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How Safe Are Our Schools?

Matthew J. Mayer and Michael J. Furlong
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER 2010 39: 16
DOI: 10.3102/0013189X09357617
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How Safe Are Our Schools?

Matthew J. Mayer and Michael J. Furlong
Schools are basically safe places for children. School violence and
disruption, although in decline through the mid- to late 1990s,
remains a concern. National surveys that inform research, policy, and
practice have been designed for different purposes and can present
conflicting findings. Common standards of risk and harm that could
advance policy and practice are lacking. Progress in the field of school
safety has been hindered by the lack of a coherent conceptual structure to guide measurement and research.This article identifies some
of the conceptual and methodological challenges that must be
addressed and calls for a 10-year national strategic plan to improve
school safety.
Keywords: at-risk students; school psychology; student behavior/
attitude; violence

ach day parents watch their children go off to school, trusting the system of education to keep them safe. Because the
experiences of their children and periodic media coverage
may increase their concern, parents and others naturally ask:
How safe are our schools? The response of researchers has been
that schools are generally safe (Dinkes, Cataldi, & Lin-Kelly,
2007), but this alone has not fully quelled these concerns because
of a lack of consensus about what constitutes safety. Do the relatively rare yet tragic high-profile school shootings represent a
greater concern than the long-term psychological effects of dayto-day bullying, intimidation, and incivility experienced by students at school? What is the connection between school safety
statistical reports based primarily on survey indicators and the
real-life experiences of students in schools?
General Awareness of School Violence and Disorder
Aspects of school violence have been a concern throughout modern American history (see Cornell & Mayer, this issue of
Educational Researcher, pp. 715) but came to the forefront with
the issuance of the 1978 report Violent SchoolsSafe Schools: The
Safe School Study Report to Congress (U.S. National Institute of
Education, 1978). A report in 1984, Disorder in Our Public
Schools (U.S. Department of Education, 1984), pointed to ongoing issues with school disorder nationally, concomitant with
increases in juvenile crime (Snyder & Sickmund, 1999). Although
not widely recognized, school violence incidents peaked around

16

educational Researcher

1993 and were described as an epidemic in the early 1990s

(Elliott, Hamburg, & Williams, 1998). The National Center for
Education Statistics began issuing annual data reports on school
safety in 1998. News coverage of school shootings involving multiple victims during the 1990s further focused public attention
on school safety. Despite this attention to violent school events,
there was limited consensus about what constitutes school violence and disorder and how to gauge accurately and reliably the
overall safety status of American schools.
Those behaviors that typically fall under the term school violence constitute a small percentage of the constellation of behavioral events at school. Conceptually, it is possible to consider the
relations depicted in Figure 1, understanding that its compartments are not empirically derived but that they informally and
broadly summarize behavioral events in schools. There are no
extant data that map precisely to all of these categoriesthis
limitation leads us to a key consideration. Having neither a quantitative referent base of a broader array of student behaviors associated with school violence nor definitive means of quantifying
unacceptable, marginal, and acceptable behaviors at school,
highly variable interpretations of the seriousness of school violence incidents are possible.
For example, how is meaning attached to the observation that
909,500 secondary students (3.4%) experienced theft at school
in 2006 or that 43% of middle schools reported weekly incidents
of school bullying during the 20052006 school year (Dinkes,
Kemp, & Baum, 2009)? Considering the 767,000 violent crimes
at school reported in 2006 spread across 26.4 million students
ages 12 to 18, each attending school for about 165 days (assuming absences), does the resultant rate of 1.76 victimization experiences per 10,000 studentschool days represent a major problem?
These data suggest that a child has about a 1 in 5,700 (5,681)
chance of being a violent crime victim on a given day during the
school year, or about 1 violent incident at a large comprehensive
high school every other day. Presenting the same data in different
ways may lead parents and guardians to feel more or less comfortable regarding their childrens safety based on varying probability
estimates. These rates vary based on race/ethnicity, urbanicity,
gender, and other key variables. However, it remains unclear how
seriously the statistics should be taken relative to adult views of
what constitutes a reasonable degree of safety and how unsafe
behaviors are considered relative to the much more common proacademic and prosocial student behaviors that occur daily in
schools.
School safety stakeholders often read and interpret statistics
reporting prevalence and incidence data. Prevalence is generally
Educational Researcher,Vol. 39, No. 1, pp. 1626
DOI: 10.3102/0013189X09357617
2010 AERA. http://er.aera.net

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Overall School Behaviors

School Disorder

School Violence, Disruption, and

Problem Behaviors

Outsider Adult
Shootings at School
School-Associated Shootings
(e.g., Columbine)

