School Safety and Emergency Preparedness in Middle School: A Principal's Guide to Drills, Response Plans, and the Decisions That Actually Matter

John Nguyen
1 day ago
15 min read

What the 2025 National Academies report says about active shooter drills, why most schools are not aligned with best practices, and how middle school principals can build real readiness without traumatizing students

The Issue: A Preparedness Landscape Without Consensus

If you are a middle school principal in 2026, you are leading inside a school safety landscape that has dramatically expanded over the past decade — and is now widely acknowledged, including by the most authoritative research bodies in the country, to be operating without the standards, evidence base, or consistent best practices that the work requires.

The numbers frame the scope. According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine consensus report published in October 2025, fully 95% of U.S. public schools conduct active shooter drills, and that figure rose to 98% in the 2019–2020 school year. The U.S. Department of Education's 2025 REMS guidance confirms that schools across the country implement tactics and policies specific to firearm violence prevention and preparedness, with active shooter drills among the most prevalent.

Yet despite this near-universal implementation, the same National Academies report finds that "the lack of consistent standards informing these practices has led to significant variations in their implementation, raising questions about both efficacy and possible negative impact on students and staff." The American Psychological Association's January 2026 analysis of the National Academies findings is even more direct: "There is limited research to show whether active shooter drills keep students and school staff safer during an emergency." The gap between the universality of the practice and the strength of the evidence behind it is one of the largest in K–12 education today.

This gap matters most at middle school. Middle schoolers are at a developmental stage where the psychological effects of safety drills are most pronounced, where the cognitive demands of response protocols are most complex, and where the long-term mental health consequences of poorly designed drills can be most enduring. The middle school principal sits at the center of decisions — about drill type, frequency, design, communication, and follow-up — for which the field provides surprisingly little authoritative guidance.

This article addresses that gap directly. It synthesizes the most current evidence — the October 2025 National Academies report, the October 2025 RAND survey of principals, the 2025 U.S. Department of Education REMS guidance, and peer-reviewed research on drill efficacy and psychological impact — into a practical framework for middle school principals making consequential decisions about school safety preparedness.

The goal is not to tell you what to think. It is to ensure that the decisions you make are grounded in the strongest available evidence rather than in the operational assumptions that have accumulated in the field over the past decade without rigorous evaluation.

Why Middle School Sits at the Hardest Point in the Preparedness Landscape

Middle school is not just one stop along the K–12 safety continuum. It is the developmental window where the design tradeoffs in safety preparedness are most consequential.

The developmental window. Early adolescence is the developmental moment when students are most cognitively capable of understanding the threat scenarios safety drills address — and most psychologically vulnerable to the anxiety those scenarios produce. Younger elementary students are often protected from the full meaning of an active shooter drill by their developmental stage. Middle schoolers are not. They understand exactly what the drill is preparing for, and they carry the weight of that understanding into the rest of their school day.

The cognitive demand mismatch. Middle schoolers are capable of complex response behaviors — barricading doors, fighting back, making decentralized decisions about evacuation routes — that elementary students are not. But the cognitive demand of options-based response protocols is higher than the demand of simple lockdown drills. Schools that have shifted to options-based drills (the dominant trend over the past five years) have raised the cognitive load on middle schoolers without always adjusting the support, training, or psychological scaffolding to match.

The peer dynamics layer. Middle schoolers experience drills socially. They watch how peers respond. They are intensely attuned to whether their reactions appear appropriate or whether they appear scared or naive. The social pressure to perform composure during drills is real and largely invisible to adults. Students who are genuinely frightened often hide that fear from peers — which means schools systematically underestimate the psychological impact of the drills they are running.

The mental health vulnerability. Middle school is the documented peak window for the onset of anxiety disorders, depression, and other mental health conditions. Students enter middle school carrying mental health vulnerabilities that the school may not yet know about. Drills that are well-designed for the average student may be deeply harmful to the student already managing trauma history, anxiety, or family stress. The screening for vulnerability that should precede drill exposure is rarely systematic.

This is the developmental context in which middle school principals are making safety decisions. Decisions calibrated for elementary or high school contexts will systematically misfire at middle school.

