Search results

This project examined the implementation of student threat assessment in Florida public schools. Researchers investigated threat assessment training and implementation, which types of threat cases schools experienced, and how cases were resolved. This project used a mixed-method approach with four broad research questions: (1) What are stakeholder reactions to training and implementation of threat assessment in their school? (2) What are the characteristics of threat assessments conducted in Florida public schools? (3) What relationships exist among academic, disciplinary, and legal outcomes for students receiving a threat assessment? (4) Are there adverse disparities in student outcomes associated with race, ethnicity, or special education status?

The data produced by this study include three Case Data datasets (DS1-3), comprised of Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) case data on student threats from the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years; two Training Survey Data datasets (DS4/5), containing results from surveys of participants who completed Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines (CSTAG) trainings; and Needs Assessment Survey Data (DS6) from a survey of district school safety leads assessing needs and concerns about their district's threat assessment process.

Across the United States (U.S.), school districts have grappled with how to create safe community- and achievement-oriented schools and how to ensure the necessary discipline is applied transparently, fairly, and without bias. Two programs that many schools have turned to in order to achieve these goals are Schoolwide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and Restorative Justice (RJ). PBIS is an evidence-driven schoolwide behavioral management approach that aims to outline clear expectations for students and to cultivate shared norms and practices across classrooms and school spaces. PBIS has become a popular approach in schools and districts: as of 2020; over 19,000 schools in the U.S. have implemented PBIS.

A second program, Restorative Justice (RJ), has grown in popularity in recent years. RJ typically focuses on restorative relationship building between affected parties, peaceful reconciliation, and non-punitive approaches to rectifying harm, using a structured circle discussion format. RJ schools use both community circles, designed to build a safe space for students and staff to share and listen to each other, and restorative circles, designed to share perspectives on and redress a behavioral issue.

Working with a large school district in a mid-Atlantic state, researchers set out to test whether these two programs substitute for or complement each other. In partnership with the school district researchers conducted two separate school-level randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The first RCT (RCT 1) sought to uncover the marginal impact of RJ by adding the program to a set of randomly selected schools that were already implementing PBIS. The second RCT (RCT 2) was designed to discover the impact of introducing both programs together into schools that had neither program at baseline. Researchers conducted student and staff surveys to collect measures of school climate, teacher logs to record program implementation, and researchers also received administrative data from the district on student test scores, teacher and student absences, student disciplinary infractions, and school costs.

There is growing evidence of the effectiveness of each of these programs in isolation. A recent meta-analysis of 32 experimental and quasi-experimental impact studies of PBIS found that PBIS reduced disciplinary exclusions and problem behavior and increased academic achievement. The findings were statistically significant and showed small to medium effect sizes. Individual studies have found that PBIS reduces the use of office disciplinary referrals and other exclusionary disciplinary measures (including the use of in-school and out-of-school suspensions), while improving student behavior and attitudes across school levels. Individual studies show variable--some statistically significant and some null--impacts on academic outcomes.

The empirical evidence on the effect of RJ in U.S. schools is more limited, with little rigorous casual evidence published to date. Based on patterns across rigorous and non-rigorous research, restorative justice is associated with decreases in suspension rates and disciplinary disparities, improved student behavior, and improved school climate and relationships.

This study made use of existing data to examine the effect of implementing school resource officers (SROs) on exclusionary discipline (e.g., arrests, suspensions) as well as perceptions of school climate in a school district in the Midwestern United States. The data used in this study were from district administrative records from the 1999-2000 through 2015-2016 school years.

Among the schools in district that have implemented SROs, this study estimated the rates of exclusionary discipline and perceptions of school climate over the years before SROs were implemented, and compared those outcomes to parallel measures from after SROs were implemented. Schools that have not implemented SROs acted as a comparison group.

Analytic techniques included latent growth curve modeling with multiple group piecewise models to examine differences between (a) schools with and without SROs (b) before and after SRO implementation.

This study also incorporated interviews and surveys with SROs for the purpose of understanding how their roles and responsibilities in schools as well as their subjective experiences of stress may play a role in the relationships examined in the study.

