Following the return of most U.S. schoolchildren to full-time, in-person learning, a raft of anecdotal reports indicate that violence may be rising in K-12 schools.
Teachers are reporting breaking up fights in schools and are raising concerns about their own safety. 69传媒 have been caught with guns or other weapons on campuses in several high-profile incidents. And school shootings in 2021, though still very rare, are on track to surpass their pre-pandemic high.
But if an actual surge is taking place, what鈥檚 causing it? Will it reshape the contours of the fractious school-safety conversation? And what do district leaders need to consider as they try to respond?
Criminologists note that the nation is in the grip of a general spike of violence probably due to the pandemic and social unrest accompanying the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Their best guess is that those trends are trickling inexorably, and tragically, down to K-12 students.
鈥淵ou study these things for so long and then you throw the rule book out. No one really knows why we鈥檝e got the trends and violence we鈥檙e seeing right now,鈥� said James A. Densley, a professor of criminal justice at Metropolitan State University, in St. Paul, Minn., who studies gun violence. 鈥淏ut I think at the same time, we鈥檙e coming to the same sorts of conclusions.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a combination of the pandemic; a lack of trust in our institutions, particularly law enforcement; the presence of guns; the toxic, divisive, contentious times we live in. They鈥檙e all interacting together.鈥�
What do we know about rates of school crime?
No recent, nationally representative data set exists to confirm that there have been more violent incidents so far in the 2021-22 school year, due to reporting lags and the generally disparate nature of the data across thousands of school systems.
The most-recent federal collection on school safety found that some types of violent crimes were on the rise as of the 2017-18 school year, though the figures still fell far below overall crime levels in schools in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Anecdotally, though, teachers, principals, and educators now say they are seeing an increase that has roughly paralleled the return of most students to in-person schooling.
In Anchorage, Alaska, fights and assaults are issued so far this year. A led to seven juvenile arrests. Pupils in Vermont, overturning furniture and supply bins. Parents in Baltimore County, Md., in response to a perceived increase in violence. In Shreveport, La., students at the high school after 23 students were arrested in a one-week period.
The rhetoric surrounding these kinds of incidents is often red hot, with administrators and parents warning about even more-dire consequences if district leaders don鈥檛 do something now.
鈥淥ur students are sending us warning shots. Literal warning shots,鈥� said Peter Balas, a principal at Alexandria City High School, in Alexandria Va., at a city council meeting earlier this month. Shortly after, the council voted to temporarily restore school police officers, who had been pulled from buildings last year in the wake of a wave of national protests about police violence. (A spokeswoman for the district denied a request to follow up with the principal.)
Teachers, too, have reported being victims of violence at school.
In Rochester, N.Y., high school English teacher Corrine Mundorff was , repeatedly groping her after she told the student not to.
The troubled city has long suffered from generational poverty and high crime rates. With so many kids out of school last year, some seem to have pulled into neighborhood turf squabbles, she said.
鈥淲e have some issues that we鈥檝e been dealing with for years and years. This year, however we have brought our kids back鈥�23,000 of them鈥攁nd for some reason we鈥檝e decided we were going to pretend the pandemic had never happened and ignore 18 months of trauma induced by the pandemic students have experienced,鈥� Mundorff said in an interview. 鈥淎nd we鈥檝e just had these arguments, these conflicts that ignited on day one. The violence that had been happening outside of the school just carried over.鈥�
School shooting on par with pre-pandemic levels
Disparate sources of data generally support the notion that what鈥檚 happening in schools this year is actually a reflection of general trends.
, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, although other types of crime generally continued a steady decline. And Americans have There are now simply more guns in desk drawers, on the streets, and in cabinets.
School shootings are also on track to outpace the figures in 2018 and 2019.
Education Week began its own tracker of school related shootings in 2018 in an attempt to cut through the morass of different definitions used by federal agencies and researchers. Our criteria are more restrictive than other collections. It includes only those incidents that take place during school hours or events, on school property, and in which at least one individual is wounded by a bullet.
According to EdWeek鈥檚 criteria, as of Monday of this week, there have been 24 incidents so far this year, resulting in 40 deaths or injuries. Two-thirds of these incidents occurred on or after Aug 1. There were also 24 incidents each in 2018 and 2019.
(The gun-control organization Everytown USA, which has more expansive criteria, also 2019鈥檚.)
In 2018, Education Week journalists began tracking shootings on K-12 school property that resulted in firearm-related injuries or deaths. There is no single right way of calculating numbers like this, and the human toll is impossible to measure. We hope only to provide reliable information to help inform discussions, debates, and paths forward.
Below, you can find big-picture data on school shootings since 2018. (This chart will be updated as new information becomes available.)
Details of the incidents are distressingly familiar. At least six began with fights or altercations between students that spilled over into gun violence. Six occurred at鈥攐r just following鈥�football games. Three appear to have been precipitated by a pattern of bullying.
School shootings nevertheless remain exceptionally rare, and the small sample makes EdWeek鈥檚 collection a limited proxy for trying to determine overall violence trends. But the , a nonprofit that tracks and confirms shootings from thousands of data sources, found that more children, not fewer, were harmed by gun violence in 2020, when many students were working from home, than in each of the past seven years.
Finally, children, like adults, are tired, isolated, and traumatized by the last 20 months. The numbers of children visiting emergency rooms for mental-health issues according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, causing three children鈥檚 health organizations recently to declare a mental health state of emergency.
The nation is still in the crisis of the pandemic with no real end in sight, pointed out Margaret A. Sedor, a school psychologist and a member of the National Association of School Psychologists鈥� school safety and crisis response committee. And students can display a range of crisis reactions, which may include aggression, in response to the losses of the last two years.
