What is school threat assessment?
Threat assessment began as a law enforcement activity to protect public figures and prevent workplace violence. However, our model of school threat assessment has been adapted to reflect the goals of educating students and fostering their healthy social-emotional development. School threat assessment is a problem-solving approach to violence prevention that focuses on helping students in distress and resolving problems before they escalate into violence. Teams want to avoid over-reacting to threats that are not serious, yet take appropriate protective action in cases that are serious. School threat assessment involves both assessment and intervention, since threatening behavior often signals a need for support services which can be short-term or ongoing. As our research has shown, very few cases require long-term suspension, arrest, or criminal charges.
who is on the team?
Each school creates a threat assessment team made up of staff from its school, although some districts will also have a central team to assist schools in challenging cases. A typical team will include a school administrator (e.g., principal or assistant principal), one or more mental health professionals (such as a school psychologist, counselor, and social worker), and a law enforcement officer (often a school resource officer). Depending on school staffing patterns, some schools will choose to include teachers, a school nurse, or others who have expertise working with troubled students. School-based teams are preferred because they know the students, they can respond quickly, and they will be able to implement and monitor interventions.
How are teams trained?
Typically, we provide a one-day, in-person workshop for threat assessment teams at your site. We also have an online training program described here.
A one-day workshop is sufficient to get teams started, but team members will want to read our 154-page manual and use some of our on-line programs to continue their training. Our model capitalizes on skills that team members already have and gives them a systematic, evidence-based way to gather information and make decisions. Typically, we train teams from 10-30 schools in one workshop. The workshop fee is the same regardless of group size. A practical limit on group size is that you need a room where teams can sit together at tables. Our workshops include a lot of team exercises and discussion.
What is covered in the workshop?
Rationale for threat assessment
Misconceptions about the nature and scope of school violence
Ineffective responses to school violence - zero tolerance discipline and excessive security measures
Public health approach to prevention using a multi-tiered model - prevention, not prediction of violence
Case study of a school shooting that illustrates the need for threat assessmentHow to conduct a threat assessment
FBI and Secret Service/Department of Education principles of threat assessment
Development of the Virginia model, including the decision tree and interview process (including practice interview)
How to identify and resolve transient threats
How to identify and resolve substantive threats
Mental health assessments - when, why, and howCases studies illustrating the three pathways to violence
Conflict pathway
Antisocial pathway
Psychotic pathwayLegal and practical issues
Safety versus confidentiality, the need to warn potential victims, the Tarasoff case, what FERPA permits schools to do
Special Education considerations in threat assessmentResearch support for threat assessment - what happens when schools use CSTAG?
Brief, non-technical overview of the field tests, controlled studies, and large-scale implementation study
Benefits of threat assessment - low rates of threats being carried out, reductions in school suspension, reductions in racial/ethnic disparities in discipline, improvements in school climate
Team exercises to resolve transient and substantive threats of violence
Transient case
Serious substantive case
Very serious substantive cases (including cases involving liability, public relations, stalking, and severe mental illness)
Adult cases
Next steps in implementing threat assessment at your school
Case documentationFree online programs for students, parents, and staff
The full-day in-person workshop and the online training program cover the same content. Under normal conditions, the in-person workshop runs approximately 6.5 hours of presentation time, not including breaks. The online training program requires about 4-6 hours for Level 1 and 4 hours for Level 2. There is a short pre-training and post-training evaluation form that allows us to give schools an evaluation report after the workshop. You may learn about all of our training options here. Our threat assessment forms are available as Word documents that schools are free to customize and use within their school system at no cost. Schools are provided with free access to online educational programs that cover the following topics: orientation to threat assessment for students, parents, and staff; advanced training for threat assessment teams. The workshop does not include purchase of the manual, Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines, which is a separate cost. (Note that the original manual, Guidelines for Responding to Student Threats of Violence, was updated with the 2018 publication of Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines.) We recommend that schools purchase manuals for each workshop participant, or minimally every team. Manuals are $50 each, with a discount for quantities > 20. Contact us for more information.