Zusammenfassung: | <p>Student threat assessment is intended to maintain school safety by resolving student conflicts or problems before they escalate into violence, with the secondary benefit of reducing reliance on safety practices that have deleterious consequences (e.g., zero-tolerance discipline). In 2013, Virginia legislation mandated the establishment of threat assessment teams in all K-12 public schools by July 1, 2014. The major goals of the project were to:</p> <ol> <li>determine how student threat assessment is implemented in statewide practice in Virginia schools;</li> <li>determine what student and school outcomes are associated with student threat assessment; and</li> <li>determine whether training/technical assistance can improve student threat assessment.</li></ol> <p>To address Goal 1, the research team collected data across five years from the annual school safety audit survey that included information on how often threat assessments occur, characteristics of the threat cases, such as student demographics and how the threats were assessed, and the outcomes of the threat. The team also collected data on threat assessment training needs. To address Goal 2, the team correlated threat assessment data collected under Goal 1 with data on student and school outcomes obtained from the annual secondary school climate survey and statewide disciplinary records for school suspensions. To address Goal 3, the team developed, tested, and updated four separate online educational programs tailored to students, parents, staff, and threat assessment teams. These online programs have been implemented by schools in Virginia, 28 other states, and Canada.</p> <p>This collection contains school safety audit data from 2013 to 2018 and all-time data for the online educational program assessments through 2019. Case-level data, high-risk case level data, and school climate data are available for limited years. Qualitative data on training needs will be made available in a future update.</p>
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