Each year, approximately 98% of public K–12 schools in the United States conduct lockdown drills or an equivalent as a method to prepare students and staff to respond in the event a gun violence incident occurs in their building. While the thought of preparing schools to respond to active shooters may be unsettling, events like the mass shootings in Parkland, FL, and Uvalde, TX, among others, have underscored the need for such efforts, though it is important to recognize that lockdown procedures are not only applicable during active shooter events—they also have utility in other situations such as child custody disputes or dangerous animals and other intruders getting into the building.

Jaclyn Schildkraut studies the impact of lockdown drills. PHOTO COURTESY OF JACLYN SCHILDKRAUT

Despite the rare but continued occurrence of gun violence events in schools, the efficacy of lockdown drills and their need to be performed continues to be called into question. Such calls often stem from “drills gone wrong” that capture news headlines, such as those in which educators are shot with pellet guns and students are exposed to mock shooters, students posing as victims, fake blood, sounds of simulated gunfire, and other sensorial techniques. And while these stories are rightfully concerning, what often escapes this conversation is the fact that they are the exception rather than the norm.

Following the Evidence

From 2018 to 2023, I conducted the largest research study in the nation, to date, on the impact of lockdown drills. During this time, my team and I collected data on more than 500 actual drills to determine how these practices impacted individuals’ ability to successfully deploy a lockdown procedure and whether skill mastery could be sustained over time.

In the first year of the project, we found that skill mastery could be achieved, particularly when training was introduced. In some cases, drills and training are treated as one in the same, yet they serve different functions: Training provides instruction about what the steps are and why each is important, while drills provide the opportunity to practice the steps taught in the training. Pairing the two helps to improve the likelihood of being able to successfully complete the procedure as it is intended.

Moreover, continued practice over time allowed for skill mastery not only to be maintained but improved in some instances. Skill degradation is common when procedures are not used, such as during the summer and over the holidays. This underscores the importance of not only practicing but doing so multiple times each school year. Although we found backsliding in certain steps in the first drill of each year, these issues were quickly corrected in subsequent practices (as our state, New York, requires schools to conduct four lockdown drills annually).

During this same period, we also collected nearly 15,000 surveys from students and staff to understand these groups’ perspectives on such preparedness efforts and how they were affected by participating in them. What we found largely countered the narrative that drills are traumatizing participants.

Among both students and school employees, drill participation was found to improve perceptions of emergency preparedness not only as it pertained to lockdown procedures but also those related to other emergency annexes (e.g., evacuation for fires, secure/lockout for emergencies outside near school grounds). This was similarly bolstered by going through instructional training, delivered in assembly-style sessions to all members of the school community, that not only outlined the steps of the procedures but also why each was important. Training students alongside teachers and staff was especially useful as emergency response is not one person’s responsibility—during the sessions, we were able to outline who was responsible for which step of the procedure and describe how these groups would work together to stay safe.

Importantly, we initially found that students expressed feeling less safe during the first year of the project after participating in lockdown drills, although we could not definitively attribute such changes to the drills rather than to other factors. Diving further, however, we found that, at least in this particular school district, students’ exposure to violence was driving their perceptions of school safety and that the drills were helping to counter such negative effects. In other words, the violence that students in our sample were exposed to was leading them to view their school as unsafe but participating in lockdown drills helped to minimize the negative impact of exposure to violence and improve perceived safety. Faculty and staff members’ perceptions of safety were not found to be impacted by participating in lockdown drills.

When further exploring the impacts of lockdown drills on students, we also found that after participating in these practices, as compared to data collected beforehand, students reported lower fear of harm and being less likely to think a shooting could happen at their school. And in a separate study in a second school district, we found that students actually reported lower anxiety and greater well-being (that is, feeling calm, content, and relaxed) immediately after participating in the drill as compared to a week before it.

Setting the Tone

Although our research has yielded numerous positive findings about participating in lockdown drills, it is important to note that these results are not generalizable to all such practices. At the core of why our drills were so successful was that we implemented existing best practices for how to ensure that drills are helpful rather than harmful.

This starts with ensuring that the adults at the school set the right tone. One best practice is to ensure that the adults always model calm behavior. Students take their cues from their teachers and staff members, so if these individuals are calm and confident in the procedures, the students will trust the process. Conversely, if their teachers or staff members exhibit anxiety or a distrust in the process, students can sense this and it may adversely affect how they feel about or respond to the drills.

In fact, although issues rarely arose during the more than 500 lockdown drills that we conducted as part of our research, when they did, they almost always involved teachers and staff rather than students. These challenges usually stem not from a distrust in the process but a fear of the present. Many of us who went to school in the pre-Columbine era know a world in which participating in lockdown drills was not the norm. Having to shift one’s mindset and accept this as a part of today’s society can be overwhelming and produce the very anxiety that we try to avoid by ensuring schools are prepared to respond if they ever need to.

It then is vital to ensure that faculty and staff members, particularly when in the presence of students, are empowered to respond and feel confident doing so. Training can help with such efforts, as can having school leadership model the same behaviors we want teachers to emulate.

Equally important is ensuring that lockdown drills are practiced with fidelity. While we don’t need to simulate an active shooter event to practice a lockdown drill any more than we need to set the school on fire to practice an evacuation or fire procedure, it still is important to “practice like you play.” Drills should always be taken seriously rather than being treated as a check-the-box exercise to report to the district or state that the requirement was satisfied. Doing so will help to build not only muscle memory but also confidence.

As a new school year begins, it is important not to lose sight of the value of lockdown drills. When conducted in accordance with best practices, they can be empowering experiences for students and staff that build confidence and improve preparedness. And when used in real-world mass shootings, they provide a protective effect that reduces both injuries and fatalities. With a school safety and security industry topping $3 billion per year with little oversight or evidence of many solutions’ effectiveness, we must follow the research and focus on what works.  

Jaclyn Schildkraut, PhD, is the executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government. She is a national expert on school and mass shootings and school safety.

References

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Schildkraut, J., & Nickerson, A. B. (2022). Lockdown drills: Connecting research and best practices for school administrators, teachers, and parents. MIT Press. mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544160/lockdown-drills/