This spring the U.S. Education Department said that in the 2015-2016 school year, “nearly 240 schools … reported at least one incident involving a school-related shooting.” The total is far higher than most other estimates. NPR reached out to every one of those schools and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the federal Civil Rights Data Collection. Only 11 incidents were confirmed. In 161 cases, schools or districts said no incident took place or couldn’t confirm one. In at least four cases, something happened, but it didn’t meet the government’s parameters for a shooting. “When we’re talking about such an important and rare event, [this] amount of data error could be very meaningful,” says Deborah Temkin of Child Trends.
Asked for comment, the Education Department said it would update some of these data this fall. NPR’s reporting highlights how difficult it can be to track school-related shootings and how researchers, educators and policymakers are hindered by a lack of data on gun violence. The Civil Rights Data Collection required every public school — more than 96,000 — to answer questions on a wide range of issues. One question was, “Has there been at least one incident at your school that involved a shooting (regardless of whether anyone was hurt)?” The answer — “nearly 240 schools (0.2 percent of all schools)” — was published this spring. The government’s definition included any discharge of a weapon at school-sponsored events or on school buses. Even so, that would be a rate of shootings much higher than anyone else had ever found.