The Evidence: What the 2025 National Academies Report Actually Says

The October 2025 National Academies report, School Active Shooter Drills: Mitigating Risks to Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Health, is the most authoritative consensus document on this topic ever produced. Its findings deserve direct attention from every middle school principal.

Finding 1: The terminology in the field is confused. The National Academies report clarifies that "active shooter drills" is an umbrella term covering a wide range of practices — lockdown drills, options-based drills, and full-scale simulation exercises among them — and that the term "active shooter drills" and "lockdown drills" are frequently conflated. Lockdowns represent only one practice on a broader spectrum.

This matters for principal decision-making. A "drill" can mean anything from a five-minute, age-appropriate practice of how to secure a classroom to a full simulation with sensory elements like fake gunfire and simulated injuries. The research literature does not treat these as the same intervention, and principals should not either.

Finding 2: The evidence base differs substantially by drill type. Recent peer-reviewed research published in 2024 examining both lockdown drills and active shooter drills found largely consistent findings on lockdown drills but less uniform findings on active shooter drills. Critically, the research demonstrates that "lockdown drills, though not active shooter drills, can help participants build skill mastery to be able to successfully deploy the procedure." Differences in impact and skill development "are largely attributable to the type of drill being conducted."

The implication: lockdown drills appear to produce the skill mastery the field claims drills are supposed to produce. The broader category of active shooter drills — particularly those involving simulation elements — does not have the same evidence base.

Finding 3: Drill design matters more than drill frequency. Both the National Academies report and the October 2025 RAND survey of principals emphasize that how a drill is designed and conducted matters more than how often it is conducted. Drills that incorporate inappropriate sensory elements (fake gunfire, simulated assailants, blood, scenarios involving simulated injuries) produce documented psychological harm — particularly for students with prior trauma history or mental health vulnerabilities.

The U.S. Department of Education's 2025 REMS guidance states this directly: schools should "avoid simulated violence in active shooter drills, including highly sensorial elements like fake firearms, gunfire sounds, blood, assailants, and/or injuries." This is now formal federal guidance, not a recommendation.

Finding 4: Most schools are not aligned with best practices. The RAND October 2025 survey of principals found that while schools are making some effort to tailor drills to grade level, "too often schools conduct drills that do not align with best practices." Nine in ten principals said their drills were designed to address the needs of students of different ages, but teachers in parallel surveys were more skeptical. The gap between principal self-report and teacher observation is itself a signal worth taking seriously.

Finding 5: Communication with students and families is uneven. The National Academies committee specifically identified pre-drill communication, age-appropriate framing, post-drill processing, and ongoing support as critical components that are inconsistently implemented across schools. Many schools run drills without adequate notification to students, without explicit framing of what students will experience, and without structured follow-up to assess and address psychological impact.

Finding 6: The mental health infrastructure to support drills is often absent. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network has developed checklists for school personnel to evaluate the mental health component of their school crisis and emergency plans. The federal REMS guidance emphasizes that drills should be paired with adequate mental health support before, during, and after — a standard that the National Academies report finds is met inconsistently in the field.

The cumulative picture is significant: a nearly universal practice, operating without consensus standards, producing variable effectiveness and documented psychological costs, with the most authoritative research body in the country now formally calling for substantial changes to how the work is done.

The Broader Safety Frame: Drills Are One Component, Not the Whole Strategy

Before turning to specific drill practices, it is worth reframing the question. The National Academies report makes a point that often gets lost in the active shooter drill conversation: drills are one component of a much broader school safety framework, and overemphasis on drills can crowd out attention to the structural prevention work that matters more.

The components of a comprehensive school safety framework include:

Threat prevention. Identifying and responding to warning signs before a crisis occurs. This includes anonymous reporting systems, behavioral threat assessment teams, mental health screening and support, and the broader work of building a school climate in which students feel they can disclose concerns about peers.

Physical security. The structural conditions of the building — secure entries, visitor management, locked exterior doors, communication systems, sightlines, evacuation routes — that affect the school's ability to prevent and respond to threats.

