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Unless you’re a school voucher evangelist, you’d probably agree that schooling in Arizona is in a rough state. (That state being, uh, Arizona.) School districts are contracting left and right and the state faces a massive teacher shortage. More broadly, Arizona ranks poorly in per-pupil spending, teacher-to-student ratio and teacher pay.
Now, a new study from Autism Parenting Magazine adds a new depressing element to that conversation. The publication examined a number of school safety factors — including staffing ratios, bullying and state regulations — to determine the states with the least-safe schools in the country. Per the analysis, Arizona’s schools are the third-most dangerous in the U.S., surpassed only by New Mexico and Alabama.
The study used data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Survey of Children’s Health and the Education Commission of the States to compare the 50 states across 10 school safety metrics.
Specifically, these metrics included the rate of pedestrians killed in fatal crashes, an important metric for kids who walk to school or cross a street to reach it; student-to-teacher, student-to-counselor and student-to-school-psychologist ratios; percentage of students who report being bullied or excluded and the number of students who brought a firearm to school. The study also weighed parent feedback and whether states require school safety plans, school safety audits and have a state-level school safety office.
Those factors were all weighted to determine a school safety score from 0 to 100. Arizona earned an “F” with 43.88 points. The average state scored 22 points higher than Arizona, with the safest states — New Jersey, Rhode Island and Nebraska — as much as doubling Arizona’s score.
Arizona’s poor ranking is driven by its nation-worst student-to-teacher and student-to-guidance counselor ratios. Arizona averages 22.7 students per teacher and a whopping 645.4 students per guidance counselor. (The state’s student-to-psychologist ratio of 1,106-to-1 is middle-of-the-pack. Alabama had the worst ratio, with more than 106,000 students for each psychologist.) Those ratios result in fewer opportunities to access critical staff members, while also making it harder for staff to get to know and keep an eye on their students. For example, the American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of 250 students per school counselor.
This staffing shortage places a significant strain on Arizona’s educators and support staff. Last November, more than 1,000 public and charter school teachers in the state quit since the beginning of the school year, likely driven by low teacher pay and a lack of support around them. In the state, the average teacher salary is less than $63,000, about $10,000 below the national average, according to the National Education Association. Similarly, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Arizona guidance counselors earn an average of $62,310 per year, which is nearly $5,000 below the national average.
Traveling to school can also be treacherous. In the study, Arizona had the third-highest rate of fatal pedestrian crashes, with more than three pedestrians killed per 100,000 residents each year. Arizona consistently scores badly on this metric. A study by AAA last year found that pedestrians in the state are nearly twice as likely to be killed in a road collision as people in the rest of the country. Notably, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled last year that schools are not responsible for injuries suffered by students crossing the street to school.
Surprisingly, given Arizona’s gun-loving reputation, the state scored well on the number of students who bring guns to school. For the school year used in the study, only 2.6 per 100,000 students brought a gun to school, tied for the sixth-lowest rate of any state. Alabama once again had the worst rate, with more than 30 students bringing guns per 100,000 students.
In other metrics, Arizona fared middlingly. The state does require school safety plans but does not require audits nor does it have a state school safety office. Nearly 42% of students report being bullied, and nearly 70% of parents say their children are safe at school.
