What Can Be Done About School Shootings?: A Review of the Evidence

Impact Factor:2.779 | Ranking:6/219 in Education & Educational ResearchSource:2012 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters, 2013)
School shootings have generated great public concern and fostered a widespread impression that schools are unsafe for many students; this article counters those misapprehensions by examining empirical evidence of school and community violence trends and reviewing evidence on best practices for preventing school shootings. Many of the school safety and security measures deployed in response to school shootings have little research support, and strategies such as zero-tolerance discipline and student profiling have been widely criticized as unsound practices. Threat assessment is identified as a promising strategy for violence prevention that merits further study. The article concludes with an overview of the need for schools to develop crisis response plans to prepare for and mitigate such rare events.

RANDY BORUM is a professor in the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences at the University of South Florida, 13301 Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, Tampa, FL 33612; borum{at}bcs.usf.edu. He served on the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education Safe School Initiative research team studying school-based attacks in the United States.

DEWEY G. CORNELL is a clinical psychologist and professor of education in the Curry Programs in Clinical and School Psychology at the University of Virginia, Box 400270, 405 Emmet Street, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4270; dcornell{at}virginia.edu. He directs the Virginia Youth Violence Project and has developed guidelines that are widely used around the country for schools to evaluate student threats of violence.

WILLIAM MODZELESKI is an associate assistant deputy secretary in the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education, 550 12th Street SW, Washington, DC 20202; bill.modzeleski{at}ed.gov. He is also an adjunct professor of public policy practice at George Washington University. He was the lead U.S. Department of Education representative on the Safe School Initiative study of school-based attacks in the United States.

SHANE R. JIMERSON is a professor in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, 2113 ED Building, Santa Barbara, CA 93106; jimerson{at}education.ucsb.edu. He has been involved in national and international initiatives regarding school crisis prevention and response and is a coauthor of the PREPaRE Model of School Crisis Prevention and Intervention.

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