Marginally Acceptable
Behaviors

Theft

Serious Violent Crime

Personal Attack

Appropriate, Positive, Engaged

Behaviors

Bullying, Intimidation, Incivility

FIGURE 1. Conceptual representation of school disorder compared with overall student behaviors. Adapted from School violence and
disruption by M. J. Mayer, 2008, SAGE Encyclopedia of Educational Psychology, pp. 880-888, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
given as the number (or rate) of incidents of a condition of interest (event or disease) present in a population at a given point in
time. Incidence is generally given as the rate of new events emerging within a specified time frame, as in the instances of new disease outbreak annually, and represents the risk of experiencing
the condition. As discussed by Borum, Cornell, Modzeleski,
and Jimerson in this special issue of Educational Researcher
(pp. 2737), the public could perceive schools as unsafe based on
media reports of the incidence of school-based homicides (e.g.,
21 during a particular year), although the actual prevalence of
school-based homicides is extremely low (the typical school
would experience such an occurrence once every 6,000 years).
The school safety waters are further muddied when the concept of harma relative constructis considered. Do horrific
school shootings, albeit rare, yet devastating for all involved, constitute a public health risk? Statistically, based on an average of 21
student deaths per year, nationally, from 1996 to 2006, the
answer would likely be no and lead to the conclusion that schools
are among the safest places for Americas youth (Modzeleski et al.,
2008). However, this provides little consolation to the bereaved
families, friends, teachers, and others affected, not to mention
parents who fear that similar harm may befall their children while
in school. Conversely, should widespread and long-term day-today bullying, intimidation, and incivility in schools be considered a serious public health risk factor? In this instance, the
answer would probably be yes, based on recent data wherein 32%
of secondary students reported being bullied at or around school
(Dinkes et al., 2009) and several lines of research that point to
pronounced long-term psychosocial harm to large numbers of
affected youth (Arseneault et al., 2006; Bierman, 2004; Boxer,
Edwards-Leeper, Goldstein, Musher-Eizenman, & Dubow,
2003; Ladd, 2003; Nansel et al., 2001). Thus far, the school
safety field lacks consensus on how to approach these matters,
and this situation is impeding movement toward forming a
national safe school agenda.
Despite limited consensus on essential school safety indicators, researchers have developed a picture of trends in school violence and disorder at the national level taken from multiple data

sources, including but not limited to (a) School Crime

Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey
(NCVS), (b) School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS),
(c) Center for Disease Controls (CDC) Youth Risk Behavioral
Surveillance Survey (YRBSS), and (d) Monitoring the Future
Study. Data from these sources originate from local community
officials (e.g., law enforcement), administrators, teachers, parents,
students, and others and represent official and unofficial accounting of discrete or grouped incidents, personal experiences, lawand rule-breaking behavior, and so forth. Based on these and other
sources such as school records and administrator records, schoolgenerated data can be used to monitor violations of school rules
(e.g., fighting, bullying, theft); survey data can be used to assess
victimization events (e.g., being physically attacked, threatened
with a weapon); other data may address self-reports of student
fear, anxiety, or avoidant behaviors (e.g., avoiding parts of the
school building, missing school due to fears for personal safety).
Examination of SCS trend data derived from personal interviews suggests major declines in school crime overall since around
1993, with some leveling off from 2001 to 2006 (see Figure 2).
In contrast, the CDCs YRBSS data derived from anonymous
school-based surveys show continuing or increasing problems
during roughly the same period for high school students reports
of having been threatened or injured with a weapon and missing
school due to safety concerns (see Figure 3). In fact, contrary to
other data suggesting sharp declines from 1993 onward in indicators of school safety problems, the CDCs Morbidity and Mortality
Weekly Report (MMWR) indicated, During 19932007, a significant linear increase occurred in the percentage of students
who did not go to school because of safety concerns (4.4%
5.5%) (Eaton et al., 2008). When examining these findings in
toto, how is it possible to conclude whether schools are becoming
more or less safe over time or how safety indicators compare with
some broadly accepted tolerance level? This question is addressed
below in the section on major data trends. The situation presented in this section sets the stage for discussion of definitional
and measurement issues, research-to-practice linkage, and making
practical meaning for those in the trenchesparents, students,
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180

Rate per 1,000 students

160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

At School

144 155 150 135 121 102 101

Away From School 138 139 129 119 117 117 95

92

72

73

64

73

55

56

63

78

74

61

55

60

48

46

49

Year

FIGURE 2. Rate of total crime against students ages 12 to 18, per 1,000 students, at and away from school, 19922006. Total crime
includes theft, violent crime, and serious violent crime.

school personnel, education leaders, and local government

grappling with school safety challenges.
Definitional and Measurement Issues
Federal, state, and local agencies collect, analyze, and report school
violence data using highly variable methods, with data reflecting
infractions of criminal law and/or school rules as well as victimization episodes (Leone, Mayer, Malmgren, & Meisel, 2000). For
instance, the Federal Bureau of Investigation administers the
Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which provides general arrest
data and the National Incident-Based Reporting System, which,
as of September 2007, reported detailed incident data from 37%
of law enforcement agencies, representing approximately 26% of
reported crime nationally (Justice Research and Statistics
Association, 2009). There are no standardized methods of collecting and reporting school-based crime incidents nationally, and
most data come from anonymous self-report surveys that do not

allow tracking specific respondents over time. For example, no

national database provides a record of the same students school
safetyrelated experiences annually throughout secondary school.
Reporting driven by the No Child Left Behind law has been
of limited value because of the variable approaches used across
states and, in particular, the unrealistic standards adopted by
many states linked to the persistently dangerous schools component
of the Unsafe Schools Choice Option in the law (Mayer & Leone,
2007). For example, in the entire nation, only 52 schools in six
states were classified as persistently dangerous in 20032004
(Snell, 2005). Testimony at a 2003 House Congressional Hearing
indicated that the major cities of Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami,
Detroit, Cleveland, San Diego, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.,
had no persistently dangerous schools (United States, 2004).
Above and beyond the impact of No Child Left Behind, problems exist nationally with several major violence data collection
and reporting approaches.

Percentage of Respondents
95% C.I.

