Indicator: Prohibited Behavior in Schools

Priority or Priorities:  ACES/Resiliency
Initiative(s): Communities for Children and Youth: Mentoring for children and youth through college/community partnerships, Asset building schools and communities,
Outcome (s): Children and youth respected, safe and nurtured in their communities

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 2005-2006 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; 669 in 2002-2003; 661 in 2003-2004; and 648 in 2005-2006. 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 100students), 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), 10,428 (5.1 per 100 students) in 2002-2003, 10,839 in 2003-2004 (5.3 per 100 students), and 11,228 (5.7 per 100 students) in 2005-2006. 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, 3.2 in 2002-2003, 3.7 in 2003-2004, and 3.5 offenders per 100 students in 2005-2006. .

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, 1,151 in 2002-2003, 1,008 in 2003-2004, and 1,362 in 2006-2006. In all years reported, the largest number of incidents involved personal offense violations, including assault and/or battery, fighting/pushing, threat/intimidation, and harassment/other personal acts.

Data Source 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, 2005-2006, 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.