Status of Data on Crime and Violence in Schools: Final Report. Working Paper Series.

Several Federal programs and initiatives are underway to reduce crime and violence in the schools. In connection with these efforts, Congress had passed legislation requiring the National Center for Education Statistics to collect data about the seriousness and incidence of violence in elementary and secondary schools. This report presents an overview of existing national datasets that can be used to satisfy this legislative requirement. Information related to school crime and violence in these datasets is described, and the quality of that information is assessed. Strengths and weaknesses of a report to Congress based on the most recently collected data are discussed, and recommendations are made for developing a survey system designed to collect rigorous and detailed information on crime and violence in the schools. The following national datasets are reviewed: (1) Monitoring the Future (National Institute on Drug Abuse); (2) Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 1993, 1995 (Centers for Disease Control); (3) Schools and Staffing Survey (National Center for Education Statistics) (NCES); (4) National Household Education Survey (NHES); (5) The American Teacher: Violence in America's Schools (Metropolitan Life Insurance Company); (6) School Crime Supplement of the National Crime Victimization Survey (Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Institute of Justice); (7) National Crime Victimization Survey (Bureau of Justice Statistics); and (8) National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NCES). A review of the nature and quality of the information in these databases leads to the conclusion that most of them are appropriate for preparing a report to Congress. However, use of the National Education Longitudinal Study is not recommended, because it contains no information not already available in more recent databases. Information in the National Household Education Survey is also available from other databases. Collectively the recommended surveys provide a relatively large picture of the extent of crime, violence, and against-regulation behavior in schools. More and better information on student-level, teacher-level, and school-level crime and violence could be collected by a survey developed by the NCES that would include items that discriminate among different types of nonviolence and violent crimes and against-regulation behaviors. Appendixes describe the national databases and contain crosstabulation tables. (Contains 12 tables and 8 references.) (SLD)