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Dive Brief:

• Crime on K-12 campuses, including student fights and physical attacks against teachers, mostly declined in the decade or so before 2022, according to a report released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Education.

• The percentage of high schoolers carrying a weapon such as a gun or knife on campus at least one day during the previous month declined from 5% in 2011 to 3% in 2021. Students ages 12-18 who reported being bullied at school also dropped from 28% in 2010-11 to 19% in 2021-22.

• But the report also highlighted concerning trends about gun violence at K-12 schools: For example, the rate of student firearm possessions during the 2021-22 school year exceeded that of any other school year over the previous decade. And in 2022, four active shooter incidents killed or wounded 52 people — the second highest number in any school year analyzed since 2000.

Dive Insight:

“This report highlights the complexity of trends in school crime and safety," said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, in a statement. Carr added that the information will provide policymakers, families, educators and the public with useful data about the current challenges faced by the education community.

NCES released the report as part of an annual series on school crime and safety at public and private K-12 schools, as well as on college campuses, created in conjunction with the U.S Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics. 

Carr noted that total school crime victimization fell compared to the decade before, but called statistics for some specific types of crimes worrisome. Data on gun violence on K-12 campuses, for example, shows that from 2000 through 2022, 50 active shooter incidents led to 328 casualties. About half of all casualties — 49% — during that time came between 2018 and 2022.

NCES defines active shooter incidents as those in which “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.”

And while overall crime rate reported on college campuses decreased in 2021 compared to the previous decade, the rate of forcible sex offenses rose between 2011 and 2021, from 2.2 to 7.5 per 10,000 students. Forcible sex offenses accounted for nearly half (44%) of all criminal activity on college campuses in 2021.