Emergency operations planning. The school's documented plans for a range of emergency scenarios, the chain of command, the communication protocols, and the integration with local law enforcement and emergency services.

Drills and training. The practice components — including but not limited to active shooter drills — that build skill mastery for response.

Mental health infrastructure. The counselors, social workers, and external partnerships that support students before, during, and after safety events.

Post-incident response capacity. The school's ability to respond effectively when an incident does occur — both in the immediate moment and in the days, weeks, and months that follow.

A school that has a strong active shooter drill program but weak threat prevention, weak physical security, weak emergency operations planning, and inadequate mental health infrastructure is not actually well-prepared. The drill component is the most visible part of safety preparedness, but it is not the most consequential.

The principal who builds the broader framework — and then situates drills appropriately within it — produces meaningfully different safety outcomes than the principal who optimizes drills in isolation.

The Structural Layer That School Safety Often Misses

There is a structural dimension to school safety that the dominant framing — focused on perimeter security, drills, and emergency response — often understates: the daily conditions of the school that determine threat development and incident likelihood in the first place.

The research is increasingly clear that most school threats do not arise out of nowhere. They develop over time, often through documented warning signs, often involving students known to the school community, and often through digital channels that are difficult for schools to monitor.

The structural conditions that affect threat development include:

The mental health climate of the school. Schools where students are isolated, where bullying is unaddressed, where mental health concerns are unsupported, and where students do not feel they can disclose distress are schools where threat indicators develop unnoticed.

The communication climate. Schools where students do not trust adults to act on their concerns are schools where critical information about peers does not surface in time to be acted on.

The digital environment. Many of the most concerning student behaviors — including the development of threat behaviors — manifest first in digital spaces. Schools with little visibility into their students' digital lives have less warning when concerning patterns develop. This is one of the reasons that comprehensive school safety includes a thoughtful approach to phone and device policy. Schools that have implemented decentralized phone-free school days — for example, the Safe Pouch system from Win Elements, in which every adult has unlocking authority — reduce the volume of digital incidents that occur during the school day, which in turn reduces the volume of low-level harassment and escalation that can contribute to broader climate concerns.

The bystander culture. Schools where students are equipped and expected to report concerns about peers — without social cost to themselves — surface threat information substantially earlier than schools where reporting is socially discouraged.

These structural conditions are not substitutes for emergency preparedness. They are the upstream work that makes emergency preparedness less likely to be needed.

For additional research on how structural school conditions connect to safety, climate, and threat development, see the Win Elements research library.

The Practice: A Middle School Principal's Playbook for Real School Safety

If you are a middle school principal building or refining your school's safety and emergency preparedness work, here is a sequence drawn from the strongest current evidence.

Step 1: Audit your current emergency operations plan

Before changing anything, document what your school's current safety infrastructure actually consists of. The honest questions:

Is the emergency operations plan a living document or a binder that has not been opened in two years?
When was the last full tabletop exercise involving administration, staff, and local first responders?
Are the chain of command, communication protocols, and decision authority clear in the moment of a crisis?
Does the plan address the range of emergency scenarios (active threat, medical emergency, natural disaster, transportation incident, family-related crisis) or focus disproportionately on one?
Is the plan integrated with local law enforcement, emergency medical services, and district leadership?

The most consistent failure mode in school emergency operations is the plan that exists on paper but has not been operationally tested. Tabletop exercises and full simulations involving multiple agencies are how the gaps surface before a real incident does.

Step 2: Distinguish lockdown drills from active shooter drills — and align practice with evidence

This is the single most important practice-level decision the National Academies findings push principals to make consciously.

Lockdown drills — practicing the specific procedural skills of securing a classroom, accounting for students, and responding to instructions — have the strongest evidence base for building skill mastery. They can be conducted in developmentally appropriate ways with manageable psychological cost.

Full-scale active shooter simulations — drills involving sensory elements like simulated gunfire, simulated assailants, blood, or injuries — have a much weaker evidence base for building skill mastery and a much stronger evidence base for psychological harm. The federal REMS guidance now explicitly advises against these sensory elements.

