Crime, Violence, Discipline, and Safety in U.S. Public Schools, Findings from the School Survey on Crime and Safety: 2007-08

This First Look report uses data from the 2007-08 School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) to examine a range of issues dealing with school crime and safety, such as the frequency of school crime and violence, disciplinary actions, and school practices related to the prevention and reduction of crime.

SSOCS is the primary source of school-level data on crime and safety for NCES. Since 1999, it has been administered four times to the principals of nationally representative samples of public primary, middle, high, and combined schools.

INTRODUCTION
This report presents findings on crime and violence in U.S. public schools, using data from the 2007–08 School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS:2008). First administered in school year 1999–2000 and repeated in school years 2003–04, 2005–06, and 2007–08, SSOCS provides information about school crime-related topics from the perspective of schools.

Developed and managed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) within the Institute of Education Sciences and supported by the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools of the U.S. Department of Education, SSOCS asks public school principals about the frequency of incidents, such as physical attacks, robberies, and thefts, in their schools. Portions of this survey also focus on school programs, disciplinary actions, and the policies implemented to prevent and reduce crime in schools.

SSOCS:2008 is based on a nationally representative stratified random sample of 3,484 U.S. public schools. Data collection began on February 25, 2008, when questionnaires were mailed to principals, and continued through June 18, 2008. A total of 2,560 public primary, middle, high, and combined schools provided usable questionnaires, yielding an unweighted response rate of approximately 75 percent.

When the responding schools were weighted to account for their original sampling probabilities, the response rate increased to approximately 77 percent. A nonresponse bias analysis was performed because the weighted response rate was less than 85 percent, and the results indicate that nonresponse bias is not an issue for SSOCS:2008. For more information about the methodology and design of SSOCS, including how response rates were calculated and the details of the nonresponse bias analysis, please see Appendix B: Methodology and Technical Notes in this report.

Because the purpose of this report is to introduce new NCES data through the presentation of tables containing descriptive information, only selected findings are presented below. These findings have been chosen to demonstrate the range of information available when using SSOCS:2008 data rather than to discuss all of the observed differences.

The tables in this report contain totals and percentages generated from bivariate crosstabulation procedures. All of the results are weighted to represent the population of U.S. public schools. Comparisons drawn in the bulleted items below have been tested for statistical significance at the .05 level using Student’s t statistic to ensure that the differences are larger than those that might be expected due to sampling variation.

Adjustments for multiple comparisons were not included. Many of the variables examined are related to one another, and complex interactions and relationships have not been explored. Due to the large sample size, many differences (no matter how substantively minor) are statistically significant; thus, only differences of 5 percentage points or more between groups are mentioned in the findings.

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Samantha Neiman
Education Statistics Services Institute – MacroSys Research and Technology
Jill F. DeVoe
Education Statistics Services Institute – American Institutes for Research
Kathryn Chandler
Project Officer, National Center for Education Statistics

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCTION
MAY 2009

Selected Findings: School Year 2007–08
• During the 2007–08 school year, the rate of violent incidents2 per 1,000 students was higher in middle schools (41 incidents) than in primary schools (26 incidents) or high schools (22 incidents) (table 1).

• While 48 percent of schools reported at least one student threat of physical attack without a weapon, 9 percent of schools reported such a threat with a weapon (table 2).

• The rate of the distribution, possession, or use of illegal drugs was higher in schools with 1,000 or more students (5 incidents per 1,000 students) than in schools with lower enrollments (1 to 2 incidents per 1,000 students) (table 3).

• About 13 percent of city schools reported at least one gang crime, a higher percentage than that reported by suburban (5 percent), town (5 percent), or rural schools (3 percent) (table 4).

• About 18 percent of city schools reported that student acts of disrespect for teachers (other than verbal abuse) happen daily or at least once a week, a higher percentage than that reported by suburban (9 percent), town (11 percent), or rural schools (5 percent) (table 5).

• For students involved in the use or possession of a weapon other than a firearm or explosive device at school, the most frequently used disciplinary action was an out-of-school suspension lasting 5 or more days (41 percent) (table 6).

• A lower percentage of schools with 1,000 or more students reported that more than 75 percent of students had a parent or guardian who attended regularly scheduled parent-teacher conferences (22 percent) than did schools with lower enrollments (49 to 59 percent) (table 7).

• A higher percentage of schools with minority enrollments of 50 percent or more involved students in resolving student conduct problems as a component of violence prevention programs (58 percent) than did schools with minority enrollments of less than 5 percent (42 percent) or 20 to less than 50 percent (51 percent) (table 8).

• Compared to schools in towns (31 percent) or rural areas (34 percent) larger percentages of city (49 percent) and suburban (43 percent) schools reported having a written plan for procedures to be followed if the Department of Homeland Security issues a warning for a severe risk of terrorist attack (table 9).

• A higher percentage of middle schools reported drilling students on a written plan describing the procedures to be performed during a shooting (63 percent) than high schools (57 percent) or primary schools (49 percent) (table 10).

• Among the factors that were reported to limit schools?efforts to reduce or prevent crime "in a major way," three were more likely to be reported than others: a lack of or inadequate alternative placements or programs for disruptive students (25 percent); inadequate funds (24 percent); and federal, state, or district policies on disciplining special education students (18 percent) (table 11).

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