School safety research rarely considers the school security climate as a product of the simultaneous implementation of several school safety interventions. This is potentially problematic, as schools seldom employ only one safety intervention. Rather, schools today employ several interventions simultaneously to meet their safety and security needs. The purpose of this study is to investigate and identify effective types of school security climates and examine student growth within these climates. This multi-year project attempts to meet two goals: 1) Identify effective types of school security climates; and 2) Determine how the school security climate affects individual students. Data were collected from approximately 600 students attending 10 schools over the course of three years. Measures included an adapted version of the School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) and the Maryland Safe and Supportive Schools Survey (MDS3). The survey also included questions to obtain respondent demographics (age, gender, race/ethnicity) and other descriptive information about students and their experiences.

The Assessment of National and State Tip Line Technology as a Strategy for Identifying Threats to School Safety was conducted by RTI International, in partnership with the Oregon State Police, from 2018 through 2021. The project was designed to describe the national prevalence and characteristics of school safety tip lines, and to develop lessons learned on successful implementation approaches by conducting a case study with the SafeOregon tip line. The three main goals of the project were to:

1. Describe the prevalence and variability of tip line technology in public middle and high schools across the U.S. through a national survey of school administrators (Component 1).
2. Evaluate the relationship between tip line technology implementation and school safety by augmenting the national survey data with publicly available data on student disciplinary and school safety outcomes from the Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) (Component 2).
3. Assess the implementation experiences, outputs, and costs through an in-depth case study in the state of Oregon (Component 3).

For component 1, RTI conducted a national survey of public middle and high school administrators. For component 2, RTI conducted a national evaluation of school tip lines and measures of school safety, merging the national survey findings with eleven offense categories schools reported to the Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC).

For Component 3, the team set out to better understand how tip lines are implemented, the characteristics or features of these systems, challenges school administrators face during implementation and use, and perceived effectiveness. Using a mixed-methods design, researchers analyzed the efforts to implement and operate Oregon's SafeOregon statewide school tip line program and present data from the national survey for context. Case study objectives included identifying the (1) prevalence and school characteristics of tip line use; (2) basic operational characteristics of tip lines, including partnerships, staffing, tip submission and triage processes, and anonymity and confidentiality; (3) barriers and challenges involved in tip line implementation; and (4) perceived impact of tip lines. This qualitative assessment was informed by interviews with key stakeholders, school administrators and students. As part of the final component, RTI analyzed tip line data from the SafeOregon statewide tip line program (2018-2020).

Data and documentation from the qualitative interviews (student focus groups and school-level stakeholders) will be made available at a future date.

Bullying, fighting, and other forms of interpersonal violence occur frequently in elementary schools, and are associated with student distress, poor school functioning, and increases in aggression, delinquency, and other behavior problems. Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (PBIS) is a holistic, multi-tiered, evidence-based approach for preventing and reducing aggression and other problem behavior in school. However, the majority of PBIS schools struggle with more intensive interventions, which many students who present aggressive and disruptive behaviors need. School mental health (SMH) offers promise for addressing these limitations in PBIS. However, SMH lacks an implementation structure and as a result a student must effectively be at a crisis level to be referred for services. Because PBIS and SMH have operated separately, the impacts of both initiatives have been limited.

To address these limitations, the Interconnected Systems Framework (ISF) has been developed by leaders from national centers for both initiatives, providing specific guidance on PBIS-SMH interconnection through effective teams, data-based decision making, implementation support for evidence-based practices, and ongoing quality improvement to assure responsiveness to school and student needs. Involving partnerships with school districts and community mental health agencies in two school districts located in South Carolina and Florida, 24 schools implementing PBIS with fidelity were randomly assigned to the three conditions: the ISF, PBIS and SMH, or PBIS alone (8 schools per condition). Data were collected from school records, teacher and student reports, and school implementation teams. The impacts of ISF were compared to the other two conditions on school climate and safety, student exposure to violence, problem behavior and discipline problems, and access to and quality of services.

