Indicator: 6 - Prohibited Behavior in Schools

 

 

Why This Is Important

Schools are an important environment for young people, and the safety of that environment is of
great concern to educators, young people and their families. Schools are also a reflection of their
local community, and measures related to school safety can also be indications of how safe
children are in their communities.

 

 

 

Where We Stand

For the 1998-1999 through 2002-2003 school years, Local Education Agencies in Maine were
asked by the Maine Safe and Drug-Free Schools Data Collection Project and its partners to report
data concerning prohibited behavior among youth in Maine schools. An “incident of prohibited
behavior”is a violation of a statute or regulation that occurs on school grounds, school property, or
at a school-sponsored event, and is reported to a school official or law enforcement agency.
Incidents may involve one or more victims and one or more offenders. Five hundred seventy (570)
schools responded to the Project’s survey in 1998-1999; 674 did so in 1999-2000; 644 in
2000-2001; 658 in 2001-2002 and 669 in 2002-2003. Statistical differences reported among
the school years may to some degree be due to the fact that (1) different schools responded each
year, and (2) not all Maine schools reported for any particular year.

The schools reported a total of 33,629 prohibited incidents in 1998-1999 (18.7 incidents per 100
students), 54,588 in 1999-2000 (25.8 per 100 students), and 47,223 in 2000-2001 (22.6 per 100 students). The project changed the definition of reportable incidents in 2001-2002 to include only
incidents of a more serious nature (for example, excluding minor pushing or shoving). Since this
change, the schools reported a total of 10,358 incidents in 2001-2002 (5.0 per 100 students), and
10,428 (5.1 per 100 students) in 2002-2003. However, since some students were engaged in more
than one incident, the ratio of offending students was lower than this; in 1998-1999 there were
8.7 offenders per 100 students, 9.6 in 1999-2000, 9.8 in 2000-2001, 3.3 in 2001-2002, and
3.2 in 2002-2003.

For the reporting schools, 1,146 incidents led to removal of one or more students from school in
1998-1999, compared with 1,501 such incidents in 1999-2000, 1,743 in 2000-2001, 1,116 in
2001-2002 and 1,151 in 2002-2003. In all three years the largest number of incidents involved
personal offense violations, including assault and/or battery, fighting/pushing, threat/intimidation,
and harassment/other personal acts.

 

 

Data Sources and Context

The data source is the Maine Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act Program
Report on Incidence of Prohibited Behavior in Drug and Violence Prevention, 2002-2003,
and preceding reports in that series. The Maine Safe and Drug-Free Schools Data Collection
Project is a partnership between Maine’s Office of Substance Abuse, the Maine Department of
Education, and Research Triangle Institute. Local school administrative units report this data in
response to a federal educational data collection requirement. The reports can be found on-line at http://www.mainesdfsca.org/information.html.