School Shootings Over Time: Incidents, Injuries, and Deaths
Two weeks before the mass school shooting in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14, 2018, Education Week began tracking incidents of gunfire at schools that result in death or injury. There had been a flurry of smaller-scale, but no-less-tragic school shootings in the early weeks of 2018, compelling us to document them in a formal way.
Since then, our newsroom has logged dozens of shootings on K-12 school grounds that killed or injured at least one person. We don’t include suicides, and we don’t include incidents that involve the accidental discharge of weapons carried by law enforcement officers that don’t kill or harm.
School shootings—though relatively rare—have forced a generation of students to grow up practicing active-shooter drills and other chilling exercises designed to prepare them for in-school violence. The incidents have turned scores of parents and students into high-profile activists, many pushing for gun control and more robust mental health supports for troubled students, or, for others, campaigning to put more police in schools and arming teachers and other school staff.
By collecting this data and presenting it without an agenda, we endeavor to bring important and nuanced context to the emotionally fraught and politically complex debates on school safety.
Below, you can find big-picture data on school shootings that resulted in injuries or deaths since 2018, as well as links to the detailed trackers of incidents by year.
Contact Information
For media or research inquiries about this page, contact library@educationweek.org.
How to Cite This Page
School Shootings Over Time: Incidents, Injuries, and Deaths (2021, March 23). Education Week. Retrieved Month Day, Year from https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-over-time-incidents-injuries-and-deaths
Corrected June 15, 2023: A shooting outside Garfield High School in Seattle on May 18, 2023, has been removed from the 2023 tracker. The incident did not occur on K-12 school property.
