During the 1997–98 school year, the media brought a number of school tragedies to the attention of the world. These tragedies all involved students using firearms to kill students —and, in one case, a teacher—in random fashion. The towns where these incidents took place—Pearl, Mississippi; West Paducah, Kentucky; Jonesboro, Arkansas; and Springfield, Oregon—were made famous. In Pearl, 9 students were shot and 2 died; in West Paducah, 8 students were shot and 3 died; in Jonesboro, 14 students and a teacher were shot and 4 of the students and the teacher died; and in Springfield, 20 students were shot and 2 died.

These were horrific events, and the media were hungry for data to put these events in context. Questions such as the following were being asked: How often do shootings like these occur? Is the frequency of school violence increasing? Are schools becoming more violent? In what schools are these incidents occurring?

Prior to the 1997–98 school year, NCES data collections on school crime and violence were done on an irregular basis. NCES had an advisory role on the Safe School Study that was conducted by the National Institute of Education in 1978. More than a decade later, in 1989, NCES sponsored the first School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The SCS provided an inexpensive means to reach students ages 12 through 18, although the number of questions that could be included was limited. The 1989 SCS was a success, and BJS released the data in 1991.

In the early 1990s, NCES shifted its focus to its own National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) as a means of collecting data on school crime. The 1993 NHES included a survey that asked students in grades 6 through 12 and their parents about issues related to safety and discipline in the students’ schools. While this survey was a success in many respects and allowed for more questions than the SCS, concerns about response rates for students led NCES to stop including the survey in NHES. NCES then shifted its thinking back to supplements to the NCVS as a means of getting student data related to crime and safety. With the support of BJS, another SCS was fielded in 1995.

In the meantime, the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act of 1994 (P.L. 103–382) contained a provision requiring NCES to “collect data to determine the frequency, seriousness, and incidence of violence in elementary and secondary schools.” While the SCS was providing data from students, NCES had no data from schools. To obtain school-level data, NCES used its Fast Response Survey System (FRSS) to conduct the “Principal/School Disciplinarian Survey on School Violence.” This survey was, by NCES standards, quite modest; responses were received from 1,234 schools. Data collection took place during the 1996–97 school year. Unfortunately, the report providing results of the survey had not yet been published when the events of 1997–98 began to take place. The report was released in March 1998, as was the report providing results of the 1995 SCS.

In December 1997, the Departments of Education and Justice began meeting on a regular basis to examine data gaps in relation to school crime and violence. Encouraged by Bill Modzeleski of the Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, the departments embarked on a joint project to produce a compendium of all the latest information on school crime and safety. The resulting report, Indicators of School Crime and Safety, was first produced in October 1998 and has been released on an annual basis (each fall) since then. The 2002 edition of Indicators of School Crime and Safety is one of the reports highlighted in this issue of the Quarterly.

NCES has also made a number of other commitments to collect and report data on school crime and safety on a regular basis. Thus, a long-term commitment was made to conduct the SCS biennially beginning in 1999. The report that releases data from the 1999 SCS, Are America’s Schools Safe? Students Speak Out: 1999 School Crime Supplement, is also highlighted in this issue of the Quarterly.

Other relevant NCES data collections include the School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS). This survey, an expanded version of the 1996–97 FRSS survey of principals/ school disciplinarians, was conducted in 2000 and will be conducted again in 2004. The 2000 SSOCS data will be released in fall 2003. Questions about school crime and safety were also added to the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 and are being added to the 2003–04 Schools and Staffing Survey. Because of these efforts, NCES will be prepared to answer the statistical questions born of tragedies in schools and to provide the data needed to help policymakers and researchers better address the safety of our children at school.