School Climate & Safety Interactive

School Shootings in 2023: How Many and Where

Education Week’s 2023 School Shooting Tracker
January 06, 2023 | Updated: January 18, 2024 3 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Looking for the Latest Data?

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.

Visit Our 2024 Tracker Explore Data Since 2018

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 began tracking shootings on K-12 school property that resulted in firearm-related injuries or deaths.

In 2023, we continued this heartbreaking, but important work. More information about this tracker and our methodology is below.

There were 38 school shootings in 2023 that resulted in injuries or deaths, according to an Education Week analysis. There were 51 school shootings with injuries or deaths in 2022, the most in a single year since Education Week began tracking such incidents in 2018. There were 35 in 2021, 10 in 2020, and 24 each in 2019 and 2018.

See Also

Photo of no gun sign on door.
iStock

Injuries & Deaths

38     School shootings with injuries or deaths

63     People killed or injured in a school shooting

21     People killed

15     Students or other children killed

6     School employees or other adults killed

42     People injured

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

Click on the column names to sort the data.

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. Incidents may be added out of sequence as it can take time for verification.

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, David Riedman’s K-12 School Shooting Database, 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 This Year: How Many and Where (2023, January 6). Education Week. Retrieved Month Day, Year from https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-this-year-how-many-and-where/2023/01

See Also

Sign indicating school zone.
iStock/Getty
School Climate & Safety Explainer School Resource Officers (SROs), Explained
Does the presence of armed officers prevent school violence? Do they contribute for Black children to the 'school to prison pipeline'?
13 min read
Greeley Police Officer Steve Brown stands in the hallway during passing periods at Northridge High School in Greeley, Colo. on Oct. 21, 2016. While school resource officers, like Brown, are expected to handle responsibilities like any police officer they're faced with unique challenges working day-to-day in schools
Greeley Police Officer Steve Brown stands in the hallway during passing periods at Northridge High School in Greeley, Colo. While school resource officers, like Brown, are expected to handle responsibilities like any police officer, they're faced with unique challenges working day-to-day in schools.
Joshua Polson/The Greeley Tribune/AP
School & District Management A Principal's Guide to Recovery After a School Shooting
Principals who led schools during or in the aftermath of a shooting wrote a guidebook of advice and lessons learned.
7 min read
Hand holding another hand
iStock/Getty Images Plus
School Climate & Safety Video They Survived a School Shooting. Here’s What They Want You to Know
The survivors of one school shooting offer insight and advice to future school leaders dealing with similar tragedies in their communities.
6:28
Santa Fe High School freshman, Jai Gillard, writes messages on each of the 10 crosses representing victims in front of the school in Santa Fe, Texas, on May 21, 2018.
Santa Fe High School freshman, Jai Gillard, writes messages on each of the 10 crosses representing victims in front of the school in Santa Fe, Texas, on May 21, 2018.
Steve Gonzales/Houston Chronicle via AP

Reporting & Analysis: Lesli Maxwell, Holly Peele, Stacey Decker, Hyon-Young Kim

Design & Visualization: Stacey Decker, Hyon-Young Kim

Events

Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Privacy & Security Webinar
Navigating Cybersecurity: Securing District Documents and Data
Learn how K-12 districts are addressing the challenges of maintaining a secure tech environment, managing documents and data, automating critical processes, and doing it all with limited resources.
Content provided by Softdocs

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School Climate & Safety Researchers Analyzed Years of Reports to a School Safety Tipline. Here's What They Learned
More than a third of gun-related tips in one state outlined possible school attacks, a new analysis finds.
4 min read
Illustration of a cellphone with a red exclamation mark inside of a word bubble.
iStock/Getty
School Climate & Safety Could Panic Buttons Save Lives in a School Shooting? More Schools Think So
There's legislative momentum to require panic alarm systems in schools. But many districts are installing the systems without a mandate.
6 min read
Visitors walk past a makeshift memorial honoring those recently killed at Robb Elementary School, Tuesday, July 12, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. A Texas lawmaker says surveillance video from the school hallway where police waited as a gunman opened fire in a fourth-grade classroom will be shown this weekend to residents of Uvalde.
Visitors walk past a makeshift memorial on July 12, 2022, honoring those killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in a May 2022 school shooting. Nearly a year after the Uvalde shooting, lawmakers in Texas passed a bill requiring that every public school classroom have a panic alarm system.
Eric Gay/AP
School Climate & Safety Opinion How to Strengthen the Safety and Security of Your School
Resources, guidance, and best practices can help leaders feel ready and empowered to improve their school’s safety and security.
Lindsay Burton & Michelle Kefford
6 min read
Illustration about warnings, with a businessman and woman each holding a with megaphone in front of a caution symbol.
Nuthawut Somsuk/iStock/Getty
School Climate & Safety 'Cascade of Failures' in Response to Uvalde School Shooting, Investigation Finds
The long-awaited federal review emphasized law enforcement failures, but also noted lapses in the district's safety policies.
6 min read
Attorney General Merrick Garland, right, and Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, left, tour murals of shooting victims on Jan. 17, 2024, in Uvalde, Texas.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, right, and Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, left, tour murals of shooting victims on Jan. 17, 2024, in Uvalde, Texas. Details of the U.S. Department of Justice Department's long-awaited investigation into the tragedy were released Jan. 18.
Eric Gay/AP