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Every New Jersey school is required to have a threat assessment team prepared to respond to school threats, such as the online social media threats several districts received earlier this month.
These teams are also tasked with making all schools feel safe, which many experts say is equally or more important for violence prevention than how schools and law enforcement respond to individual threats.
The state’s threat assessment law, which required teams to be in place by September 2023, is based on the Secret Service threat assessment model. In New Jersey schools, teams are tasked with identifying students of concern, assessing their risk of engaging in violence and then delivering intervention strategies to ensure a safe school environment.
The law does not include a data reporting requirement, which means little information is available about how the work of these assessment teams is going one year into the mandate from the state.
How a threat assessment team is composed
Threat assessment teams must include an administrator, teacher, school safety specialist, law-enforcement liaison, and an employee with expertise in student counseling, according to state law.
The state Department of Education said it has trained about 28,000 school officials in behavioral threat assessment practices and is continuing to offer training to mitigate the risk of violence in schools.
The department also provides schools with technical assistance, security assessments, drill observations, and other tools to ensure a safe and secure learning environment, according to a spokesperson.
“Keeping public spaces safe from any form of violence or harmful activities, especially in our schools, is of the utmost importance to me and this administration,” Gov. Phil Murphy said when he signed the bill into law on Aug. 1, 2022. “It is my hope that these threat assessment teams will help students and school employees feel safe and out of harm’s way when they are at school, and for students who are considered to be a threat to receive the much-needed help they need at such a crucial time in their lives.”
After the bill was signed, the Education Law Center wrote a letter to state lawmakers urging amendments that would limit law enforcement involvement to specific situations, narrow the grounds for threat assessment referrals to prevent profiling, improve student privacy protections, and add a data reporting requirement.
No changes were made.
Advocates share concerns about threat assessment teams
“We appreciate that lawmakers intended to better protect New Jersey students and educators by passing this law. However, based on our understanding of school discipline disparities and threat assessment team best practices, we are concerned that implementing this law will negatively impact New Jersey students, particularly students of color and those with disabilities,” reads the letter, which includes signatures from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, New Jersey Policy Perspective, and other advocacy groups.
Including a data reporting requirement would allow for the state to see if certain student groups are overrepresented in referrals to threat assessment teams and alter training practices or regulations to protect the referral process from bias and prejudice, the advocates wrote.
There is still a need for data on how threat assessment teams are being used and which students are most impacted by their existence, Elizabeth Athos, senior attorney at the Education Law Center, told NJ Spotlight News.
New Jersey’s threat assessment law emphasizes identifying students with behaviors of concern and says approaches must “not tolerate profiling of any kind based on race, ethnicity, age, physical or mental health conditions, learning abilities, socioeconomic status, gender, or religion.”
The state Department of Education guidance says concerning behaviors may include unusual interests in violent topics, conflicts between classmates, increased anger, increased substance use, or other noteworthy changes in behavior, such as depression or withdrawal from social activities.
An evidence-based system could help prevent bias
State guidance notes that concerning behavior does not predict if someone will become violent, but instead serves as an indicator that someone might need increased support. According to the Secret Service’s guide to preventing school violence, there is no profile of a student attacker.
“There have been male and female attackers, high-achieving students with good grades as well as poor performers. These acts of violence were committed by students who were loners and socially isolated, and those who were well-liked and popular,” the Secret Service guide reads.
Amanda Klinger, director of operations for The Educator’s School Safety Network, said threat assessments can help keep bias out of violence prevention by creating a formalized, evidence-based system.
“In the absence of a system, there’s this very informal, loose, ‘Well, what do you think about this kid?’” said Klinger, whose organization provides threat assessment training to schools nationwide. It is good to raise concerns about the role of bias to make sure the system isn’t used against minority groups, they said.
“It’s a little bit difficult for states to know, is this being implemented with fidelity, or did we send four people to the training as required and we don’t actually know how often it’s being used,” Klinger said.
How NJ law compares
New Jersey’s threat assessment law is standard compared to such laws in other states, Klinger said. Virginia became the first state to mandate threat assessment in K-12 schools in 2013 following a mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007. Since then, most states have implemented some type of threat assessment policy, according to the National Association of State Boards of Education.
New Jersey guidelines lay out eight steps for establishing a threat assessment program, beginning with establishing a threat assessment team and ending with creating a safe school climate and conducting training for members of the school community.
The seventh step includes assessing and improving the school climate, strengthening how connected students feel to school, empowering students to share concerns with adults in the school they trust, and finding clubs or teams students can join to find community.
New Jersey schools were already required to have school safety teams to “develop, foster, and maintain a positive school climate” under the state’s Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights.
Having a positive school culture is the most important aspect of school safety, Klinger said.
“We call it ‘school safety you can feel good about,’” Klinger said, drawing a contrast to school security drills and metal detectors in schools. “We spend a lot of time working with schools on school safety improvements or mitigations we can do that also have positive consequences for school climate — and behavioral threat assessment is certainly one of those.”
Hannah Gross covers education and child welfare for NJ Spotlight News via a partnership with Report for America. She covers the full spectrum of education and children’s services in New Jersey and looks especially through the lens of equity and opportunity. This story was first published on NJ Spotlight News, a content partner of Chalkbeat Newark.
