School Counselors' Role in Threat Assessments (2024)

The principal has assigned you to be in charge of completing risk assessments with students who present themselves as a potential threat to others. You are uncomfortable with this assignment and express your concerns that this responsibility should not fall on any one person. You are trying to convince administration to make you part of an administrative-led team and not the leader and/or sole assessor. Are you alone in your thinking, or do other school counselors feel the same way?

Our nation’s schools are entrusted to provide a safe and healthy learning environment for approximately 50 million elementary and secondary school students. In January 2022, the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) joined forces with ASCA, the National Association of School Psychologists and the National Association of Secondary School Principals to discuss threat assessments in a 90-minute townhall. ASCA’s position is that school counselors’ role in threats should largely be preventive. In a January 2022 survey, school counselors strongly indicated (91.4%) that if school counselors are involved in threat assessments it should be in collaboration with other professionals specifically trained in violence assessment.

When asked if they currently share the responsibility for formal threat assessments with others such as administrators, teachers, school psychologist or school social worker, 79.1% said “yes.” School counselors aren’t opposed to being a member of an administrative-led team with other educators and experts sitting in the decision-making chair. There was complete agreement (100% of respondents) that the school counselor should not be the leader of the threat assessment team. Administrators must be involved and lead the team.

A threat assessment team’s main function is to develop a support plan for students who have been identified as in need of interventions. However, should the plan call for disciplinary action, the team needs someone in authority who can call law enforcement; search lockers, computers, phones and backpacks; and suspend or expel students. School counselors do not have the authority to make any disciplinary decisions; school counselors’ threat assessment begins and ends with contributions as a team member to weigh in on interventions and support plans. It is unwise of the district and school administration to ever place the burden on a school counselor or any one person to determine the inexact science of predicting a person’s potential to level harm on the school community.

A joint effort by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics examines crime occurring in school as well as on the way to and from school. The annual report, Indicators of School Crime and Safety, provides the most current detailed statistical information on the nature of crime in schools. The latest 2019 report contains key crime trends in schools for the 2017–2018 school year:

Strategy Prevention
NTAC has three guides designed to help school officials address and prevent school violence. The guides provide step-by-step guidance on forming a threat assessment team, risk identification and protective factors.

• Enhancing School Safety Guide (2018)
• Protecting America’s Schools: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Targeted School Violence (2019)
• Averting Targeted School Violence (2021)

NTAC and the U.S. Department of Education studied targeted violence so pre-attack behaviors could be detected and future attacks prevented. The results are counter-intuitive. There simply isn’t a clear profile of a school shooter. After comprehensively studying 37 instances with 41 perpetrators from 1974 to 2000 in the United States, some generalizations have emerged, however. In 2018, the FBI released A Study of the Pre-Attack Behaviors of Active Shooters in the United States, which compiles evidence of active shooter cases from 2000–2013. This continued research is beneficial for school preparation and safety, but caution is needed as each attacker and attack had its own particularities. The generalizations allow for more preventive measures to be taken, but they cannot be used as the only markers of an attacker. Download the report.

In 100% of the cases NTAC studied, the attackers demonstrated disconcerting behavior prior to the attack. In a good number of cases, the attacker told someone what was going to occur. A majority of informants were told within two days (54%) or two weeks of the attack (66%), and 77% threatened their target or shared their intentions to carry out an attack. Most of these informants were friends of the attackers.

What’s important for school counselors to know is that the students who came forward immediately with information about potential threats were in positive relationships with adults and felt they could trust adults to skillfully handle the information. A case in point happened in February 2022. A seventh-grade student told friends during breakfast service that he had a gun, and the friends went straight to their school counselor. School staff recovered the gun from the student’s locker.

In numerous interviews with students who knew there was a weapon on school grounds, they said the major reason they didn’t report anything was due to lack of trust or positive relationships with adults at the school. One student who did not report summed up some of the reluctance: “School officials are too judgmental. I did not trust how the administration would handle the information.”

Students need a way to report that allows them to feel safe, valued and protected when they speak up. Protective factors are important for both potential perpetrators and also for upstanders. Violence prevention is tied to protective factors, many of which involve relationships, such as:

• Prosocial involvement
• Strong social support
• Strong attachments and bonds
• Positive attitude toward intervention and authority
• Strong commitment to school
• Resilient personality traits

The School Counselor’s Role
The ASCA Student Standards: Mindsets & Behaviors for Student Success address helping students develop prosocial involvement, resiliency, positive attitudes and more. This is where school counselors make a real difference and is our primary role in threat assessment. School counselors want to be in the classrooms and conducting small groups to help all students develop protective factors, ameliorate adverse childhood experiences and build relationships. ASCA also has two position statements addressing threat-related issues and the school counselor’s role:

• The School Counselor and Prevention of School-Related Gun Violence, which lays out rationale through three tiers of recommended practices
• The School Counselor and Safe Schools and Crisis Response, which outlines additional resources and response methods for school counselors and school staff

Families and communities expect schools to keep their children safe from threats and violence. NTAC, the U.S. Department of Education Office of Safe and Healthy Students and the FBI all stress to school officials that there needs to be a multidisciplinary team approach when a student presents as a potential threat to others. School counselors should not be asked to go it alone in threat assessments. Advocate for your preventive role and to be but one voice in a sea of voices assessing and developing interventions and support for those who may pose a school community threat.

Carolyn Stone, Ed.D., is a professor at the University of North Florida and chair of the ASCA Ethics Committee. Send your ethics questions to ethics@schoolcounselor.org.

Prevention Plan Steps
Step 1: Establish a multidisciplinary threat assessment team of school personnel including faculty, staff, administrators, coaches and available school resource officers who will direct, manage and document the threat assessment process.

Step 2: Define concerning behaviors, including those that are objectively concerning or prohibited, which should trigger an immediate intervention (e.g., threats, violent acts or weapons on campus), and other lower-level concerning behaviors (e.g., depressed mood, interest in violent topics or conflicts between classmates).

Step 3: Establish and provide training on a central reporting system, such as a smartphone application, an online form or a dedicated school email address or phone number. Ensure it provides anonymity to those reporting concerns and is monitored by personnel who will follow up on all reports.

Step 4: Determine the threshold for law enforcement intervention, especially if there is a risk of harm to self or others.

Step 5: Establish threat assessment procedures that include practices for maintaining documentation, identifying sources of information, reviewing records and conducting interviews. The assessment should be guided by an understanding of the thinking and behavior observed in past school attackers, as described in Protecting America’s Schools: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Targeted School Violence.

Step 6: Develop risk management options to enact once an assessment is complete. Create individualized management plans to mitigate identified risks. Notify law enforcement immediately if the student is determined to pose an imminent risk of harm to self or others. Take steps to ensure the safety of potential targets, create a situation less prone to violence, redirect the student’s motive and reduce the effect of stressors.

Step 7: Create and promote a safe school climate built on a culture of safety, respect, trust and emotional support for students. Encourage communication, intervene in conflicts and bullying, and empower students to share their concerns.

Step 8: Provide training for all stakeholders, including school personnel, students, parents and law enforcement.
–U.S. Secret Service, 2019