Summary Overview Report: Student Threat Assessment as a Safe and Supportive Prevention Strategy

• NCJ Number: 255054
• Author(s): Dewey Cornell; Jennifer Maeng
• Date Published: February 2020
• Length: 16 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2014-CX-BX-0004
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical); Report (Summary); Report (Study/Research); Report (Grant Sponsored); Program/Project Evaluation; Program/Project Description

Annotation

This is the Summary Overview Report of a research project with the goals of determining 1) how student threat assessment is implemented in statewide practice; 2) what students and school outcomes are associated with student threat assessment; and 3) whether training/technical assistance can improve student threat assessment.

Abstract

The second goal of determining what student and school outcomes are associated with student threat assessment was achieved by correlating threat assessment data collected under the first goal with data on students and school outcomes obtained from the annual secondary school climate survey and statewide disciplinary records for school suspensions. How student threat assessment is implemented in statewide practice (goal 1) was addressed by analyzing 5 years of Virginia's legally mandated safety audit survey of each school in the state. Schools provided information on their threat assessment team and cases they investigated each year. In determining what student and school outcomes are associated with student threat assessment (goal 2), analyses were conducted separately for behaviors in elementary and secondary schools. The third goal of determining whether training/technical assistance can improve student threat assessment was addressed by developing, testing, and updating four online education programs for students, parents, staff, and threat assessment teams. These online programs have been implemented over the past 3 years by schools in Virginia and at least 10 other states. Study findings show the ability of threat assessment teams to resolve thousands of student threats with no violent outcome in 99 percent of the cases. The project demonstrated the parity of disciplinary and legal outcomes for Black, Hispanic, and White students who received a threat assessment. This project developed a free online educational program to help students, staff, parents, and threat assessment team members learn about threat assessment and school safety. 10 references