How do you prepare kids for a possible school shooting without traumatizing them?

Just about every student in the U.S. has rehearsed what to do if a shooter enters their school. As school shootings — and hoax reports of active shooters — have grown more frequent, so too have active shooter drills, becoming routine in 95 percent of American schools and often mandated by state law.

Proponents say the drills teach situational awareness and can save lives. But research is still far from clear on whether these drills actually make students safer in a real emergency.

What experts do seem to mostly agree on is that drills have the potential to traumatize students rather than empower them — especially when schools use realistic simulations, fake gunfire, or deception. And, as The Trace reported, active shooter drills can be especially difficult for students, teachers, and staff who have experienced violence at home.

Despite concerns about the mental health effects, these drills are almost certainly going to remain a fact of life for American students. Take New York, for example: It’s taken steps to make drills less traumatic while still requiring them four times a year. It’s one of at least 40 states that mandate school-based active shooter drills, according to a 2022 Trace analysis of state laws and policies.

Perhaps surprisingly, students seem to agree with that approach. Sarah Stilwell, a researcher at the University of Michigan who has surveyed roughly 2,000 K-12 students about their experiences with active shooter drills, found that most students think schools should continue conducting them.

“Overall, students felt like, ‘Yes, we still want these to be implemented, but something has to change in order for us to feel like they’re effective and so that we’re going to take them more seriously,’” Stilwell told me.

The emotional landscape is complicated. In follow-up text message surveys, students reported deeply mixed feelings. About 20 percent said drills made them feel scared, and 13 percent reported feeling stressed or anxious, Stilwell said. About 5 percent said the drills made them feel unsafe.

But nearly one-third reported positive feelings — 12 percent said the drills made them feel more prepared, and 9 percent said they felt safer. Another third of students reported experiencing conflicting emotions: feeling both safe and anxious at the same time.

Still, a little over half of the students felt that the drills failed to prepare them for an actual event. “If an active shooter were to come into their school, they wouldn’t feel prepared based on these drills at all,” Stilwell said. 

There’s a related, and growing, problem, Stilwell said. As drills become almost a mundane fact of school life, older students often stop taking them seriously. Educators told Stilwell this was one of their biggest frustrations. The reasons appear to be threefold: desensitization from doing drills so many times, developmental factors that make teenagers more prone to testing boundaries, and the fact that drills sometimes become an opportunity to ignore other school rules.

“During a drill, sometimes students use it as an opportunity to check their cell phone for the first time during that day when there are cell phone bans in schools,” Stilwell said. “It’s an opportunity for them to socialize, talk with their friends or peers, or check social media apps.”

So if students want drills to continue, but they’re not working as intended and can cause harm, what’s going wrong?

The answer, according to experts, is that implementation varies wildly, we don’t really know what makes a drill effective, and in some cases, schools are using practices that pose significant psychological risks with little evidence of benefit. A recent wide-ranging report from a National Academies of the Sciences committee found that how active shooter drills are defined, carried out, and communicated to students and parents varies tremendously across the country.

Some school districts use discussion-based approaches — simple classroom conversations about emergency procedures. Others use standard response protocols, practicing specific steps like locking doors, staying quiet, and moving to designated areas. Still others use option-based practices that train students to make real-time decisions about whether to “run, hide, or fight.”

There’s currently no coordinated federal guidance on how to implement best practices for school drills. The National Association of School Psychologists released recommendations roughly a decade ago, and some states develop their own standards, but adoption of best practices remains scattershot.

While most schools seem to avoid hyperrealistic drills, nearly half use some realistic elements like involving police or uniformed security personnel, according to a September report from the RAND Corporation, a research nonprofit. A smaller minority use high-intensity simulations that experts say cross a line. RAND’s survey of teachers and principals found that 6 percent of teachers reported that their drills involved sounds of real gunfire, 5 percent said blanks were fired, and 4 percent said prop firearms were used. While exceedingly uncommon, 1 percent of teachers said that their drills used fake blood, and 1 percent reported sounds of explosions.

“It’s clear from the developmental sciences that effective learning, both for adults and students, doesn’t typically take place when individuals are experiencing excessive stress and anxiety, which can happen with those realistic or high-sensorial components,” said Justin Heinze, an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, who served on the National Academies committee.

The inconsistency also extends to basic communication practices. Only about 50 percent of schools notify students or parents in advance that a drill will occur, according to RAND. And although there’s little nationally representative data to say how common it is, some drills have also involved deceiving or misleading students and teachers into believing a real active shooter event is occurring.

