The Sky is NOT Falling - School Fatalities

A Serious Look at School Fatalities

According to a study released in 2012, wolves are the number one cause of death in the United States.  After the Reynolds HS shooting, a group called Everytown for Gun Safety posted a map showing 74 school shootings since the Sandy Hook massacre.  What do these two events have in common?  They are not true.

The fictitious Wolf Study was cited in a rather humorous article in The Onion, a website of parodies and satirical stories.  Though the article involves made-up facts, it rings true in several ways as borne out by research in the field of what is known as terror management theory TMT.  TMT research indicates that people often become convinced that they are more likely to experience catastrophic but extremely rare events than factual risk evaluation indicates.  For example, though most passengers on commercial aircraft survive aviation crashes, most people believe they will be killed if they are on a plane that crashes.  TMT also explains why many people fear events that are bizarre and unusual even more than events that pose much greater actual risk because they as far more common and even deadly. 

Besides delivering humor, this story highlighted how wildly inaccurate statistical data is often used to generate increased and sometimes unrealistic levels of fear among the public.

The second study was of great concern because it used a flawed process to identify school shootings.  Shortly after it's release, The Blaze and CNN took a closer look at the figures.  The 74 alleged school shootings were reduced to 15 which included university shooting incident.  While 15 incidents is still tragic, this data provides a much more accurate indication of risk in a nation of more than 300 million people and 55 million K12 students.  It is important to keep in mind that while many people automatically think of any “school shooting” in terms of active shooter events, the majority of these fifteen tragedies are not active shooter incidents but are in fact, far more typical of the types of shootings that have claimed many more lives than active shooter incidents.  Though they are truly catastrophic and shocking events, active shooter incidents are not the leading cause of violent death at school.

Early in 2014, Safe Havens International commissioned me to do a study on the leading causes of death in K12 schools in the US.  On April 16, 2014, this study was released as part of a project for the Maine Department of Education.  It was called Relative Risks of Death in US K12 Schools.

The study centers around a very important question. Are active shooter incidents being addressed at the expense of the all­‐hazards approach? This question is a crucial one because preventable school fatalities may be occurring if resource allocation does not match the actual safety risks for K12 schools.

This was an observational study of open-source material.  Events were identified using the Department of Homeland Security definition of an Active Shooter, “An Active Shooter is an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area; in most cases, active shooters use firearms(s) and there is no pattern or method to their selection of victims.”

The Top Five Causes of Death in Schools from 1998-2012:
1) School Transportation-Related Crashes (525)
2) School Homicides (489)
3) School Suicides (129)
4) Active Shooter Incidents (62)
5) Interpersonal Disputes (61)

The following were findings from the study:
1) Active Shooter Incidents are not the leading threat for fatal incidents schools face.
2) Active Shooter Incidents in schools (K12) are not happening more frequently.
3) Active Shooter Incidents should not be the primary focus for a school's prevention, mitigation and emergency preparedness efforts.
4) More focus needs to be given to school transportation-related safety.
5) More focus needs to be given to school homicides and school suicides.

Schools are better served using a risk assessment-based approach to school safety, as part of the All-Hazards emergency planning model.  School fatalities are a serious issue, one that is better served through proper data analysis and research.   My colleagues and I have spent considerable time and energy developing some of the most advanced training resources to address active shooter events available including the IS-360 training program which was part of the 2013 White House School Safety Initiative and recently released web courses.  At the same time, the research indicates that we should also address the less publicized situations that claim more lives than active shooter incidents as well.

 Oh, and keep an eye out for the wolves.