(The Hill) – School shootings reached a record high in the 2021-2022 school year, doubling the previous record that was set the year before, according to new federal data released Wednesday.
In the 2021-2022 school year, 188 school shootings with casualties were reported, breaking the record from the year before, when 93 shootings with casualties were reported, according to the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) annual crime and safety report.
The report notes there has been “no consistent trend” in school shootings from the 2000-2001 school year to the 2020-2021 school year, with shootings with casualties ranging from 11 to 93 per year.
“Because the number of school shootings in 2021–22 is an outlier compared to prior years, readers should interpret data with caution,” the report says.
The FBI defines active shooters as a person or people who try to kill others in a populated area. Based on that definition, NCES found 47 active shooters in schools from 2000 to 2021.
Among the 47 active shooters, 46 were male, only one was female, and more than two-thirds were between the ages of 12 and 18.
The report comes as Education Week’s school shooting tracker has found 30 school shootings so far in 2023.