Data Shows Violent School Deaths are Rare

Violent School Deaths

After the Troutdale, OR shooting a group founded by Michael Bloomberg called Everytown for Gun Safety posted a map of 74 school shootings since Sandy Hook.  Since then the data used to make that map has been found to be seriously flawed.  In fact, a Bureau of Justice report shows that violence in schools is on the decline.

When looking specifically at school-associated violent deaths, the Pew Research Center found that they are in the decline, with the exception of the 26 people killed at Sandy Hook.  From the Pew Research report, "Such incidents are as rare as they are tragic. In 2010-11, for instance, 11 children and youths (ages 5 to 18) were murdered at school, less than 1% of the 1,336 total homicides among that age group that year; suicides at school were even rarer."

Analysis

The Pew Research report does acknowledge there is difficulty in getting accurate and timely numbers, but it would seem from this research and the report Relative Risks of Death in U.S. K12 Schools, that there is an effort to inflate the dangers in schools.  This may be done unintentionally or with an agenda in mind, but school leaders need to get back to using a critical eye to evaluate any changes in approaches used by their schools.

Michael Dorn and Chris Dorn of Safe Havens International, have authored a training course through SafeSchools Training, Active Shooter for Administrators.  Courses like this one are based on research and valid evidence, and will prove much more useful than programs that are not research or evidence-based.

Actice Shooter Incidents are low-probabillity, high impact events.  While they should factor into a school's emergency planning, schools should not make such planning out of alignment with the other emergencies for which they prepare.