12
10
8
6
4
2
0

1993

1995

1997

1999

2001

2003

2005

2007

Threatened or Injured With a

Weapon at School (past year)

7.3

8.4

7.4

7.7

8.9

9.2

7.9

7.8

Missed School for Safety

Concerns (past 30 days)

4.4

4.5

5.2

6.6

5.4

5.5

Year

FIGURE 3. Results of Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance Survey, 19932007.

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We believe that the low number of schools identified as persistently dangerous is also a byproduct of ambiguity and a lack of
consensus over which safety indicators and databases are most
salient and what is actually being measured. Crime incident data
can lead to biased estimates of the extent of violent acts and number of perpetrators in a community because they reflect arrests, not
adjudications and convictions, and do not include behaviors that
escape law enforcement due to lack of detection, victims failure to
report crimes, or system inability to pursue cases. Victimization
self-reports via the NCVS are also vulnerable to problems, including sampling frame and instrumentation, and respondent errors,
such as poor recall, comprehension difficulties, and telescoping
effects (inaccurately recalling sooner or later than events occurred;
Biemer, Groves, Lyberg, Mathiowetz, & Sudman, 1991). Major
national surveys have demonstrated risk of bias driven by extreme
response sets (responses that tend to be anchored at one part of a
scale; Furlong, Sharkey, Bates, & Smith, 2004) and inferential
limitations due to uses for which the surveys were never validated
(Furlong & Sharkey, 2006). For example, citing work by Bachman
and colleagues, Furlong and Sharkey reported on the Monitoring
the Future Study, where validity of questions about substance use
was not empirically established. Large-scale surveys tapping into
similar domains can vary significantly with respect to analysis
goals linked to instrumentation design and can produce data that
are incongruent across differently defined and targeted populations, types of violence or disorder, and time frames (Leone et al.,
2000; Reiss & Roth, 1993; Sharkey, Furlong, & Yetter, 2006).
More localized surveys have demonstrated problems in terms of
consistently following standardized administration protocols,
directions to respondents differing across administrations, and
local survey providers often being untrained and unprepared for
survey administration (Cross & Newman-Gonchar, 2004).
Beyond survey administration issues, there are problems with
how results and other school safety data are organized, interpreted, and disseminated among schools and allied agencies.
There is no uniform school safety data collection and recording
framework, and practices vary, for example in the recording of
duplicated versus unduplicated (e.g., counting multiple suspensions of a particular student as one suspension) counts and protocols for reporting based on individuals versus incidents.
Systems-change initiatives (e.g., positive behavioral supports)
that often use outcome measures such as office disciplinary referrals have been criticized for not necessarily capturing the most
relevant data reflecting violence and disruption in a school
(Morrison, Peterson, OFarrell, & Redding, 2004). Likewise, differing approaches to recording suspension data across school districts can result in reliability and validity problems, hindering
meaningful interpretation (Morrison, Redding, Fisher, &
Peterson, 2006). A noteworthy investigation in New York State
uncovered serious underreporting of school violence in many
schools, where about one third of a sample of audited schools
failed to report approximately 80% of violent incidents (Office
of the New York State Comptroller, 2006). The State of
California, in fact, started formal school crime reporting twice,
and both efforts were discontinued because it was evident that
not all crimes were being reported and that reporting was influenced by administrator idiosyncratic interpretation of the reporting requirements (California Legislative Analyst Office, 2002).

Beyond considering definitional and measurement issues, questions emerge regarding linkage to theory.
Linkage to Theoretical Models
School safety and order encompass a wide range of student and
adult behaviors and systemic processes, going beyond a narrower
focus on school violence. Cross-cutting threads in school safety
involve well-run schools with positive student engagement and
outcomes and overall psychological and physical safety for all
stakeholders. A reasonable expectation for researchers and other
stakeholders in the social and behavioral sciences would be that
major national surveys of important social issues (e.g., violence,
drug use, health habits) would be linked to established theoretical
foundations and well-conceived conceptual frameworks. But this
is not necessarily the case. Johnston, OMalley, Schulenberg, and
Bachman (2001) provided insightful discussion of how theory
applied to drug abuse meshed more or less well with goals of the
Monitoring the Future Survey. Several key points they raised with
respect to drug use might be applied to violence and other socialpsychological concerns.
First, the history of social and behavioral inquiry, including
research on substance abuse, includes dozens of theoretical
models and their derivatives, addressing (a) types of involvement;
(b) stages of development; (c) sets of social, emotional, and behavioral factors purportedly linked to outcomes; (d) foundational
theories of human behavior; and (e) units of measurement and
analysis. Second, no theories are embraced by most of the field,
and theory development remains in process. Third, citing comments of Merton (1957), Johnston et al. (2001) pointed to much
of the research embracing middle-range theories that map to
minor testable hypotheses; this research did not entail a coherent explanatory approach driving variable selection but, rather, a
more general orientation to relevant variables. Fourth, citing
Cattells (1966) description of an inductive-hypothetico-deductive spiral, Johnston et al. argued that in the absence of coherent
theory, a somewhat more eclectic approach is necessary, where
through iteration, particular theoretical positions drive specific
empirical tests, which in turn influence refinement of theory.
Taken as a group, these considerations suggest that the school
violence field is developing in a manner similar to other areas of
social-behavioral research, such as substance abuse, in that at
present it lacks a unifying framework and is more often studied
in a piecemeal fashion within discipline domainseducation,
psychology, sociology, criminology, and public healththat
communicate incompletely with one another. This theoretical
fragmentation may contribute to the so-called research-to-practice gap.
The desire to better understand the status of school safety is
linked to future research, policy, funding, and programmatic
implementation to address need. Developing theoretical coherence is critical for purposes of developing a system of meaning
that informs research, practice, and planning for the future. For
school violence and safety data collection and analysis, the interest often is focused on learning more about (a) victimization
experiences; (b) characteristics of the individuals and schools;
(c) systemic factors, such as how the schools system of rules is
understood and implemented; (d) risk and protective factors
across ecological levels; and (e) related contextual variables, such
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19

