Title:

Student-Teacher Ratio's Impact on School Shooting Outcomes

Growing incidents as well as a renewed research interest in school shootings has led to a want for new research into what increases total victims as well as the overall rates of death during an active shooter event in K-12 schools. Knowing that student-teacher ratios have an impact on juvenile delinquency and deviance in the school setting where lower ratios of students per teacher curb these behaviors it was hypothesized to do the same for active shooting events. Using a database comprised of active shooter events in K-12 schools post-Columbine during events where student lives were in danger, the student-teacher ratio was tested to see if it affected outcomes in terms of overall victims and rates of death for these events. Using Poisson regression it was found that the student-teacher ratio has a significant impact on outcomes where as this ratio increases, and there are more students per teacher, the number of predicted victims and deaths decreases. It was also found that factors like SRO presence and the educational level at which the event took place also had an impact where SRO presence as well as elementary schools faced higher rates of victims and death. This leads to a need for future research to be done to try and find an ideal ratio of students per teacher that curbs delinquent behaviors like classroom disruption, peer harassment, and future incarceration but also keeps students and staff safe during active shooter events.

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