This multidisciplinary study included three objectives: (1) to conduct physical security surveys of K-12 schools in Arizona to compile a dataset of the physical security barrier technologies in use in those schools; (2) to survey parents and teachers about their perceptions of security in their schools, and compare their perceptions to those of security experts who conducted physical security surveys of participating schools; and (3) to test commonly used door and window materials in schools against ballistic and forced entry attack to determine the time necessary to penetrate the material.

To assess physical security, researchers visited 73 schools in 15 school districts and collected data on 3712 doors. The data collected included door material, door condition, hinges, locks, door knobs, door closers, and any windows adjacent to, or in, each door. Board certified security professionals and a retired law enforcement officer then scored the security value of each type of physical security device on a scale of 0 to 5. The scores were aggregated to arrive at an overall security score for each school that was compared to the survey responses of stakeholders. Commonly used door and window materials used in schools were also tested against ballistic and force entry attacks to establish baseline penetration times. The Penetration Test Protocols is available to download as study documentation, but the completed test report is not available with this collection.

Parent perceptions were assessed using a 45 item survey. Data were collected from 614 parents or guardians who had at least one child attending one of 43 K-12 schools in 9 Arizona school districts. Most parent respondents self-identified as females (n = 401; 94 missing data points). The average parent respondent age was 43.64 (SD = 8.70), with an age range from 23 to 78 years old (113 missing data points). Parent respondents identified as White, non-Hispanic (66 percent), Hispanic (10.3 percent), Black or African American (.5 percent), American Indian (4.6 percent), Asian (.7 percent), and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander (.2 percent; 110 missing data points).

Teacher perceptions were assessed using a 47 item survey. Data were collected from 384 teachers who taught at one of 43 K-12 schools in 8 Arizona school districts. Most teacher respondents self-identified as females (n = 292; 6 missing data points). The average teacher age was 45.38 (SD = 12.77), with an age range from 22 to 100 years old (39 missing data points). Teacher respondents identified as White, non-Hispanic (84.4 percent), Hispanic (7.8 percent), Black or African American (.5 percent), American Indian (1 percent), Asian (.3 percent), and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander (.3 percent; 18 missing data points). The participants' reported an average job tenure of 7.12 years (SD = 6.65), with a range from .17 to 40 years at their school (26 missing data points).

Tools for Life: Relationship-Building Solutions (TFL) is a program designed to improve school climate and safety through the proactive development of elementary and middle school students' interpersonal skills (relationship-building and communication) and intrapersonal skills (self-regulation and resiliency). In the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 school years, the Jackson (Mississippi) Public School District (JPSD) implemented TFL in grades 1 through 8. RAND researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial to determine whether TFL, integrated into existing school practices, positively affected school climate and safety in the district.

This project described the implementation of TFL in JPSD, calculated its costs, and evaluated the program's effectiveness. TFL was designed to improve whole-school change in relationships among staff and students, but the project researchers found that implementation of TFL in JPSD schools was generally shallow, and the program was rarely, if at all, implemented across a whole school as it was designed. TFL had little impact: After one year of implementation, there were no practically or statistically significant differences between schools that implemented TFL and those that did not in measures of students' social and emotional, school climate, behavioral, or achievement outcomes. In addition to the uneven implementation of the program, methodological limitations of the study and contextual factors in JPSD may have contributed to these finding.

Although the placement of school resource officers (SROs) in schools is widespread, little is known about its effectiveness in preventing school crime or the extent to which placement may harm schools and students (e.g., by facilitating the formal processing of minor offenses). The Study of Police in Schools sought to strengthen the evidence base on the effects of SROs on schools and students. Specifically, this study addressed two research questions: (1) What are the effects of SROs on school disciplinary offenses and disciplinary actions? and (2) Do the effects of SROs vary by implementation, school, and student characteristics?

