The overall number of school shootings in 2024 that resulted in injuries or deaths slightly outpaced last year’s tally, according to Education Week’s school shootings tracker.
Thirty-nine school shootings this year met the criteria for Education Week’s tracker—the second-highest total for any year since Education Week began tracking these incidents in 2018.
Gun violence in and around schools weighs heavily on students and staff, close families and extended relatives, nearby neighbors, and the entire nation. This is true whether the event generates weeks of headlines or a stray news article; whether no one dies or many people do; and whether it’s been 25 minutes since the last incident or 25 years.
Education Week began tracking school shootings in 2018, just two weeks before the mass school shooting in Parkland, Fla., in which 14 high school students and three adults died.
Since then, EdWeek has counted 221 school shootings, as of Dec. 31, 2024. The tracker counts incidents in which at least one person other than the individual firing the weapon is injured by gunfire on school property when school is in session or during a school-sponsored event.
Of the 39 shootings this year, more than two-thirds took place outdoors on school grounds, where administrators and security personnel typically have a harder time intervening when trouble arises.
At least one school shooting took place in the United States every month this year.
Mass shootings in 2024 outpaced last year, but not 2022
Four school shootings this year met the Gun Violence Archive’s definition of a mass shooting—in which four or more people other than the shooter died or were injured by gunfire.
That’s three more than in 2023, but five fewer than in 2022, when nine mass shooting incidents took place—the most in a single year since EdWeek began tracking school shootings in 2018.
The first mass school shooting in 2024 took place just four days into the calendar year, when a 6th grade student died, four more students were injured, and three staff members were injured in a shooting at Perry High School in Iowa. One of the injured staff members, the school’s principal, died 10 days later from injuries he sustained during the incident.
Exactly eight months later, two students and two teachers were shot and killed by a 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School in Georgia. The incident had more casualties than any other school shooting in 2024—in addition to the four deaths, nine people were injured.
Two of the four mass shootings in schools this year took place in Georgia. Separate from the Apalachee incident, four students were shot and injured on Feb. 14 at Benjamin E. Mays High School in Atlanta.
The year’s last mass shooting took place just nine days before Christmas, on Dec. 16, at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis. One teacher and a 14-year-old student were killed, and six other people were injured.
Dozens of people were shot on school grounds this year
Nationwide, 18 people died and 59 others were injured this year in instances of gun violence in and around schools.
The number of deaths is lower than in the previous two years, but more than double the tally in 2019, when eight people died in school shootings nationwide. That number is lower than in any other year since EdWeek began tracking school shootings, aside from 2020, when school buildings nationwide were closed for much of the year.
The total number of casualties—injuries and deaths combined—is higher than in 2023, but significantly lower than in 2022, when 140 people were injured or killed in a school shooting, according to the tracker.
Shootings from prior years continued to make news in 2024
This year marked the 25th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre, in which 12 students and one teacher were killed. That incident laid the groundwork for much of the school safety apparatus students, staff, and families across America now regularly confront in schools. It also spurred a tidal wave of billions of dollars in new expenses schools have incurred in well-intentioned—though sometimes insufficient or ill-advised—efforts to keep people safe.
Years after a shooting takes place, answers to key questions and solutions to prevent further violence often remain frustratingly elusive.
In January, a U.S. Department of Justice review found that a faster police response to the 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, could have saved lives. Earlier this month, a judge denied a motion to dismiss criminal charges filed in July against two of the 376 officers involved in the Uvalde response.
A trial over those charges is tentatively set for October 2025—29 months after the incident took place. None of the 374 other officers who responded in Uvalde, where two teachers and 19 elementary school students died, has been charged with a crime.
School shootings also have ripple effects that go well beyond the immediate consequences.
Schools across the country faced an uptick of violent threats in the days following the Apalachee High School shooting in Georgia. Most of those threats turned out to be unfounded or not credible—but even so, they take an emotional toll on all who respond to them.
