We are continuing to track school shootings. Click below to visit our latest tracker or explore year-by-year data on school shootings since 2018 that resulted in injuries or deaths.
School shootings—terrifying to students, educators, parents, and communities—always reignite polarizing debates about gun rights and school safety. To bring context to these debates, Education Week journalists in 2018 began tracking shootings on K-12 school property that resulted in firearm-related injuries or deaths.
There were 35 school shootings in 2021 that resulted in injuries or deaths, 25 of which occurred after August 1. A shooting on Nov. 30, in which a student killed four people and injured seven at an Oxford, Mich., high school, was the deadliest school shooting with injuries or deaths since May 2018.
In 2021, we continued the heartbreaking, but important work of tracking school shootings. More information about this tracker and our methodology is below.
Injuries & Deaths
Where the Shootings Happened
The size of the dots correlates to the number of people killed or injured. Click on each dot for more information.
About the Shootings
A previous version of this table included the age, sex, and status of the suspect(s). We are no longer tracking that information.
Contact Information
For media or research inquiries about this data, contact library@educationweek.org.
About This Tracker
In the emotionally charged aftermath of school shootings, politicians, activists, news media, and ordinary citizens often cite statistics that can present a distorted view of how many of these incidents occur. Those statistics are used to fuel ongoing debates about gun control, arming teachers, and school security.
With this tracker, Education Week aims to provide a clear accounting of K-12 school shootings. There is no single right way of calculating numbers like this, and the human toll in the immediate aftermath and long term is impossible to measure. We hope to provide reliable information to help inform discussions, debates, and solutions.
Methodology
Counting Incidents
This page refers to incidents that meet all the following criteria:
- where a firearm was discharged,
- where any individual, other than the suspect or perpetrator, has a bullet wound resulting from the incident,
- that happen on K-12 school property or on a school bus, and
- that occur while school is in session or during a school-sponsored event.
We do not track incidents in which the only shots fired were from an individual authorized to carry a gun on school property, such as a school resource officer, and who did so in their official capacity.
The numbers of incidents, injuries, and deaths reported in this tracker do not include suicides or self-inflicted injuries. While suicides and attempted suicides are serious issues of health and safety, many of the critical questions and debates that those incidents raise for educators and the broader public are often distinct from those generated by school shootings.
Counting Injuries & Deaths
Injuries included in this tracker may be major or minor. While we only track incidents resulting in at least one bullet wound, total injuries are not necessarily the result of gunfire.
The total number of people killed or injured does not include the suspect or perpetrator.
Sources
In addition to our own reporting, we rely on local news outlets, school and district websites, news alerts via online search engines, the Gun Violence Archive, and the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s Naval Postgraduate School’s K-12 School Shooting database.
How to Cite This Page
School Shootings in 2021: How Many and Where (2021, March 1). Education Week. Retrieved Month Day, Year from https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-this-year-how-many-and-where/2021/03
