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.

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.

Incorrect Data in the Aftermath of Troutman, Oregon

Incorrect Data

When dealing with school safety, it is important to use proper data to drive your efforts.  In the wake of the Troutman, Oregon school shooting, bad data has been put forth and swept along by social media, giving the impression that schools are not as safe as they used to be.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Blaze notes a journalist, Charles Johnson, who examined the faulty data from the group Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group funded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.  Of the 74 "school shootings mapped by the Everytown group, Johnson found issues with 33.  Everytown included every type of shooting imaginable, including, according to Mr. Johnson, some shootings that were only loosely associated with a school.

Analysis

This spring I released a study called Relative Risks of Death in U.S. K-12 Schools. In that report, the definition of an Active Shooter Incident was defined, using the definition put forth by the US Department Of Homeland Security. That definition is, "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.” This definition separates school shootings from shootings that take happen to take place at schools.

From the year 1998 through 2012, there were only 22 Active Shooter Incidents in K-12 schools.  These incidents resulted in the deaths of 50 students and 12 staff members.  Half of those incidents involved no fatalities, while of the other 11, three (Columbine, Red Lake and Sandy Hook) resulted in 46 (70.8%) of the 62 fatalities.

Active Shooter Incidents are terrifying, chiefly because their target selection is random.  That means anyone at the school is a potential target.  Targeted acts of violence, while dangerous, indicate a community violence issue in which the school is involved along with the community.  Active Shooter Incidents are targets of opportunity; schools just happen to be selected as a target because they have a high number of potential victims.  While one can predict violence at school in a violent community, we have thus far been unable to predict when a school will become a target of an Active Shooter.

School safety is a serious issue, and it is one about which we should have an on-going discussion.  We do no one any service at all by making it a fallacious discussion, using bad data.