as neighborhood mobility or crime and violence in the local

school community.
Researchers are both constrained and liberated at times by their
choice of theoretical approaches. More parsimonious approaches
such as radical behaviorism may be useful for understanding discrete behaviors and related interventions but offer relatively little
breadth and depth to inform the understanding of and responses
to school safety needs. Highly eclectic approaches, while providing
convenient lenses through which to view and consider diverse
phenomena, lack theoretical coherence and can inhibit systematic
research and development of effective prevention approaches.
Researchers need to work with models that (a) propose theory that
promotes understanding of complex social-emotional-behavioral
issues, (b) provide a foundation for evidence-based interventions,
and (c) support scientific investigation that is responsive to emerging knowledge and withstands the challenges of experimental science. These trade-offs map to researchers understanding of school
violence data, especially when they seek fundamental meaning as
well as integrity of analysis.
Thinking About the Nature of Trend Data
There are limited and incongruent national-level measurements
of school violence and disorder that span considerably different
time periods, making long-term trend analysis challenging. The
School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime
Victimization Survey (NCVS), which collects victimization and
related data from student respondents, was administered in 1995,
1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, and 2007, with plans to continue biennial surveys. The larger NCVS survey, reported annually since
1972 (redesigned in 1992), which currently reaches a national
probability sample of about 76,000 households, taps into more
general crime victimization experiences of the overall adult U.S.
population, as well as the experiences of secondary students. The
National Center for Education Statistics School Survey on Crime
and Safety (SSOCS), which collects data from elementary and
secondary administrators, was originally administered in the
19992000 school year, with biennial data collections, excepting
the 20012002 school year. The CDCs Youth Risk Behavioral
Surveillance Survey (YRBSS), which collects information biannually from students in Grades 9 to 12, addresses a wide range of
health- and safety-related behaviors, including behaviors related
to school violence and victimization. The Monitoring the Future
annual survey of high school seniors, beginning in 1976, includes
questions on student victimization experiences at school (with
data on 8th- and 10th-grade students from 1991 onward). Other
related information is available from the Schools and Staffing
Survey, which includes teacher reports of school climate and specific problems at school such as physical attack and threats on
teachers (National Center for Education Statistics, 2009).
Recent reports from the U.S. Departments of Education and
Justice have documented significant declines in school violence
and disorder since the early 1990s (Dinkes et al., 2007). We
opened the door to this discussion earlier, suggesting that from
about 1993 to 1999 there were striking declines in recorded
school crime (see Figure 2), whereas other indicators suggested
less pronounced changes or even increases (see Figure 3). Some
of the trend differences across surveys can be understood as a
function of previously discussed definitional and measurement
20

issues, as well as respondent ages, response coding rules, and patterns of concordance of different surveys over time.
Stakeholders examining year-to-year changes in data need to
be mindful of point versus interval estimates (e.g., means and
confidence intervals). Statistics from national school safety surveys using probability samples include interval estimates that are
driven by standard error. Although it is tempting to read the data
as point estimates, this can be misleading. For instance, the 25%
increase in serious violent crime from 201,800 in 1997 to
252,700 in 1998 seems noteworthy but is statistically nonsignificant at the .05 level as a result of high standard errors. Other
factors must also be considered when evaluating trend data for
change. Major national surveys reviewed here use complex sampling designs (clustering, stratification, and unequal selection
probability weighting) that can entail multiple methods for calculating the standard error of statistics, which are typically larger
than those of a simple random sample due to the design effect (the
ratio of the variance of a statistic under a particular sample design
to the variance of that statistic under simple random sampling for
a sample of equal size; Kish, 1964; Kish & Frankel, 1974). This,
in turn, affects interpretation of change.
Do seeming contradictions in trends based on different indicator variables constitute a problem, or are they a benefit, helping
investigators better understand disparate aspects of school safety?
Rand and Rennison (2002) discussed apparent contradictions
between a NCVS-reported 15% drop in crime from 1999 to
2000 and a Uniform Crime Reporting Program report showing
year 2000 figures at a stable level compared with previous year
data. They noted that year-to-year changes in violent crimes
across the two surveys moved in the same direction about 60% of
the time. Rand and Rennison identified multiple aspects of the
surveys that accounted for differing statistics on crime, including
who was being measured, counting rules for multiple victims versus incidents, victimization measurement of persons versus
households, and protocols for recording a series of victimizations.
For example, if a student was victimized several times in one day
by the same bully perpetrator, should this be recorded as a single
victimization or several? Protocols can vary. In addition, socialenvironmental factors may contribute to differential reporting
behaviors regarding crime and victimization, such as crime victims perception of system responses to their reports.
Meaning and utilitynot just beautyrests in the eye of the
beholder, particularly when public policy issues are involved.
Above and beyond the topical content focus of a data collection
system are the end users who dictate relevance and utility. Justice
system officials developing policy, legislators addressing crime,
law enforcement officials developing interventions, and criminologists studying these issues all would be interested in officially
reported crime data to support their efforts. Epidemiologists
studying patterns of violence, policy makers developing a national
strategic agenda, lawmakers approving funding, and local human
services agencies providing support programs are each uniquely
dependent on victimization data collected through surveys.
Specific survey data efforts such as the CDCs YRBSS may better
support the work of epidemiologists than the needs of federal,
state, and local policy makers trying to respond to violence and
disruption in the schools. The YRBSS can help track the emergence and development of targeted risk behaviors of interest,

