February 9, 2005

By Anne Bromley

A new study demonstrates how schools can safely respond to students who make violent threats, thereby preventing them from being carried out. Conducted by University of Virginia professors Dewey G. Cornell and Peter L. Sheras, the study reports on guidelines for student threat assessment, a method the U.S. Department of Education recommends for all schools. The 188 incidents reported on were investigated and resolved by school threat-assessment teams without a single threat leading to violence.

Appearing in the current issue of School Psychology Review, the field’s leading journal, the study was the first to field-test recommendations resulting from the FBI’s 1999 investigation of school shootings. The threat assessment approach, developed using both FBI and Secret Service recommendations, represents a radical departure from profiling and zero tolerance approaches, which are the most widely used practices in the nation’s schools.

The study reports on guidelines for student threat assessment that were field-tested at 35 schools over one year in the City of Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County public schools. Even before these findings were published, school divisions in Virginia and other states have been eager to receive threat assessment training, Cornell said. Workshops have already been completed for school divisions in Richmond, Fairfax, Henrico and Roanoke counties and a dozen other school divisions in Virginia. School divisions in Oakland and San Diego, Calif., and in Memphis, Tenn., have also received the training.

“So far no one else has developed and field-tested these kind of specific guidelines and procedures for schools to use in implementing threat assessment. We hope that these guidelines will establish a national model,” said Cornell, who like Sheras, is a clinical psychologist in U.Va.’s Curry School of Education.

All elementary, middle and high schools in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, which have a combined enrollment of approximately 16,000 students, participated in the study. School principals, assistant principals, psychologists and school counselors completed threat assessment training prior to the field-testing. School resource officers assigned to schools by the local police departments also participated.

During the 2001-2002 school year, 188 incidents including threats to kill, shoot, stab and assault others were investigated. The threats were aimed primarily at other students, but also included threats intended for teachers and school administrators. Almost every student investigated was able to return to school within a few days. Only three students were expelled and six were arrested. One-half (94) of the incidents resulted in a short-term suspension, typically one to three days, before the student returned to school. During that time, no violent acts were carried out.

In separate reports, the FBI and Secret Service have condemned the use of student profiling to identify potentially dangerous students. Profiling uses a checklist of character traits, behaviors and other signs considered common among violent or dangerous youth, but has been criticized for over-identifying youth as “dangerous.”
“The basic problem with student profiling is that many adolescents who are not dangerous will have a few characteristics on the checklist that cause them to be falsely identified and stigmatized as violent, even when they may still be in elementary school,” Sheras said.

Another popular approach, zero tolerance, involves the use of long-term suspension or expulsion for any violation of certain school rules. A typical zero tolerance policy, for example, will call for the automatic expulsion of a student who brings any type of weapon to school, without regard to the circumstances of the infraction. Such policies have resulted in the expulsion of students for inadvertently bringing objects to school, such as a bread knife or a miniature toy gun.

The basis of threat assessment is that in most cases, threats precede violent acts in schools. The approach requires school officials to investigate any apparent threatening behavior by students and make a determination of the seriousness of the actions before imposing disciplinary consequences. The Virginia threat assessment guidelines are organized around a decision tree that leads school administrators through a step-by-step process of investigating student threats, determining how dangerous a threat is and then planning what actions are necessary to prevent it from being acted upon.

“We found that most threats could be classified as transient threats that are easily resolved, and that about one-third of threats were substantive threats that required more extensive assessment,” Sheras said.

According to the researchers, one of the defining features of the threat assessment approach is that school administrators do not have to take a zero tolerance approach that results in severe punishment for any kind of threat. If a threatening statement can be identified as a joke or figure of speech — for example, “I could just kill you for that” — it can be resolved quickly with an explanation and apology. If a threat is considered very serious, it triggers a law enforcement investigation and a mental health assessment of the student. The guidelines include criteria for school administrators to use in determining the seriousness of a threat.

“Our field-testing is an important step toward establishing our guidelines as a national model for how schools can safely deal with student threats, but must be followed up with additional controlled studies,” Cornell said.

See http://youthviolence.edschool.virginia.edu for more details.

Dewey G. Cornell can be reached at (434) 924-0793 or dgc2f@virginia.edu, and Peter L. Sheras can be reached at (434) 924-0795 or pls@virginia.edu