“There really is no evidence to suggest that simulation elements, including deceptive tactics, improve students’ or staff’s perceptions of preparedness,” Heinze said during an August webinar about the committee’s report.

Stilwell’s interviews and surveys back up the committee’s findings that making drills hyper-realistic doesn’t help increase preparedness or make students take them more seriously. “There’s absolutely no correlation with that,” she told me. “It can cause unnecessary fear and anxiety, but according to our research, there was no potential positive benefit.”

The committee’s review of the limited available research found that, while drills can raise anxiety, fear, and school avoidance, responses vary widely in part because drills vary so widely. Studies the committee reviewed indicated that between 10 and 65 percent of students report negative emotional reactions, with those who have experienced previous trauma, bullying, or mental health challenges being particularly vulnerable.

“More detailed studies tend to find more negative effects than brief surveys, suggesting that subtle impacts may be overlooked in the research,” said Celeste Malone, an associate professor of school psychology at Howard University and a National Academies committee member.

Aside from the immediate stress and anxiety drills may induce, the long-term mental and behavioral health effects have been studied even less. One study from Everytown Research and the Georgia Institute of Technology suggested that drills may be driving young people to confront mortality at younger ages than they would otherwise, a reality that could have lifelong implications. (Disclosure: Through its nonpolitical arm, Everytown provides grants to The Trace. You can find our donor transparency policy here, and our editorial independence policy here.)

Given this reality, experts say the focus should be on harm reduction, communication, and researching effective national standards.

The National Academies report offered specific, actionable recommendations, and its most unequivocal recommendation is what schools should never do: “State legislatures and education agencies should implement policies that prohibit the use of high-intensity or high-sensory stimulations and exercises, as well as any deceptive practices in active shooter drills in public schools.”

The report also recommended that before drills, schools should work with mental health professionals to ensure the content is developmentally appropriate for different age groups. Administrators should announce them in advance to the entire school community, including parents, and be explicit about when a drill is beginning and ending so there’s no confusion about whether it’s real. 

Local school districts could explore policies that allow parents to opt their children out of the drills. And during drills, mental health staff, counselors, or school nurses should be available to monitor and support students who become distressed.

The National Academies report calls for federal agencies — including the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security — to issue coordinated guidance to schools based on the committee’s recommendations.

After drills, schools should create space for processing, the National Academies committee recommended.

Stilwell agreed. Her surveys have found that students think debriefings are one of the best ways to mitigate feelings of emotional or psychological unrest surrounding a drill. “Debriefing was associated with less drill-related anxiety and even feeling more prepared for a real-life situation,” she said. “Really importantly, debriefing was associated with taking drills seriously.”

But knowing what to do and being able to do it are two different things. Teachers are already stretched thin, managing enormous responsibilities with limited resources.

When Stilwell asked educators about debriefing, they expressed reservations about practical implementation and proper training.

“The school day is so busy. There are so many things on educators’ plates. So when is debriefing actually going to happen? And who is the appropriate person to conduct the debriefing?” she said. “Teaching is getting harder and harder, and a large part of teachers’ jobs is now protecting the safety of their students rather than focusing on curriculum.”

The National Academies report also emphasized the need for funding.

“This is just one of many things we’re consistently placing on our teachers and our school leadership,” said Sonali Rajan, a researcher at Columbia University’s Teachers College who studies school safety and participated in the committee. She’s now a senior research director at Everytown Research. “We need funding to support the resources, personnel, training, and infrastructure necessary to both implement these drills safely but also to maintain a positive school environment in general,” she told me.

Because ultimately, even perfectly implemented drills can do only so much. In interviews Stilwell conducted with former students reflecting on their K-12 experiences and school safety, active shooter drills were almost always the first thing they mentioned. “Probably 75 percent of the interviews, that’s the first thing that they name,” Stilwell said.

But as conversations continued and students were asked what they wished had been different, the drills disappeared from the discussion. Instead, they talked about wanting inclusive communities, positive school climates, mentorship, and supportive relationships among students.

“They have this progression of going from talking about drills to reflecting on their own individual experience,” Stilwell said. “Then at the end, their recommendations aren’t about drills.”

This speaks to a more fundamental reality. Even at their best, “active shooter drills are not gun violence prevention,” Rajan said. “They are one component of emergency preparedness. But that is just one piece of a much larger set of solutions around school violence prevention.”

And if drills are here to stay, they should be part of comprehensive efforts to make sure that schools are safe and healthy, Stilwell said. “We need to make sure that this falls into the bigger picture — where we’re also thinking about how to influence emotional well-being and take care of psychological safety and physical safety, where we’re also fostering the attentional environment, the social environment, and the physical environment.”