining trend in school violence.
Making Schools Safe for Students
Today, nearly 100% of schools serving 12- to 18-year-olds use at least one safety or security measure. [4] This includes locked doors, security cameras, hallway supervision, controlled building access, metal detectors, and locker checks. However, use of these measures varies by factors such as the school's population and location.
Protecting children from violence in school
Globally, half of students aged 13-15 - some 150 million - report experiencing peer-to-peer violence in and around school. Slightly more than 1 in 3 students between the ages of 13 and 15 experience bullying, and about the same proportion are involved in physical fights. Around 720 million school-aged children live in countries where they ...
13 reasons why we need to end violence in schools
Factors that increase a young person's vulnerability to violence include disability, extreme poverty, ethnicity and sexual orientation or gender identity. In 39 countries in Europe and North America, 17 million young adolescents admitted to bullying peers at school. One in three students aged 13-15 is involved in physical fights in schools.
PDF School-based Violence Prevention
Contents Introduction 2 Section 1: Getting started: Develop leadership, school policies and coordination methods 12 Section 2: Collect data on violence and monitor changes over time 18 Section 3: Prevent violence through curriculum-based activities 24 Section 4: Work with teachers on values and beliefs and train them
What you need to know about school violence and bullying
School violence refers to all forms of violence that takes place in and around schools and is experienced by students and perpetrated by other students, teachers and other school staff. This includes bullying and cyberbullying. Bullying is one of the most pervasive forms of school violence, affecting 1 in 3 young people.
School violence, causes and solution: [Essay Example], 1017 words
The causes of school violence are multifaceted and can be categorized into four main groups: individual, familial, institutional, and community-based risk factors. Individual factors encompass various elements that contribute to a propensity for violence, such as inherent aggressiveness, substance abuse, lower intelligence, birth complications ...
10 Things You Can Do to Prevent Violence in Your School Community
Attend all parent orientation activities and parent-teacher conferences. Volunteer to assist with school functions and join your local PTA. Help your children seek a balance between schoolwork and outside activities. Parents also need to support school rules and goals. 6. Join Your PTA or a Violence Prevention Coalition.
Cause & Effect Essay: School Violence
The effects of school violence can lead to division and severe mental and physical trauma for both perpetrators and victims alike. The main cause of school violence is a combination of weak community relations and a lack of a firm hand within both schools and communities. To effectively deal with the issue, both of these need addressing.
School Violence
20 essay samples found. School violence encompasses physical violence, bullying, and any other form of aggressive behavior in educational settings. Essays on school violence could explore the psychological, social, and systemic factors contributing to violent behaviors, prevention and intervention strategies, and the impacts on academic and ...
What Are the Best Ways to Prevent Bullying in Schools?
Building a positive school climate. School climate can be difficult to define, though possible to measure. It is the "felt sense" of being in a school, which can arise from a greeting, the way a problem is resolved, or how people work together; it is a school's "heart and soul," its "quality and character.".
Six ways to prevent violence against children in schools
New research led by International Alert in Lebanon has revealed that 75% of children aged 7-12 have directly witnessed violence in the past 12 months, and 50% experienced bullying. What makes these findings especially alarming is that the students who were part of the research attended classes in the centres of NGOs, where children are ...
What schools and elected officials can do to prevent school shootings : NPR
School safety researchers support tightening age limits for gun ownership, from 18 to 21. They say 18 years old is too young to be able to buy a gun; the teenage brain is just too impulsive. And ...
About School Violence
School violence is violence that occurs in the school setting, such as on school property or on the way to or from school, or during a school-sponsored event or on the way to or from a school-sponsored event. It describes violent acts that disrupt learning and have a negative effect on students, schools, and the broader community. Examples of ...
How To Stop Shootings and Gun Violence in Schools
2. Outline a Plan to Prevent Gun Violence in Schools. The report provides a proactive plan to prevent active shooter incidents and, more broadly, address gun violence in all its forms in America's schools. Using what we know about school gun violence, our organizations have put together a plan that focuses on intervening before violence occurs.
Student, Teachers, and Officers Preventing (STOP) School Violence
The STOP School Violence Act of 2018 seeks to improve school security by providing students and teachers with the tools they need to recognize, respond quickly to, and prevent acts of violence. Both the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) offer grants to improve security within our ...
Analysis: 10 ways we can prevent school shootings right now
5. Enlist social media companies in the effort to detect threats. Most young people today use social media to express their feelings and aspirations. In the case of school shooters, these posts ...
Causes, Effects and Prevention of Violence in Schools
3. Conclusion. The findings above reveal that school violence in Vietnam and other parts all over the world is more and more serious. It damaged much not only the educational system, cultural beauty but also the future of a country. Sadly, there are many causes of this issue and they cannot be solved soon.
Essay on Violence for Students and Children in English
Long Essay on Violence is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10. Violence is the expression of physical or verbal force against self or different, compelling action against one can on pain of being hurt. The word violence covers a broad spectrum. It will vary from physical words between 2 beings, wherever a small injury could also result, to ...
Educating kids about school violence begins at home
School districts across America have reported various incidents of aggression, including shootings and physical fights on school property and at school-sponsored events, slapping and physically ...
As schools reconsider cursive, research homes in on handwriting's brain
As schools reconsider cursive, research homes in on handwriting's brain benefits : ... "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.
Intimate Partner Violence: Access to Protection Beyond the Pandemic
Abstract. Civil protection orders are the most common legal remedy victims pursue in response to intimate partner violence (IPV). They are more empowering for victims than the criminal legal system because victims themselves drive the process, instead of prosecutors, and they offer more flexible and tailored relief.
Former FBI agent: 'We have to want to have less firearms violence, or
Now, she travels around the country to tell people how they can help stop violence in schools, businesses, and in their daily lives. "We have to want to have less firearms violence, or we won ...
Australia tries to stop a violence against women 'epidemic ...
The "respectful relationship education" title sounds a little bland. But it is being delivered against a backdrop of violence against women in this country that has been labelled a "national crisis".
Domestic violence in Australia: Is it time to stop men congregating in
The outrage comes hot on the heels of a scandal out of elite private school Yarra Valley Grammar, where news broke last week that male students had circulated a list ranking female students from ...
DOJ O-BJA-2024-172090: 2024 STOP School Violence Program Competitive
The STOP School Violence Program is designed to improve school safety by providing students, teachers, and staff with the tools they need to recognize, respond quickly to, and prevent acts of violence. It provides funding to states, units of local government, federally recognized Indian tribes, public agencies (e.g., school districts, towns ...

