Schools should carefully consider the\ impacts before conducting live active shooter drills that involve students and educators.

Complete report

Given growing concern among parents, students, educators, and medical professionals about the impact that active shooter drills can have on student development,10 Everytown, AFT, and NEA do not recommend these drills for students and believe schools should carefully consider these impacts before conducting live drills that involve students and educators. For schools that do conduct drills, Everytown, AFT, and NEA support—at a minimum—six important stipulations that experts have found can help protect students’ well-being:

• 1. Drills should not include simulations that mimic an actual incident;

• 2. Parents should have advance notice of drills;

• 3. Drills should be announced to students and educators prior to the start;

• 4. Schools should create age and developmentally appropriate drill content with the involvement of school personnel, including school-based mental health professionals;

• 5. Schools should couple drills with trauma-informed approaches to address students’ well-being; and

• 6. Track data about the efficacy and effects of drills.

Drills involving students should not be the only plan to respond to school shootings. If schools decide to adopt these drills, they must be part of a comprehensive safety plan that includes measures to prevent active shooter incidents from happening in the first place, such as threat assessment programs, access to mental health professionals, collaborating with law enforcement, and engaging the community to ensure guns are not easily accessible.

KEY FINDINGS

Although nearly all students and educators experience drills, and a $2.7 billion dollar industry11 has grown up around the anguish of parents and school staff and the desperate feeling that we must “do something,” there is extremely limited research available on drills’ effectiveness.12 One 2007 study found drills that prepare students for an “intruder,” and that utilize best practices to minimize fear, have the potential to improve students’ response to a threat without increasing their anxiety.13 Another study commissioned in one school district following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida found drills that were announced in advance and followed by a debrief session increased students’ perception of their safety preparedness.14 Given drills’ relatively recent widespread implementation, however, there is not yet enough data to comprehensively study their effects. Further, the enormous variety of types of drills makes it difficult to measure and compare effects.

While there is almost no research affirming the value of these drills for preventing school shootings or protecting the school community when shootings do occur, stories abound in the media of incidents where students, educators, and staff have experienced distress and sometimes lasting trauma as a result of active shooter drills.

What little we know about active school shooters suggests student-involved drills may in fact be counter-productive, as the shooters are very often current or former students at the schools. A recent study of mass shooters from 1966 through 2019 found that nearly all mass school shooters were students and they exhibited warning signs prior to the incident.19 In these cases, school preparedness protocols and procedures are being shared with the very individuals most likely to perpetrate an active shooting. This is exactly why these drills, if adopted by school districts, cannot be the sole element of a school safety plan.