Gun violence is rising in schools, but overall crime is falling

Gun violence has become more common in K-12 schools compared with a decade ago, a new Department of Education report shows, while incidents of bullying and violence against students and teachers on school grounds have declined.

The report, released July 25, highlights the changing landscape of K-12 schools, which can “help policymakers and practitioners understand the nature, scope, and scale of the problem they are addressing as they develop programs aimed at preventing violence and crime in schools,” the report’s authors wrote.

Earlier this summer, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared gun violence a public health crisis, issuing a 39-page guide on initiatives to prevent gun deaths. The guide said the rate of gun-related deaths “reached a nearly three-decade high in 2021.”

Gun violence became the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in 2020 and remained so in 2021 and 2022, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a nonprofit health policy research and polling organization.

Here’s what you need to know about school crime:

Overall crime on school grounds is down

In the decade to 2022, crime committed on public school grounds has declined. This includes student fights and physical attacks on teachers. Gang violence and hate graffiti have also declined, the report said.

The percentage of high school students who carried a gun on school grounds at least once in the past month also fell compared with a decade earlier. And the percentage of students and staff who reported being threatened or attacked with a gun on school grounds fell between the 2011-12 school year and the 2021-2022 school year. The report reflects the most recent data available.

Cyberbullying is more common than traditional bullying

Bullying has long been a reality in public schools—especially high schools, where preteens go through major physical and emotional changes. But cyberbullying has become slightly more common than traditional bullying, according to federal data. A separate Pew Research Center study, also conducted in 2022, found that nearly half of U.S. teens reported experiencing at least one form of cyberbullying.

For children aged 12 to 18, about 19.2% reported being bullied at school during the 2021-2022 school year, according to a Department of Education report. A decade earlier, 28% of children reported the same.

Of the students who were victims of bullying, young females were more likely to experience it than their male classmates.

Gun violence still occurs in schools

The threat of gun violence has become a fact of life for American schools. Schools across the country are going into lockdown with increasing frequency, and about one in four teachers in a nationally representative survey by the Pew Research Center said their campus had at least one gun-related lockdown last school year.

A Department of Education report found that the rate of student firearm ownership in the 2021-2022 school year was higher than any other year in the previous decade.

In 2022 alone, 52 people were killed or injured in an active shooter incident on school grounds. This was the second-highest death toll in an active shooter incident on school grounds, after 2018, when 81 people were killed or injured.

Contributor, Alia Wong, USA TODAY