Free school threat assessment toolkit may help with safety, student support

On Board Online • May 20, 2024

By Sara Foss
Special Correspondent

It's a question that every school leader has asked: How can we prevent violent events from occurring in our schools? A new resource with evidence-based best practices is available from the federally funded National Center for School Safety at the University of Michigan. And it's free.

The School Threat Assessment Toolkit is a 128-page guide that was developed by two professors from the University of Virginia. It is designed to help schools integrate behavioral threat assessment - a form of violence risk assessment focused on people who have threatened to harm someone - into their broader safety plans.

The new guide and many other threat assessment resources are available on the website of the New York State Center for School Safety, a contractor for the New York State Education Department's Office of Student Support Services, at www.nyscfss.org/resources-threat-assessments .

"Schools need a fair, systematic and effective way to assess the seriousness of a student's behavior and develop an appropriate response that both prevents violence and helps the student with the problem underlying their threat," said Dewey Cornell, a professor of Education at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia and co-author of the new toolkit.

Cornell told On Board that people mistakenly believe threat assessment teams are used to identify students with serious intent to carry out a mass shooting. In reality, the teams typically are evaluating troubling but everyday misbehavior.

"Most of the time, we are talking about fights and assaults," Cornell said. "Schools routinely deal with students who for some reason - perhaps anger, frustration or mischief - make threatening statements or do something provocative that raises concern about violence."

Routinely, school teams confront the question, "What is the best response to this incident?" Behavior threat assessment is a collaborative method of answering that question.

Brian Forte, executive director of the State of New York Police Juvenile Officers Association, which represents school resource officers, said threat assessment "should be in every school."

Forte's organization includes threat assessment in its advanced school resource officer curriculum and continuing education program and is creating an educational program on threat assessment geared toward teachers and other school staff. In August, the organization will include a segment on the new threat assessment toolkit for educators at its annual conference in Niagara Falls.

The use of behavioral threat assessment in American schools took off after the school shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 - a watershed event that prompted widespread changes in how schools approach safety and threats. By 2019-20, 64% of all public schools reported having a threat assessment team, according to the Threat Assessment Toolkit.

New York does not require schools to have behavioral threat assessment teams, but the subject arose during a discussion at the April meeting of the Board of Regents. The State Education Department (SED) is proposing to require school districts to include information about violence prevention efforts in their school safety plans. Specifically, schools would be asked to provide information about county or regional threat assessment teams or school-level behavioral assessment teams, if they have them.

Regent Roger Catania praised this proposed change, saying threat assessment ought to be "required or at least encouraged strongly."

Nine other states require in-school threat assessment teams, according to an analysis by Everytown, an organization that advocates for firearm safety.

In the aftermath of a mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo in 2023, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order requiring New York counties to establish threat assessment teams.

Kathleen DeCataldo, special advisor to the New York State Commissioner of Education for Student Support Services, said SED is encouraging districts to partner with county threat assessment teams. Those teams are "better able to bring together the learned practitioners you need to do this kind of work," she said. "For smaller school districts, it's very difficult to go through the training and have the right people around."

Cornell said threat assessment is a more effective approach to addressing school violence than zero-tolerance tactics such as suspension or expulsion. Deployed properly, it can be a vehicle for directing resources and interventions to students in need and defusing situations before they escalate or get out of hand.

Schools with good behavioral threat assessment programs "see a reduction in school suspension," Cornell continued. "They also see reductions in peer conflicts like bullying and fighting because they are identifying those problems and responding to them through the threat assessment process. Teachers and students report a safer and more positive school climate in schools using threat assessment."

The School Threat Assessment Toolkit is comprised of three sections:

• Section 1 discusses how to select and train a school threat assessment team, which should include representatives from school administration, mental health staff such as counselors or social workers and law enforcement.
• Section 2 looks at how to implement threat assessment in schools.
• Section 3 describes how to evaluate the effectiveness of a threat assessment program.

Cornell co-authored the toolkit with Jennifer Maeng, a research associate professor with the UVA School of Education's Youth Violence Project.

The National Center for School Safety is funded by the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance, which trains districts receiving school safety grants. Its most recent report, issued in April 2024, is a three-page document entitled, "A Positive Youth Development Approach to School Safety." The center also serves as a clearinghouse for related federal reports, such as "The Causes and Consequences of School Violence: A Review," an 86-page report published by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2022. See www.nc2s.org/resource-type/publications .

Another group involved in school threat assessment is the National Association for Behavioral Intervention and Threat Assessment, which offers training and certification programs. It is based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. See www.nabita.org/k-12-schools-and-districts .

Other companies seek to enhance mental health support for students. For instance, Cartwheel Care of Cambridge, Massachusetts, will have a booth at NYSSBA's Annual Convention & Education Expo in New York City Oct. 20-22. "We help districts address clinical-level mental health needs for students in grades K-12," said Joe English, co-founder and CEO. That includes therapy, psychiatry and extensive case management for students who struggle with issues ranging from anxiety and depression to self-harm and trauma.

Although "threat assessment" is a popular term, not everyone likes it. "I have a problem with calling it 'threat assessment' because I don't ever want a child to be labeled a threat," said SED's DeCataldo. "I prefer 'behavioral intervention.'"