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much like a disease outbreak, and includes a number of school

safetyrelated questions. However, it lacks the more comprehensive data collection tools that would be useful for designing
school safety programming that spans ecological levels, addressing not only individual and interpersonal phenomena but systemic processes as well.
Data collection that is well linked to a theoretical framework
will tend to support the work of researchers aligned with that
framework but may not necessarily provide valuable data for other
stakeholders. This relates to a broader theme in multiple areas of
educational, social, and behavioral research, where the linkage
among theory, research-driven data collection, and practice can
differ dramatically between researchers and practitioners. For
example, researchers may design an intervention for students with
learning disabilities that does not address the practical needs identified by teachers (MacMillan & Speece, 1999). Likewise, a school
violence prevention researcher studying a new intervention in
anger management would tend to focus on experimental conditions that may not align well with students ability to learn and use
new anger management techniques and may not mesh well into
the daily processes and procedures of schools (Mayer & Van Acker,
2008). Research-based data collectionhaving critical impact on
research analysis and subsequent practicecan be designed for
highly divergent researcher or practitioner needs. This leaves the
concerned stakeholder with awareness that data collection and
analysis systems are anything but unified and that they serve various purposes, often providing an incomplete view of what is happening in schools. These informational windows can overlap while
retaining somewhat unique foci, with specific indicators providing
different insights into day-to-day life at school.
Current Indicators: What Is Going on in Schools?
We return to the core question: How safe are our schools? We will
focus on indicators from the NCVS and SCS, the CDC YRBSS,
and the Monitoring the Future Study. NCVS data from 2006
show that student-reported violent crime in secondary schools
including simple assault and serious violent crimes of rape, sexual
assault, robbery, and aggravated assaultwas 29 per 1,000 students (Dinkes et al., 2009). In addition, these data varied by
gender, race, age, and urbanicity. For the same year, the violent
victimization rate was 32 and 25 per 1,000, for males and females,
respectively (with no statistically significant differences for gender). Violent victimization rates per 1,000 students ages 12 to 18
at school were 27, 32, 26, and 44, for students reported as White,
Black, Hispanic, and Other, respectively, where Other denoted
students reported as Asians, Pacific Islanders, American Indians
(including Alaska Natives), and those of more than one race.
However, the differences of White, Black, and Hispanic each
compared with Other were nonsignificant, and there were no
significant differences among the first three categories of race.
Younger students ages 12 to 14 experienced higher levels of victimization, compared with older students, ages 15 to 18, at 35
versus 23 incidents per 1,000 (p < .05). Violent victimization rates
in schools for 2005, across urban, suburban, and rural settings
were 34, 19, and 21 per 1,000, respectively, and urban schools
were significantly higher than schools in other settings (p < .05).
Data from the 2007 NCVS SCS on bullying/peer victimization
show that almost 80% of students who reported being bullied at

school indicated that it took place inside school, as opposed to

outside the building on school grounds, on the bus, or elsewhere.
In 2007, 32% of secondary students reported being bullied at or
around school during the prior 6 months, with 11% of students
reporting that they had been pushed, shoved, tripped, or spit on,
and 8.8% reporting having been injured. As was the case with
violent victimization, a larger percentage of younger students
reported being bullied, with percentages ranging from 42.9% of
6th-grade students to 23.5% of 12th-grade students. Rates of bullying in 2005 were similar in suburban and rural schools (28.9%
and 29.0%, respectively), with slightly lower values in urban
schools (26.0%) and no statistically significant differences between
any pair of settings. Urbanicity data were not publicly released for
the 2007 NCVS survey due to methodological redesign.
Percentages of White, Black, and Other students bullied were
similar (34.6%, 30.9%, and 34.6%, respectively, nonsignificant),
with lower values for Hispanic and Asian students (27.6% and
18.1%, respectively). Reported percentages for White students
were significantly different compared with Hispanic (p < .001)
and Asian (p < .0001) students, and percentages for Black students
were significantly different from those for Asian students (p <
.001). Males and females reported being bullied (30.6% and
33.7%, respectively) at different levels (p < .05).
A growing body of research has demonstrated that above and
beyond the harmful effects of bullying (Arseneault et al., 2006;
Ladd, 2003; Nansel et al., 2001), students psychological wellbeing is affected negatively by constant low-level aggression in
schools and an overall atmosphere of incivility (Boxer et al.,
2003; Skiba et al., 2004; Thomas, Bierman, & the Conduct
Problems Prevention Research Group, 2006). Mayer (in press)
found evidence across multiple NCVS SCS data sets of day-today low-level aggressive behaviors of intimidation and incivility
in school accounting for a much larger part of students anxiety,
fear, and avoidant behaviors compared with a model incorporating less frequent, and high-profile, theft and personal attack.
CDC YRBSS data indicate continuing problems in schools
with students threatened or injured with a weapon at school.
Rates have remained relatively stable from 1993 to 2007; in
2007, 7.8% of students in Grades 9 to 12 reported being threatened or injured with a weapon at school during the preceding 12
months. The percentages reported by males (10.2%) were significantly higher compared with females (5.4%; p < .0001).
Percentage rates for 9th-grade students (9.2%) were about 50%
more than that of 12th-grade students (6.3%), with the difference highly significant (p < .01). Some significant differences
existed across racial and ethnic groups, with reported percentages
for White students at 6.9%; Black, 9.7%; Hispanic, 8.7%; and
Asian, 7.6%. Significant differences were present in percentage
rates between White and both Black (p < .01) and Hispanic students (p < .05; data parsed by urbanicity were unavailable for
2007). What about more general threats of harm to students?
Monitoring the Future survey results show that from 1976 to
1996, about 20% to 25% of high school seniors reported being
threatened without a weapon (no injury involved). Data from
2007 show little change, with 26.1% of seniors reporting receiving threats without a weapon (no injury involved), with disaggregated data showing males (30.5%) and females (21.2%), and
Whites (26.3%) compared with Blacks (27.0%).
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21

