A New Agenda for School Safety Research

Kindergarten to 12th grade (K–12) schools in the United States face complex and ever-evolving school safety problems. Although incidents of serious violence (such as school shootings) make headlines, less newsworthy—yet all too common—threats and incidents of lower-level violence (such as student fights) affect schools each day. New challenges also regularly emerge, such as harsh cyberbullying on social media or the use of new technologies (for example, artificial intelligence) to generate and spread harmful deepfake images of peers or school staff. Building and maintaining safe and supportive learning environments are serious challenges for educators and school staff. At the same time, the ways in which schools have responded to safety-related issues have also drawn controversy.

This paper summarizes the challenges and future directions for K–12 school safety from a roundtable discussion hosted by RAND in September 2024. At the roundtable, a diverse group of K–12 educators, administrators, law enforcement officers, mental health professionals, and safety researchers explored the multifaceted nature of school safety issues and identified actionable research priorities for the future. This paper should be informative for policymakers involved in developing guidance and funding initiatives related to K–12 school safety, as well as other funding entities, such as private foundations. The paper may also be of more-general interest to K–12 administrators and other stakeholders interested and involved in school safety.