Violence Prevention Practice Trends in Large U.S. School Districts, 2012-2024

Though state laws require schools to address and prevent violence through education programs and/or trainings, implementation of violence prevention practices may vary across districts and over time. Using representative data from the 2012-2024 School Health Profiles for 10 large urban school districts across the United States, we used logistic regression to analyze trends of 11 school violence prevention practices. The most common practice across districts was having a designated staff member for students to confidentially report bullying, sexual harassment, and electronic aggression (95.3%-97.8% across years). The least common practice across districts was using self-assessment tools to assess policies/programs for unintentional injury/violence prevention (38.3%-53.8% across years). For most practices at the district level, the percentage of schools implementing the violence prevention practices from 2012 to 2024 did not significantly change. There are opportunities for additional implementation across school districts, particularly for assessing current policies/programs, engaging parents/families, and training staff.