The study focused on public secondary schools that increased SRO staffing through the 2013 and 2014 Department of Justice's Community Policing Services (COPS) Hiring Program (CHP) and on matched comparison schools that neither received SROs funded by CHP grants nor increased SRO staffing at the same time as treatment schools. Using longitudinal analyses of monthly school-level administrative data, the study compared the treatment and comparison schools on disciplinary incidents/offenses and actions. In addition, the study analyzed data from web surveys of school administrators and SROs at the sample schools, and from interviews with law enforcement officials at the agencies that placed the SROs in the schools. To assess the extent to which the presence of SROs affects the measurement of school crime, research staff also collected and analyzed qualitative information from interviews with school administrators in select treatment schools.

To conduct the study, the following data sources were collected or obtained:

1. Linking and SRO program information data files (1 file for CA, 1 file for FL)
2. California Department of Education administrative data files (5 files)
3. SRO web survey data files (1 file for CA, 1 file for FL)
4. School administrator web survey data files (1 file for CA, 1 file for FL)
5. Law enforcement agency interview data files (1 file for CA, 1 file for FL)
6. Moderator data file (1 file for CA)
7. School administrator interview data file (1 file for CA)

The major aims of this project were to: 1) Adapt for middle schools and assess the feasibility and acceptability of the Maryland Safe and Supportive Schools (MDS3) Model; 2) Test the efficacy of MDS3 for improving school safety and climate, problem behaviors, engagement, and achievement using a group of randomized controlled trial design in 20 middle schools; and 3) Measure the programmatic costs and benefits associated with implementation of the MDS3 model. Toward that end, during Spring 2015, the study team adapted and finalized the middle school version of Maryland Safe and Supportive Schools (MDS3) model, ensuring that it was feasible and acceptable to implement in middle schools, thereby addressing aim 1. The study team then began a randomized controlled trial in Summer 2015, whereby they recruited, enrolled, and randomized 40 middle schools to intervention and control conditions. The study team then collected baseline (Spring 2015- Fall 2015) and annual follow-up data in the Spring of the 2015-2016, 2016-2017, and 2017-2018 school years. These data included: student, staff, and parent indicators via the online MDS3 School Climate Survey; implementation of positive behavior supports and multi-tiered interventions; classroom and environment observations using two measures: Assessing School Settings: Interactions of Students and Teachers (ASSIST; Rusby et al., 2001) and School Assessment for Environmental Typology (SAfETy; Bradshaw, Milam, Furr-Holden, and Lindstrom Johnson, 2015); and cost data assessing the cost of program delivery in all 40 schools. Additionally, the team collected implementation data from coaches in the 20 intervention schools, which included information on coaching fidelity and ratings of the school engagement.

Funded by the National Institute of Justice, and in collaboration with the Flippen Group, the South Carolina Department of Education, and the districts of Charleston, Georgetown, Greenville, and Richland County Schools, WestEd conducted a randomized controlled trial of violence prevention and a school climate improvement program known as Capturing Kids' Hearts Campus by Design (CKH).

CKH is a skill intensive, systematic process, whole-school intervention, designed to strengthen students' connectedness to school through enhancing protective factors (strong bonds with teachers, clear rules of conduct that are consistently enforced) and targeting modifiable risk factors (inappropriate behavior, poor social coping skills). The CKH training program aims to address the mechanisms and processes of social skills instruction that lead to improved student behavior by promoting skills acquisition (i.e., modeling, coaching, and behavioral rehearsal), enhancing skills performance, removing competing behavior, and facilitating maintenance of social skills.

Components of CKH have been widely used throughout the United States. As of 2013, CKH training has been offered to over 200,000 staff in more than 7,000 schools. Although widely used, the whole package of CKH training and service has not been sufficiently subjected to a rigorous evaluation to assess the effectiveness of the program.

The purpose of this study is to test and evaluate the Capturing Kids' Hearts package of programs and processes offered in the school-wide model, CKH Campus by Design, which includes Capturing Kids' Hearts, Process Champions-Plus, Campus TrAction Pacs, Teen Leadership, CKH Recharged, and Leadership Blueprint.

