The authors wish to thank the heads of their respective agencies, Gary Phillips of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and Jan Chaiken of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), for backing this report. We also appreciate their support of our larger data collection and reporting agendas on school crime and safety.

From BJS, we wish to thank Cathy Maston of the Victimization Statistics Branch for her work in preparing and verifying data from the NCVS.

From NCES, we wish to thank Bruce Taylor, Shelley Burns, Arnold Goldstein, Aurora D'Amico, and Ellen Bradburn, who served as reviewers. They each provided input that substantially improved the publication.

Outside of NCES and BJS, others who reviewed the report were Richard Lawrence of St. Cloud University; Meg Small, of the OESE/Safe and Drug Free Schools; Mary Schifferli, of the Office for Civil Rights of the U. S. Department of Education; and Joanne Wiggins of the Planning and Evaluation Service of the U. S. Department of Education. Their advice was gratefully accepted. We particularly appreciated their willingness to review the report under very strict time constraints.

Without the assistance of the following staff at MPR Associates this report could not have been produced: Barbara Kridl (overall production and proofreading), Francesca Tussing (production, proofreading, layout, and editing), Andrea Livingston (editing), and Leslie Retallick (figure design and text layout). They provided invaluable editorial, graphic, and production assistance.