These highlights taken from national surveys point to continuing safety problems in schools. Some of these indicators are
at less than half the levels seen in the early 1990s, when school
violence was considered by many as having reached epidemic levels (Elliott et al., 1998), which suggests that progress has been
made toward the reduction of school violence incidents. However,
there is no definitive proof of what drove the reductions, and
other statistics have remained fairly consistent. As a group, these
data suggest that significant violence, bullying, and related
threatening and intimidating behaviors continue in schools
(Mayer, in press), a circumstance associated with students experiencing fear and anxiety and altered academic and social-emotional trajectories (see Cornell & Mayer, this issue).
While considering these data on school violence and disorder,
it may be instructive to consider an analogy to the harm caused to
children by child abuse and neglect. The literature in psychiatry,
psychology, education, social work, and juvenile justice paints a
general picture of great difficulties children experience as a result
of multiple forms of abuse and neglect (Johnson, Cohen, Brown,
Smailes, & Bernstein, 1999; Keiley, Howe, Dodge, Bates, &
Pettit, 2001). Research on resilience (Luthar & Cicchetti, 2000;
Masten et al., 1999; McGloin & Widom, 2001) suggests that
some factors act as buffers or sources of protection that reduce the
odds of having deleterious developmental outcomes. There is general agreement regarding the likelihood of harm from severe
abuse. However, the effects for children who experience chronic,
long-term neglect, although overlapping, are somewhat different.
Children who experience neglect over the long haul are generally at elevated risk for poor academic performance, developing
limited social communication skills, experiencing poor peer relations, and having some degree of emotional-behavioral difficulties (Hildyard & Wolfe, 2002; Kendall-Tackett& Eckenrode,
1996; Widom & Maxfield, 1996). The harm is real. Yet social
systems aimed at protecting children from abuse and neglect may
not respond as well in such instances because (a) much of the
damage occurs very slowly over time, (b) there is no highly tangible evidence of harm (e.g., bruises on the body) often associated
with physical abuse, and (c) the systemic resources required to
ameliorate such long-term neglect are more extensive and require
long-term strategic approaches.
Much like instances of obvious severe physical and sexual
abuse, the educational and community systems respond quickly
and decisively to instances of extreme violence in the schools
(e.g., school shootings). The harm is clearly evident, but the systems try to stabilize the situation through crisis intervention to
make sure no further harm occurs as a result of the violence.
Despite the attention that incidents of deadly violence have
received, situations of serious but not life-threatening disruption
or violence are more common, and more difficult for educational
systems to address. In fact, in Davis v. Monroe County Board of
Education (1999), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a
student claiming harm resulting from chronic harassment at
school that school authorities did not adequately address. In light
of this ruling, it is possible to consider these ongoing day-to-day
problems as constituting a form of systemic educational neglect
when not meaningfully addressed. Like neglect on an individual
level, the persistence in schools of lower level bullying, harassment, threatening behaviors, and incivility is more difficult for
22