鈥淭hey鈥檝e had almost two years of being socialized and acculturated in a different way, and we need to acknowledge and support community re-engagement,鈥� she said.
What it all adds up to, said Densley, is this: The global pandemic has exacerbated risk factors for violence in general, like loneliness, isolation, and economic instability. Violence also tends to rise at times of uncertainty, especially when distrust in public institutions is high. And social media serves as an accelerant, whipping up anger and frenzy.
鈥淣ow you tie that together with last year鈥檚 record gun sales鈥攁nd we鈥檝e got more people carrying guns in public because of more lax laws in that regard,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd you can sort of put two and two together and say guns are just more likely to be found in the hands of juveniles.鈥�
Some districts consider a return to school-based policing
Those sobering conclusions seem primed to restart an already searing debate over the role that school resource officers and other safety personnel play in schools.
Earlier this summer, Education Week found that a small number of U.S. school districts removed police officers or cut their school-policing budgets in the wake of racial-justice protests in 2020. Some of those communities, like Alexandria, Va., are now beginning to have second thoughts.
In Rochester, the president of the teachers鈥� union and three other labor groups representing educators recently and offering evening or remote learning options for disruptive students.
The district did not respond to a request for comment on its safety plans. Its superintendent has in public statements.
In other places, advocates fear that more violence could put paid to longstanding efforts there to remove school officers.
The Shelby County district, which includes Memphis, has in the wake of a harrowing shooting at a public K-8 school in late September, apparently prompted by bullying, that left one student in critical condition.
鈥淚鈥檓 very concerned about the child, obviously. But my second thought is, 鈥極h no, what does this do to trying to get law enforcement out of schools?鈥� Because so many people think [having a police officer] is like a Band-Aid,鈥� said Cardell Orrin, the Memphis executive director at Stand for Children Tennessee, which has pushed to remove sheriffs鈥� deputies from schools. 鈥淚t makes people feel better rather than solving the challenges, and it potentially further criminalizes children. That is the fear, and I think that鈥檚 the fear nationally, too.鈥�
Researchers continue to learn more about SROs and the tradeoffs that having them can mean for students. In , a team of researchers studying federal data found that having an SRO did reduce some violent incidents in schools, mainly fights, but did not appear to reduce shootings or firearm-related incidents.
And their presence came at a high price: It meant that a higher proportion of students were suspended, arrested, or referred to the juvenile-justice systems, and the toll fell disproportionately on Black students. (The research has not yet been peer reviewed.)
Districts will need to honor the complexities
Even these new insights, though, don鈥檛 always make it clear what鈥檚 happening in the black box. For one thing, it鈥檚 ultimately principals who make the call on whether to suspend students, not officers themselves, and principals who, alongside officers, can refer students into the juvenile justice system. Put another way, the research appears to point to broader cultural problems in schools.
People want to see what you鈥檙e doing for safety, and police are very visible. Connecting kids with resources or using social workers or school psychologists鈥攖hose things are not as kind of in-your-face or apparent.
The body of school safety literature invariably recommends that improved school culture and safety hinge on strong relationships between adults and students.
Getting kids back into school and back in routines and being reconnected with their peers and classmates is a critical step, said Sedor, the school psychologist. But it demands that districts think systematically about how to support students, and that they move from merely reacting to incidents to intervention and wellness-promotion efforts.
鈥淚 think it鈥檚 bringing folks together and acknowledging that things have changed and talking about fear and loss, and then problem-solving and strengthening coping strategies,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 about relationships and being able to listen.鈥�
But desperate to respond to frightened communities, districts often seek out immediate, tangible improvements rather than the painstaking work of improving school culture. For good or ill, police officers and other hardening measures鈥攆ences, metal detectors, bulletproof glass鈥攕ignify safety, even though, for the most part, not much evidence suggests they contribute to safer schools.
鈥淧eople want to see what you鈥檙e doing for safety, and police are very visible. Connecting kids with resources or using social workers or school psychologists鈥攖hose things are not as kind of in-your-face or apparent,鈥� noted Joe McKenna, a senior research associate at WestEd鈥檚 Justice & Prevention Research Center.
Even teachers who say they鈥檙e close to their breaking points acknowledge the complex calculus.
鈥淚 know that teachers are annoyed that the focus keeps going to school resources officers because there are so many more levels to it, and everyone just focuses on them,鈥� said Mundorff, the Rochester teacher. 鈥淲ould it be helpful to have one? Sure. Does that solve all our problems? Absolutely not. We have three social workers for 952 students who are carrying tons of trauma. And now we have students who weren鈥檛 carrying trauma before the pandemic and the ones before are carrying a ton more.鈥�
In Madison, Wis., Gloria Reyes represents the radical middle when it comes to the ongoing school safety conversation.
A former law enforcement officer, she served on the city school board when it voted in June 2020 to remove SROs. She now teaches classes, including on racism within the criminal justice system at Madison College, and runs a local nonprofit.
She strongly supports the restorative justice programs that have replaced school policing in the district, but she鈥檚 also concerned that teachers and other educators aren鈥檛 well trained to respond to incidents of violence. And while she agrees that communities have for far too long relied on police for things they shouldn鈥檛, they鈥檝e simultaneously neglected other critical social investments, she notes.
If rising violence is due to a simple equation鈥攖hat hurt kids hurt other kids鈥攖he solution, she fears, is complex.
鈥淲e have to have professionals out in our communities, visiting with families and visiting with children and doing the outreach and support,鈥� Reyes said. 鈥淵ou know, it鈥檚 going to take families, parents, teachers, social workers鈥攊t鈥檚 going to take everyone to prevent fighting.鈥�
