Many teachers feel unprepared to deal with potential school shootings, survey finds

(TND) — A new report from the Pew Research Center shows most teachers are worried about a shooting happening one day at their school.

Roughly a quarter of teachers surveyed by the Pew Research Center said they’ve experienced a gun-related lockdown during the last school year.

And a plurality of teachers, nearly 40%, said their school is doing only a fair or poor job preparing for an active shooter.

This weekend will mark the 25th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting, which claimed 13 victims in Colorado.

Department of Education data shows 108 people were killed and 168 were wounded in active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2021 at the nation’s elementary and secondary schools.

And CNN tracking shows there’s been an average of 78 school shootings over the last three years.

F. Chris Curran, director of the Education Policy Research Center at the University of Florida, said school shootings and the coverage that follows create “a climate of fear.”

Teachers are understandably concerned, he said.

But he said school shootings “luckily, thank goodness, remain quite rare events.”

“Schools, by and large, are very safe places for youth and kids, especially relative to, for some kids, crime or violence they may experience in a neighborhood context,” Curran said.

Curran has firsthand experience in a public school classroom, having taught middle school science for several years in Mississippi before going to graduate school.

He described being pulled into a conference room with a student that they thought had a gun in their backpack.

He thankfully has never lived through a school shooting. And he said most teachers won’t either.

Teachers are more likely to deal with fights and other kinds of violence at school, he said.

The Pew Research Center asked teachers about several prevention strategies.

Over 90% said improving mental health screenings and treatment would be at least somewhat effective in preventing school shootings.

Over 80% said having police officers or armed security guards at the schools would help.

Over 70% said metal detectors in schools are effective safeguards.

And 28% said allowing teachers and school administrators to carry guns in schools would be effective at preventing school shootings.

Democratic and Democratic-leaning teachers were more likely to favor the mental health approach, according to the Pew Research Center.

A higher share of Republican or Republican-leaning teachers supported what Curran called “target-hardening” approaches, though two-thirds of Republican teachers still supported the improved mental health strategy.

“I think at the end of the day, probably you know both of them have some merits,” Curran said. “Both of them can play in at different points in the process.”

Preventing a school shooting from the outset might be most effectively done with the mental health approach, he said. That includes relationship building, engaging students in school, and fostering trusting relationships with teachers.

But he said there is value in having tools, for example quick-locking doors, and protocols in place in case the unimaginable takes place.

He said a common concern with the security measures is that a school can start looking like a prison. If there are security fences up and every door is locked, some of those preventative efforts can start coming undone.

There’s a thin line between a secure school and a welcoming school.

And then there’s a practical problem of daily student movement if a school is secured too tightly.

He would, for example, take his students out back during his days as a middle school teacher so they could collect leaves or blast off a model rocket.

Students might be shortchanged if they’re kept to classrooms for their lessons.

“A big tension that schools have to grapple with there is kind of how, especially with the security practices, how to balance that with the other functions of the school,” he said. “And in some cases, unintended consequences of the use of those practices.”

The issue of gun violence in schools is part of the broader issue of gun violence in American society, he said.

While schools should take preventative and precautionary steps, relying solely on schools to prevent or respond to such incidents misses the need for policy to address gun violence more broadly, Curran said.

Federal legislation, such as the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act that was passed in 2022, has taken some steps toward this, Curran said. But he said there’s more to do in addressing reasonable gun policy, community mental health needs, and community violence.