This study is to understand how perceptions and the organization of school safety and security are associated with the level and type of law enforcement engagement in rural schools. A triangulation mixed methods design was used to collect and examine individual, school, and community level quantitative and qualitative data. The social-ecological theory of violence prevention guides the research by predicting that an interplay of factors at multiple levels influences the type and level of law enforcement engagement in rural schools.

Specifically, it was predicted that the more organized and coordinated a school is in the area of safety and security, the more likely it is to be formally engaged with law enforcement. Formal engagement is defined as use of some version of the school resource officer (SRO) model or defined roles and responsibilities for law enforcement in schools that are articulated in documents such as a memorandum of agreement or understanding.

The Wisconsin School Violence and Bullying Prevention Study sought to understand the impact of comprehensive bullying prevention programs on outcomes related to violence, safety, and bullying rates. This study focused on 24 middle schools (grades 6 to 8) in Wisconsin.

To examine the effectiveness of the school's current anti-bullying program, the Bullying Prevention Program Assessment tool (BPPAT) was completed at the end of the school year. The BPPAT focused on administrative policy and procedures geared towards students, faculty, parents, or administrators. This tool examined the following items: policy and procedures, program implementation, staff training, parental education and communication, student training, reporting systems, and continuous quality improvement (CQI). Students and faculty were given surveys to determine bullying rates and perceptions of school safety. The school safety survey was given to all students concerning their bullying victimization and perception of school safety. This survey contains the following demographic variables: age, sex, grade, and race. The verified bullying incident data contains incident reporting from faculty, which focused on the type of bullying and the demographics of the perpetrator and victim. After new bullying prevention programs were implemented, students were given the safety and bullying victimization survey which focused on perceptions of bullying and school safety.

The number of bullying incidents, number of student victims and perpetrators, and the demographic characteristics of victims and perpetrators were retained in aggregate form for each school were submitted to the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) for analysis.

This study tests the efficacy of an intervention--Safe Public Spaces (SPS) -- focused on improving the safety of public spaces in schools, such as hallways, cafeterias, and stairwells. Twenty-four schools with middle grades in a large urban area were recruited for participation and were pair-matched and then assigned to either treatment or control. The study comprises four components: an implementation evaluation, a cost study, an impact study, and a community crime study.

Community-crime-study: The community crime study used the arrest of juveniles from the NYPD (New York Police Department) data. The data can be found at (https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Public-Safety/NYPD-Arrests-Data-Historic-/8h9b-rp9u). Data include all arrest for the juvenile crime during the life of the intervention. The 12 matched schools were identified and geo-mapped using Quantum GIS (QGIS) 3.8 software. Block groups in the 2010 US Census in which the schools reside and neighboring block groups were mapped into micro-areas. This resulted in twelve experimental school blocks and 11 control blocks which the schools reside (two of the control schools existed in the same census block group). Additionally, neighboring blocks using were geo-mapped into 70 experimental and 77 control adjacent block groups (see map). Finally, juvenile arrests were mapped into experimental and control areas. Using the ARIMA time-series method in Stata 15 statistical software package, arrest data were analyzed to compare the change in juvenile arrests in the experimental and control sites.

Cost-study: For the cost study, information from the implementing organization (Engaging Schools) was combined with data from phone conversations and follow-up communications with staff in school sites to populate a Resource Cost Model. The Resource Cost Model Excel file will be provided for archiving. This file contains details on the staff time and materials allocated to the intervention, as well as the NYC prices in 2018 US dollars associated with each element. Prices were gathered from multiple sources, including actual NYC DOE data on salaries for position types for which these data were available and district salary schedules for the other staff types. Census data were used to calculate benefits.

Impact-evaluation: The impact evaluation was conducted using data from the Research Alliance for New York City Schools. Among the core functions of the Research Alliance is maintaining a unique archive of longitudinal data on NYC schools to support ongoing research. The Research Alliance builds and maintains an archive of longitudinal data about NYC schools. Their agreement with the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) outlines the data they receive, the process they use to obtain it, and the security measures to keep it safe.

Implementation-study: The implementation study comprises the baseline survey and observation data. Interview transcripts are not archived.

