35,000 Threatened Or Physical Attacks With A Weapon In US Schools-School Security Report

Overview

A reader wants insight into the recent Michigan school shooter. She wants to know if there is data as to what schools are doing to combat potentially violent or hostile student behavior.

There is a report from the General Accounting Office (November 2021) on the subject. Additional information is available at Crime in America. I encourage those interested to read the full GAO report; it’s summarized below.

As the charts below suggest, physical attacks with a weapon and threatened physical attacks with a weapon (not necessarily firearms) in schools increased during the measurement period. There were well over 35,000 threatened or physical attacks with a weapon in US schools.

Physical attacks with a weapon doubled.

The charts below provide insight as to what schools are doing about hostile school behavior and the extent of the problem. As readers are aware, hostility and bullying seem to be correlated with extreme school violence. The GAO report focuses on these behaviors.

Readers may be a bit confused regarding civil rights complaints (i.e., bullying based on race or sex). The General Accounting Office report focuses on US Department of Education (not local) resolutions.

Author

Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.

Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of directing award-winning public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of criminology and public affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Former police officer. Aspiring drummer.

Author of ”Success With The Media: Everything You Need To Survive Reporters and Your Organization” available at Amazon and additional booksellers.

CNN Recap of The Michigan School Shooting

Days after a 15-year-old student allegedly killed four classmates at a Michigan high school, the district’s superintendent has requested an independent investigation into the incident — the deadliest school shooting at a US K-12 campus since May 2018.

Ethan Crumbley is accused of carrying out Tuesday’s shooting at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit and faces a slew of charges as an adult, including terrorism and first-degree murder, among others. His lawyer entered a not-guilty plea during his arraignment Wednesday.

His parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, were also each charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with their son’s alleged actions.

There’s an excellent and detailed overview as to what happened on the day of the shooting.

CNN

General Accounting Office (GAO) Report on School Violence (rearranged quotes)

The document examines an array of hostile school behavior with an emphasis on civil rights violations, bullying, and other concerning behaviors. It documents what schools do to combat hostile behavior. GAO used student self-reports and interviews with school administrators and experts. What’s below is selected verbiage from the report.

Background

The General Accounting Office is a legislative branch government agency that provides auditing, evaluation, and investigative services for the US Congress.

This report examines: (1) the prevalence and nature of hostile behaviors in K-12 public schools; (2) the presence of K-12 school programs and practices to address hostile behaviors; and (3) how the Department of Education (editor’s note-not local authorities) has addressed complaints related to these issues in school years 2010-11 through 2019-20.

The GAO report partially relied on The School Crime Supplement (SCS)—referred to in the body of this report as the student survey—is a biennial survey that was created as a supplement to the National Crime and Victimization Survey. The survey is co-designed by Education’s National Center for Education Statistics and Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics and is a nationally representative survey of approximately 9,500 students between the ages of 12 through 18 in grades 6 to 12, enrolled in U.S. public and private elementary, middle, and high schools. Because the focus is on public schools, we excluded students that attended private schools for each survey year in our analysis.

The SCS asks about school-related topics such as alcohol and drug availability; fighting, bullying, and hate-related behaviors; fear and avoidance behaviors; safety measures; gun and weapon carrying; and gangs at school.

Selected Findings

Nearly every school used programs or practices to address hostile behaviors, and schools’ adoption of them increased from school year 2015-16 to 2017-18.

About 18,000 more schools implemented social emotional learning and about 1,200 more used in-school suspensions.

Additionally, 2,000 more schools used school resource officers (SRO)—career officers with the ability to arrest students—in school year 2017- 18. SROs’ involvement in schools, such as solving problems, also increased.

The rest of this article relies on charts provided by The General Accounting Office.

A broader summation of findings is below.

Selected Charts Describing School Violence

Chart From The GAO Report-Physical Attacks With Weapons

Chart From The GAO Report-School Security Practices

Chart From The GAO-What Schools Do Regarding Student Problems

Chart From The GAO- Mental Health Serves

Chart From The GAO-Training

Chart From The GAO Report-Student Hostile Behavior Programs

Chart From The GAO Report-US DOE’s Handling Of Civil Right Complaints

Over the 10-year period, Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) increasingly resolved complaints of hostile behaviors by dismissing them.

Dismissals accounted for 49 percent of resolutions in the 2010-11 school year, rising to 81 percent in the 2019-20 school year.

Complaints of alleged civil rights violations on the basis of sex were the most frequently dismissed complaint in the 2019-20 school year (88 percent), followed by those on the basis of race, class, or national origin (87 percent), and disability status (76 percent).

Complaints can be dismissed for a variety of reasons. Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) frequently dismissed complaints in recent years because it did not receive consent to disclose the name of the complainant. Such dismissals accounted for 8 percent of resolutions at the beginning of the 10-year period, rising to 21 percent at the end of the 10-year period.

Conclusions

A few findings from the General Accounting Office report seem striking:

Physical or threatened attacks with weapons (not necessarily firearms) increased substantially during the measurement period.

The great majority of civil rights complaints were dismissed by the US Department of Education. The bulk of dismissed complaints dealt with sex or race or national origin or disability. Schools have the responsibility for responding to complaints. DOE gets involved when the hostile behavior that targets a victim based on an identity protected under relevant federal law is sufficiently serious that it limits the ability of a student to participate in or benefit from a school’s program or activities, and is not adequately addressed by school employees. Relevant protected classes in this context include race, national origin, color, or disability (editor’s note-response from the lead investigator of the GAO report).

Schools seemed to increase their response mechanisms to student misbehavior:

The use of detention increased
Assignment to a program increased
Suspensions increased
School probation increased
Corporal punishment increased considerably.

Efforts decreasing included:

Transfers to specialized schools decreased
Removing students decreased.

See More

See more articles on crime and justice at Crime in America.

Most Dangerous Cities/States/Countries at Most Dangerous Cities.

US Crime Rates at Nationwide Crime Rates.

National Offender Recidivism Rates at Offender Recidivism.

An Overview Of Data On Mental Health at Mental Health And Crime.

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