How to Identify and Prevent School Violence

Recognizing the Signs of School Violence

Types of School Violence

Causes of School Violence

Impact of School Violence

Impact on Children Committing Violence

Impact on Children Victimized by School Violence

Impact on Children Who Witness School Violence

Impact on Parents

Preventing School Violence

A Word From Verywell

How to Prevent School Violence Essay

School shootings: What we know about them, and what we can do to prevent them

Who is perpetrating school shootings?

What can we do?

NASP: The National Association of School Psychologists

In This Section

Brief Facts and Tips

References:

Related Resources

Talking to Children About Violence: Tips for Parents and Teachers

Making Schools Safe for Students

Historical School Safety Efforts

Evaluating School Safety Technology

Comprehensive School Safety Initiative

Moving Forward

About This Article

About the author

Cite this Article

What you need to know about school violence and bullying

More on this subject

Other recent articles

How to Prevent School Violence: Analysis of Causes and Solutions

Table of contents

Cite this Essay

Related Essays

Still can’t find what you need?

Related Essays on Youth Violence

Related Topics

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

In This Section

10 Things You Can Do to Prevent Violence in Your School Community

2. Set Clear Rules and Limits for Your Children

3. Know the Warning Signs

4. Don't Be Afraid to Parent; Know When to Intervene

5. Stay Involved in Your Child's School

6. Join Your PTA or a Violence Prevention Coalition

7. Help to Organize a Community Violence Prevention Forum

8. Help Develop A School Violence Prevention and Response Plan

9. Know How to Deal With the Media in a Crisis

10. Work to Influence Lawmakers

Additional Resources

Related Content

Creative samples from the experts

Cause & Effect Essay: School Violence

Follow Us on Social Media

Get more free essays

Send via email

Contributors Bio

Find more useful services for students

School Violence - Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

Growing Problem of School Violence

Be Aware of School Violence

Gerard Jones’ Biased Evaluation of Violence in Media

Dealing with School-Based Weapon Violence

Problem of Violence in Schools

Tragedy and the Meaning of School Shootings

Effects of School Shootings

Students Violence in Moroccan High Schools

Effects of Multi Media on Violence in School

Gun Violence and the Second Amendment

Issues of Violence in Schools

Violence Caused by Media

Gang Violence in Schools

Rise of School Shootings

Reasons of Violence in Schools

Does Multi Media have an Impact on Violence in Schools

Witnessing Violence in High School Predicts Student Impairment

Horror of Violence in Schools

An Analysis of Violence in Public Schooling