This study is an experimental investigation of the effectiveness of integrating School Resource Officers (SROs) into multi-disciplinary teams in reducing risk behaviors in students, specifically the average number of disciplinary incidents over the course of three years (2015-2017). The authors focus on the following research questions:

1. Do schools with SROs demonstrate significantly greater declines in student disciplinary incidents than schools with no SROs?
2. Do schools with SROs who receive the enhanced training (intervention) show greater declines in student disciplinary incidents than schools whose SROs receive only the standard training?
3. Do the answers to questions 1-2 vary by sub-populations in the schools such as students from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds, gender, and socioeconomic status?

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed.

This study was a randomized controlled trial of a dating violence and sexual harassment (DV/H) prevention program called the Shifting Boundaries (SB) Program. Thirty-five public middle schools in New York City were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions of the SB program. The project includes a baseline and two follow-up surveys with 6th, 7th and 8th grade students to assess short to medium term impact on rates of DV/H. The classroom curriculum intervention (SBC) covered the consequences for perpetrators of DV/H, state laws and penalties for DV/H, and respectful relationships. The school (building-level) intervention (SBS) included the use of school-based restraining orders, higher levels of faculty and security presence in areas identified through student mapping of safe/unsafe "hot spots," and the use of posters to increase awareness and reporting of DV/H.

The project examined (1) the effects of saturating a school environment by providing the SB intervention to all three middle school grades compared to only two grades or one grade and (2) the effects of two dosages of SB across two years compared to one dosage of the SB intervention across one year which was explored in two prior evaluations of the program.

The School Crime Operations Package (School COP) is a software application developed by Abt Associates Inc. with funding from the National Institute of Justice. School COP is a free software package that persons responsible for school safety can use to enter, analyze, and map criminal incidents and school rule violations that occur in and around K-12 schools. School COP organizes information according to the data model that the United States Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics' Crime, Violence, and Discipline Reporting Task Force recommends. The School COP database includes data related to the incident (e.g., date, time, type, location) and to persons involved in the incident (e.g., name, grade, action taken). In other words, School COP is an incident-based system, rather than a student-based system. School COP offers a variety of techniques for analyzing school incidents, including tabular reports, bar graphs, pie charts, and maps. School COP can be installed on any Windows (95 or later) PC. It requires no other software to run, and is usable without formal training.

The origin of this project is an award to Abt Associates Inc. that was funded under the National Institute of Justice's (NIJ) June 1999 "Safe Schools Technology" solicitation, which requested proposals for innovative approaches to using technology to enhance the safety of our nation's elementary and secondary schools. School COP was initially released on CD-ROM in January 2001, and made available at the School COP Web site in June 2001. This Windows version of School COP was generally designed for individuals, for a single school, or for small offices within a school district. Abt Associates Inc. was subsequently awarded another grant in 2001 to enhance the School Crime Operations Package (School COP) and to conduct an evaluation of this software, which is used to enter and analyze incidents that occur on school campuses.

Two types of enhancements were made. First, an enhanced Windows version of School COP was developed that could run on a local- or wide-area network, thus allowing multiple users within a single school or across multiple schools to share a common School COP database. The enhanced Windows version also included two utilities: a Merge application (which enables a district-level School COP database to be constructed by merging several individual databases) and a Viewer application (which enables users to view -- but not add, edit, or delete -- incident information). Second, Web School COP was developed to meet the diverse information needs of persons charged with maintaining safe schools in large school districts, including persons at the school-level (e.g., principals, assistant principals, security officers, and school resource officers), the district-level (e.g., district-level administrators and security staff), as well as possibly parent organizations and state-level administrators. Web School COP was designed to run on either an Intranet (e.g., the school district's private Internet) or a secure third-party Web server, and was built to run on the current Microsoft Web platform.

The evaluation of School COP entailed case studies of six sites to address three main issues: (1) what decision process do sites go through when deciding whether to use School COP, (2) once the site decides to use School COP, what implementation obstacles exist, including those related to installation, customization, and training, and (3) what benefits do sites realize from using School COP.