systems to resolve. As is the case with prolonged neglect, there

can be serious long-term harm to children who attend schools
where such toxic climates exist. But is the situation in schools a
stand-alone concern, or is it linked to the larger community in
which the school is situated? We next consider several related
community-based factors.
Community Factors: Gangs, Guns, and Infusion of
Community Violence Into Schools
Schools exist within and connected to local communities, where
effects of gang activity, access to guns, and neighborhood violence can intrude on schools. Youth gang members age range
varies, with most members in their early teens to mid-twenties.
Youth gang violence affects urban, suburban, and rural communities, with noted problems in a number of inner-city environments. Results from the 2006 National Youth Gang Survey
indicate that in 2006 law enforcement in 3,400 cities (population
of 2,500 or more) reported gang problems. National estimates for
2006 point to more than 26,000 youth gangs and 785,000 youth
gang members (U.S. Department of Justice, 2008). Percentage of
law enforcement reporting gangs ranged from about 15% in rural
counties to 51% in suburban counties and 86% in larger cities.
Youth gang members are at increased risk for violent victimization, as well as engagement in more delinquent and violent behaviors, compared with nongang members (Gatti, Tremblay, Vitaro,
& McDuff, 2005; Thornberry, Huizinga, & Loeber, 2004), with
routine behaviors of drug and/or alcohol involvement mediating
the link between gang membership and risk for increased victimization (Taylor, Freng, Esbensen, & Peterson, 2008). Summarizing
key results from the Rochester Youth Development Study and the
Denver Youth Survey, Thornberry, Huizinga, and Loeber (2004)
reported that, in the Rochester study, using longitudinal data
based on a sample of elementary and middle school students at
risk for delinquency, male and female gang members accounted
for 63% of all delinquent behaviors (not counting gang fights). In
the related Denver study, gang members accounted for 80% of all
serious and violent crime in the sample. Exposure to community
violence among youthsometimes involving gangshas been
linked to development of posttraumatic stress, depression, anxiety, reduced self-esteem, and avoidant behaviors (Lynch, 2003;
Lynch & Cicchetti, 1998; Margolin & Gordis, 2000).
Guns have played a key role in community and school-related
violence and are a deeply embedded part of American culture.
The United States has among the highest rates of firearm-related
deaths for youth and adults among industrialized nations (Mercy,
Krug, Dahlberg, & Zwi, 2003). According to data from the
CDC WISQARS (Web-Based Injury Statistics Query and
Reporting System), 2,958 children and adolescents, ages 5 to 19,
were killed by firearms in the United States in 2005some were
suicides and some of the homicides involved adult perpetrators
of teen victims. Of these deaths, approximately 14 were schoolrelated homicides. Questions emerge as to the circumstances surrounding gun access and usage in these school shootings. Many
of these issues are addressed later in this special issue in the article
by Borum and colleagues concerning school shootings. Here, we
highlight what is known about youth access to guns.
Several factors have been linked to juvenile access to guns and
child and adolescent gun-related deaths: (a) illegal gun markets

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(Braga & Kennedy, 2001); (b) prevalence of local firearm ownership, accounting for 47% of the variance in firearm-related youth
deaths (Murnan, Dake, & Price, 2004); (c) increased likelihood
of having loaded and unlocked guns at home among families in
communities with high crime and gang activity (Vacha &
McLaughlin, 2004); (d) widespread practice, in homes with children (2 million or more), of storing loaded and unlocked guns
(Okoro et al., 2005; Schuster, Franke, Bastian, Sor, & Halfon,
2000); (e) higher weapon-carrying rates among inner-city youth,
compared with suburban and rural youth, in school and community (Sheley, McGee, & Wright, 1995); and (f ) relatively easy
availability of firearms, per student self-reports (Brown, 2004;
Sheley & Wright, 1998). Clearly, managing gun access by youth
is a national-, state-, and community-level challenge far beyond
the purview of schools.
What is known about the infusion of community-level violence into the schools? Most school violence studies have focused
on school or student characteristics but have not concurrently
analyzed data across multiple levels of the ecology (Watkins,
2008). Three recent studies addressed this issue. Welsh, Greene,
and Jenkins (1999) studied communities and schools in
Philadelphia, finding that schools could offer programming that
mitigated the harmful effects of community violence and that
schools were not necessarily at the mercy of nearby community
violence. That study, which received methodological criticism
(Hoffman & Johnson, 2000), stood somewhat alone until a
study of schools in Chicago addressed similar issues (Kirk, 2006).
The Chicago study likewise found that schools could be successful while embedded in a community experiencing high violence
rates, with school program effects operating somewhat independent of community factors. The research also identified the ameliorative role of families active participation in school activities
and administrationan outcome negatively associated with poverty (Evans, 2004)and found an association of reduced delinquency with increased academic engagement of students. Watkins
(2008) examined community, school, and student influences on
weapon carrying in school, analyzing survey responses from a
subset of students in Grades 8 to 12 from the 19941995 administration of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent
Health. The analysis, while having limitations, showed no systematic relation between student weapon carrying and surrounding community poverty, residential turnover, and community
violent crime.
The previous discussions suggest the need for continued
research to better explain factors and processes across ecological
levels. There may be more questions than answers regarding
school violence, what is going on in Americas schools, and what
can be done about it.
Unanswered Questions and Next Steps in Research,
Policy, and Practice
Although there are dozens of unanswered questions about school
violence and disorder and the current safety of schools, it is
important to identify a core set as high-priority targets. These
questions pertain to this articles focus on the overall safety of
schools but go further to address other concerns associated with
school safety. Here we identify five key questions that we argue

