Poster #45 - Exploring School and District Responses to Gun Violence: Impacts on Educator Composition and Student Outcomes

• In Event: Friday Poster Reception

Abstract

Background:

Over recent decades, incidents of gun violence on K-12 campuses have increased alarmingly (Rapa et al., 2024). This represents a critical challenge to the U.S. education system, severely undermining students' right to a safe learning environment and exacerbating disparities in school safety. Contributing factors to school shootings are varied, including bullying (Dukes et al., 2010; Klein, 2013), mental illness (Ferguson et al., 2011), and inadequate firearm legislation (Katsiyannis et al., 2023). State-level factors, such as mental health expenditure and background checks, have been linked to reduced incidence of shootings (Kalesan et al., 2017), though Hall et al. (2019) results potentially contest these results, suggesting no causal relationship between psychotropic medication use and the actions of most perpetrators. 

            The consequences of school shootings are profound, encompassing increased absenteeism (Hodges et al., 2023), declining academic performance (Beland & Kim, 2016; Gershenson & Tekin, 2018), heightened prevalence of mental health issues (Rossin-Slater et al., 2020), and reduced graduation and college enrollment rates (Cabral et al., 2020). Students in urban, underfunded, and predominantly non-white schools are disproportionately affected by these adverse outcomes (Barboza, 2018). It is essential to ensure students are supported when they are affected by gun violence, and research on these responses is unclear (Borum et al., 2010; Jonson, 2017), as we know much little about whether and to what extent incidences of school violence compel educational leaders to invest more in support personnel or more punitive discipline approaches.  

Research Questions:

This study aims to investigate how districts and schools respond to these incidents, focusing on exploring whether responses are best characterized as more punitive or restorative. 

1. To what extent do incidents of gun violence lead to changes in the composition of school staff, specifically in terms of increasing school resource officers (punitive response) or enhancing student support personnel (restorative response)? 

2. How do incidents of gun violence affect student (dis)enrollment and discipline?

Data and Methods:

This study combines data from the K-12 School Shooting Database and the Washington Post School Shooting Database to create a comprehensive database on US K-12 school shootings. These data will then be merged with the Common Core of Data and the Office of Civil Rights Data collection to add outcomes of interests. Using an interrupted time series (ITS) design, we will assess the effects of school gun violence incidents on staff composition changes, disciplinary actions, and mental health support services. The ITS design can efficiently isolate the influence of school shootings on outcomes by examining data across numerous time points before and after the incidents while controlling for underlying patterns and seasonal variations.

Preliminary Findings:

Preliminary analyses suggest a marked increase in school shootings since 2018, peaking in 2022 following the COVID-19 pandemic. ITS results suggest that student support staff at the district level slightly increases after gun violence incidents. We do not find significant changes in student enrollment, but we see a mild increase in out-of-school suspensions at the school level.

 

 

 

Authors

• Jerome Graham, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Su Yon Choi, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author