A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Are Our Schools Safe?

Recent incidents of school violence and fatalities have shocked the nation and there have been escalating concerns about just how safe our classrooms and school yards really are. A new study suggests, however, that schools remain relatively safe places for children and adolescents, who are unlikely to be victims of serious violent crimes in the nation's classrooms.

According to findings in the recently published Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 1998, young people spend approximately 40 percent of their waking hours at school, but are considerably more apt to be murdered or to become victims of other serious violent crimes when they are away from the schoolhouse. Indeed, during the two most recent school years for which data are available (1992-93 and 1993-94), a total of 7,357 young people ages 5 through 19 were slain, but less than 1 percent of these fatalities occurred at schools.

This same picture of relative safety also holds true for nonfatal, serious violent crimes such as rape, sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault. The study, a collaborative effort by OERI's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, found that students ages 12 through 18 are more apt to experience serious violent crime outside the classroom than in school or while traveling to or from their schools. During 1996, students in this age range were victims of about 225,000 such incidents at school, while 671,000 incidents occurred elsewhere, and students in urban areas were more vulnerable to serious violent crime (both in and out of school) than were students in rural areas.

The picture changes however when simple assault (e.g., physical attack or fight without a weapon) is considered. In 1996, schools were the site of 909,000 simple assaults on 12- to 18-year-olds, while 757,000 incidents occurred away from school. Moreover, when data on serious violent crimes and on simple assaults are merged, young people are just slightly safer at school than in other settings, with 1.1 million incidents of all nonfatal, violent crime occurring at school and 1.4 million incidents occurring elsewhere. The report also found that elementary schools were much less likely than either middle or high schools to report any type of crime in 1996-97, and that elementary schools were more likely to report vandalism than any of the other crimes.

Is violence at school getting worse? Based on students' own reports of injuries suffered inside or outside the school building or on a school bus, the number of nonfatal, serious violent crimes among 12- to 18-year-old students remained constant between 1992 and 1996. Moreover, data gathered from 12th-graders over a 20-year time span (1976-1996) show that the percentages reporting having been harmed at school (with or without a weapon) have not changed markedly over the past two decades.

Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 1998, the first in a series of annual reports on school crime and safety, not only provides a profile of school crime and safety in the United States but describes the characteristics of the victims of these crimes. The report contains 19 indicators organized around 6 topics: Nonfatal Student Victimization Student Reports; Violence and Crime at School; Public School Principal/School Disciplinarian Reports; Violent Deaths at School; Nonfatal Teacher Victimization at School Teacher Reports; and School Environment.

Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 1998 is available online at http://nces.ed.gov. Look there also for the 1999 Indicators Report expected later this fall. Early Warning, Timely Response: A Guide to Safe Schools, another joint publication of the Departments of Education and Justice, offers research-based practices designed to help school communities identify warning signs of potentially troubling behavior and develop prevention, intervention, and crisis response plans. Early Warning is available from ED Pubs.

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