The Data Dispatch

Monday, December 23rd, 2024



What’s Wrong With American Middle Schools?

Matt Helm December 18th, 2024

I recently came across the School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). I had never heard of this survey before, and after exploring the data briefly, I was close to moving on to a new source as I didn't find anything in it particularly interesting. However, after calculating per-school rates of different kinds of violent incidents, one thing really stood out: middle schools are seemingly more violent than high schools in a few different ways. I found this surprising and I would have expected high schools to have much higher rates of the most serious kinds of incidents, simply because the kids are older.

First, let's look at an incident type that is in line with what I expected:

Source: National Center for Education Statistics, School Survey on Crime and Safety2019 - 2020Author calculations from public use microdata file

This makes sense to me and I expected most of the charts to look more or less like this one. Here's where I got my first surprise:

Source: National Center for Education Statistics, School Survey on Crime and Safety2019 - 2020Author calculations from public use microdata file

If we assume that the rate of disciplinary actions is representative of the underlying rate of incidents, these data suggest that middle schools have higher rates of physical attacks and fights than high schools (on a per-school basis). Given that middle schools tend to have fewer students than high schools, this means that middle school students are far more likely to engage in physical attacks & fights compared to high school students. I did not expect this and was quite shocked - so much so that I ran the numbers again and again to make sure I hadn't missed something.

Source: National Center for Education Statistics, School Survey on Crime and Safety2019 - 2020Author calculations from public use microdata file

This chart shows the distribution of school size by school type. From it we can see that there are far more elementary schools in the United States than there are other types of schools. We also see that the most common size for a middle school is between 500 - 999 students, while the most common high school size is 1,000+ students.

This next chart looks at the per-school rate of disciplinary actions for the use of a weapon, excluding firearms and explosive devices:

Source: National Center for Education Statistics, School Survey on Crime and Safety2019 - 2020Author calculations from public use microdata file

Again, middle schools have notably higher rates of this particular kind of discplinary action, which I find astonishing.

About the Data

The SSOCS is a nationally representative survey conducted by the NCES that gathers detailed data about crime and safety in U.S. public schools. The survey collects information from schools about various aspects of school security, crime prevention programs, the frequency of criminal incidents, disciplinary actions, and school characteristics. SSOCS has been administered periodically since the 1999–2000 school year, providing valuable data that helps education policymakers, researchers, and administrators understand trends in school safety, evaluate prevention programs, and develop effective strategies to ensure secure learning environments.