should take priority in a strategic agenda for research, policy, and

practice in the coming years.
1. What are the standards of risk for harm, and how should they be
defined? Earlier sections of this article posed questions about
acceptable risk based on daily or annual probabilities of being
victimized or otherwise experiencing harm. The field needs to
begin the gradual process of developing a consensus for a framework with which it can address risk of harm to students in a manner that bridges the needs of all relevant constituentsstatistical
analysts, researchers embracing varying theoretical frameworks,
policy makers, educational leaders, teachers and allied school and
agency professionals, and parents and other stakeholders. These
standards of risk not only need to satisfy the technical requirements of research but must map in a meaningful way to those of
the people making decisions about how to keep schools safe and
must resonate with families and others on a commonsense level.
2. What are acceptable and unacceptable degrees of risk, and how do
they mesh with societal commitment to address the risk? It is easy to
do a little historical research in education, going back to formative debates and legislative enactment surrounding Goals 2000,
No Child Left Behind, and similar initiatives for change. Virtually
every such initiative has avoided the politically hot topic of setting a less-than-perfect goal and has unrealistically sought 100%
attainment of a goal (reading achievement, school safety, etc.).
Does seeking perfection automatically set schools and communities up not only for failure but for a process where stakeholders
tend to rationalize away seemingly unobtainable goals? Effective
planning is usually linked to attainable goals. Educators and
policy makers do not know what acceptable risk means with
regard to school safety, nor do they have a way of defining what
they really expect to do about it. Collectively, there is a need to
begin asking these questions.
3. What should be measured, how should it be measured, and to
what does it connect? Measurement of school safety not only must
link to the previous two questions but must provide meaningful
information to all stakeholders. Research, policy, and practice
should be linked to some type of theoretical orientation, as discussed earlier in the article. Federal agencies managing the major
surveys relating to school safety (NCVS, SCS, YRBSS, SSOCS)
are not following an approach that reflects a common need to
inform research, policy, and practice. It would be difficult to
argue that these efforts theoretically align with the common
research orientations used by allied disciplines in the social and
behavioral sciences that address at-risk youth and related factors.
The next steps are to articulate a transdisciplinary framework that
can better meet these measurement objectives.
4. What are the primary research questions and the methodologies to
answer them? There needs to be a strategic plan (in our view,
within a 10-year completion cycle) developed by the field to suggest key areas to be researched and generally preferred methodological approaches for that research. One of the problems thus
far has been the disorganization and lack of coherence in the
field, resulting in fragmented, duplicated, and inefficient efforts.
Federal agencies, foundations, and others supporting research
in school safety should have a guidepost by which to formulate
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23

longer term planning and foster efficient use of scarce resources.

Researchers, although free to pursue any research questions of
interest and concern, should be able to work in a more coordinated way tackling what most consider the high-priority unanswered questions. Toward this end, the major federal agencies and
allied professional organizations could establish a combined
interagency and transdisciplinary task force whose charge over a
period of 18 to 24 months would be to establish a 10-year agenda
for moving school safety research forward.
5. What future structures and approaches will help not only bridge
the research-to-practice gap but promote increased effectiveness and
synergy across research, policy, and practice? Paradigm shifts and
systems change hold the potential to drive longer term improvements where our collective efforts bear richer fruits. For example,
the early work of the Child and Adolescent Service System
Program in the 1980s and subsequent Systems of Care approaches
represent a confluence of streams of change in empirical research,
policy development, and service delivery systems over the past 30
yearsalbeit a painfully slow process. School safety efforts could
benefit from taking some historical lessons (what worked well
and not so well) from the 30-year Systems of Care saga (Stroul,
2002). Similarly, there are some valuable lessons to be gained by
examining the challenges and successes of the now more than
400 schools that have implemented multiyear projects via the
Federal Safe Schools/Health Student Initiative (Furlong, Paige,
& Osher, 2003; Furlong, Sharkey, Felix, & Osher, 2007). The
proposed taskforce to address Question 4 could also be given the
task of addressing this question.
Conclusion
In this article we asked, How safe are our schools? We found that
the extant data show that the safety of Americas schools has
improved over the past decade but that significant concerns remain
with regard to violence, theft, bullying, and intimidation, and associated harm to students. In addition, there exist neither standards
for assessing the degree of seriousness of problem student behaviors
nor standards of harm that distinguish between crisis events or
experiences and chronic low-level victimization. Determination of
what constitutes safety remains fluid and relative.
Discussion of related issuesgeneral public awareness of
school safety, taking meaning from current statistics, challenges
working with trend data, mechanisms of survey data collection
and analysis, theory-research-practice linkages, and school community factorsunderscored the many facets driving answers to
the core question of safety. Most noteworthy, discussion of the
third unanswered question in the previous section ended with a
call for a transdisciplinary theoretical approach. The field has
been driven by many midrange theories, but among the most
prominent models are social-ecological, developmental, social
information processing, and public health. Future progress
depends on advances in theory, including ways to combine our
most useful conceptual frameworks. We concluded that there
must be a coherent national agenda that better focuses efforts to
understand school safety challenges and more effectively bridges
the research-to-practice gap. A first step in that direction is
to identify key questions and launch a longer term national strategic plan.
24

As with Americas broader societal ills, school violence and

disruption will likely remain a concern for years. Stakeholders
(research, policy, practice, and concerned community members)
are interdependent, and long-term solutions will require
improved collaboration and shared investment. Collectively,
there is need to identify and address key unanswered questions
that will inform future actions making schools safer. Finally, it
will be critical to articulate a practical and achievable vision for
linking research, policy, and practice toward those ends.
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AUTHORS

MATTHEW J. MAYER is an assistant professor of educational psychology in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University, 10
Seminary Place, New Brunswick, NJ 08901; mayerma@rutgers.edu. His
research includes analyzing national data and modeling school violence
and disruption processes.
MICHAEL J. FURLONG is a professor the Department of Counseling,
Clinical, and School Psychology, Gevirtz Graduate School of Education,
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106; mfurlong@education
.ucsb.edu. His research focuses on school violence prevention research.
He is the editor of the Journal of School Violence.

educational Researcher
Downloaded from http://er.aera.net at Midlands State University on August 25, 2014

Manuscript received June 23, 2009

Revision received November 4, 2009
Accepted November 4, 2009