Let’s take a deep breath, calm ourselves, and then look at violence in American schools. The facts are likely to surprise most readers. The in-school homicide rate is not rising and our schools are relatively safe places.
The average annual number of in-school student homicides over the past decade is 20. The highest number on record is 34 in the 1992-93 school year (the first year for which data were available). The numbers over the most recent decade range from 32 to 11.
There are approximately 58 million students enrolled in American K-12 schools. At our historic rate of homicides, the probability of any student being killed at school this year is about 1 in 3 million. Roughly as many K-12 students die from sports related injuries as from in-school homicides. High school football alone claims 10 or more lives in a typical year.
Like an airliner crash, a mass shooting in a school is a terrible thing to see. Images of a crash scene might persuade people that air travel is dangerous; but actually it is much safer than traveling by car. Schools, like air travel, have good safety records that can be overshadowed by mass deaths. We can learn to improve safety without letting fear paralyze the work of education or air travel.
We can begin by acknowledging how much we don’t know. Federal and state governments should fund research to be carried out by public and private organizations such as CDC and our research universities. The conclusions will inform leaders of our schools, law enforcement agencies, and the public.
Don’t expect “one size fits all” solutions because there is so much variation among our schools. At best, research will identify good practices that are proven to reduce violence. School and law enforcement leaders should have the opportunity to choose the ones that best fit local needs.
Our understanding of school violence should include many kinds of assaults and bullying. Fights, sexual assaults, and distribution of illegal drugs are examples of school safety problems that are more common than killing. Some schools have the presence of rival gangs. Most don’t.
The available research seems to conclude that school resource officers (SROs) can be effective at reducing violence in schools with a history of gangs or fights among students. Individual killing is often spontaneous and arises from disputes among students, gangs or faculty. Officers with special training for the role can intervene in those situations and sometimes prevent violence by interacting with at-risk students or just by anticipating and being in “the right place at the right time”.
I found no research supporting the notion that every school should have a SRO. In many schools the faculty and staff manage well without them. It may be that if additional funding is available for those schools it would be better spent by adding counselors, social workers, nurses or other positions to address the emotional, mental health, poverty and family issues with which students live every day.
Mass killing is different from other violence among students. It is generally planned and carried out by one individual who may not be enrolled or involved with the school. It is a security problem that exists in every location where people gather. Both the Parkland and Columbine shootings occurred in schools with SROs. Imagine a SRO battling a shooter who has a semiautomatic weapon that can fire dozens of rounds without reloading. It’s very questionable whether the officer could reduce the loss of life.
The extremely difficult choices of resource allocation should be left to school superintendents and boards because they are in the best position to apply research findings to local situations. Unfortunately, they will be vulnerable to second guessing whenever something goes wrong, as it surely will. We just don’t know when or where and neither do they. That will be the moment when they most need public support.
Existing research seems to support three strategies for preventing mass killing. They are universal background checks for gun purchases, limitations on semiautomatic weapons with large magazines, and universal access to good mental health services. Those have been under consideration for a long time but legislators haven’t passed the first two or funded the third. Elections are coming soon.
additional reading:
gun death statistics: https://gun-control.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=006094
US Department of Justice Homicide trends: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf
Need for sro research https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/school-resource-officers/
Congressional summary of information available about sro in 2013 https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43126.pdf
Research on sro training, plicy and management http://www.popcenter.org/responses/school_police/4
cdc mortality rates: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr66/nvsr66_06.pdf