The practice-level implication: if your school is conducting active shooter drills, ask whether the drill design is closer to a lockdown drill (developmentally appropriate, focused on skill mastery, free of sensory simulation) or closer to a full simulation (sensory elements, intensive scenarios, designed to produce realistic fear). The evidence and the federal guidance both support the former.

Step 3: Build mental health infrastructure into drill design

The National Academies report and the federal REMS guidance both emphasize that drills must be paired with mental health support. Concrete practices:

Pre-drill notification that allows students, staff, and families to know what is coming and prepare emotionally.
Age-appropriate framing that explains the purpose, what students will experience, and what they should do.
Identification of students who may have particular vulnerabilities (prior trauma, anxiety disorders, recent loss) and structured supports for them.
Post-drill processing that allows students to debrief, ask questions, and surface concerns.
Follow-up monitoring in the days after the drill for students showing signs of distress.
A counselor or social worker available during and immediately after the drill.

The drill that is conducted without these supports is the drill that produces the documented psychological harm the National Academies report describes. The drill that is conducted with them produces meaningfully better outcomes.

Step 4: Strengthen threat prevention infrastructure

The work of preventing threats from developing is upstream of any drill program. Effective threat prevention includes:

A behavioral threat assessment team that meets regularly and reviews concerning student behavior systematically.
An anonymous reporting channel that students actually trust and use.
Strong mental health screening and support that surfaces and responds to student distress before it escalates.
Active engagement with student social dynamics — knowing what is happening in your school socially, not just academically.
Family communication channels that allow concerns from home to reach the school quickly.

The behavioral threat assessment process is particularly important. Federal guidance and multiple state-level frameworks now treat threat assessment teams as a core component of school safety infrastructure, distinct from drill programs and broader than discipline systems.

Step 5: Build relationships with local first responders before you need them

Most school safety incidents are managed in their first minutes by school personnel, not by external responders. But the integration with local law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical services determines what happens after those first minutes.

Concrete moves:

Joint tabletop exercises at least annually with local law enforcement and emergency medical services.
Walk-throughs of your building by first responders so they know the layout before a crisis.
Direct communication channels between school administration and local agency leadership.
Shared protocols and language so that internal and external responders are operating from compatible frameworks.
Post-incident debrief practices that include external agencies.

The principal who knows the local police chief, fire chief, and EMS director personally is operating from a different position than the principal who has had no contact with them outside of formal correspondence.

Step 6: Design family communication for both prevention and response

Families are essential partners in school safety, but the communication has to be thoughtful in both directions.

Pre-crisis communication includes regular, transparent updates about safety practices, drill schedules, and any specific concerns. Families who feel they understand the school's safety approach are families who trust the school's judgment in moments of crisis.

In-crisis communication includes clear protocols for how the school will reach families during an incident, when it will reach them, and through what channels. The chaotic family communication that often surrounds school safety incidents — with rumors moving faster than facts, with families showing up at school during active situations, with social media filling information gaps — is largely preventable through pre-established protocols.

Post-crisis communication includes both immediate notification and longer-term support — counseling resources for affected families, structured opportunities to ask questions, transparent communication about what happened and what is changing as a result.

Step 7: Strengthen the structural conditions that support climate and safety

The structural daily conditions of the school affect safety in ways that drill programs and emergency operations plans do not.

Concrete moves:

Visible adult presence in hallways, cafeterias, and other unstructured spaces.
A genuinely enforced phone-free school day that reduces digital incident volume and the amplification of in-person incidents — and that creates the cognitive space for the kind of student-adult relationships that surface threat concerns early.
Strong, consistent classroom management that reduces the daily disruption that erodes school climate.
Active investment in school belonging — the research on bullying, threat development, and school climate all converge on belonging as a protective factor.

These structural conditions do not appear in most school safety frameworks. They should.

Step 8: Plan for what happens after an incident

The least-discussed part of school safety planning is post-incident response. Yet the school's capacity to support its community in the days, weeks, and months following an incident matters as much as anything done in the moment.

Post-incident planning includes:

Immediate trauma response capacity — counselors, social workers, and external partners ready to deploy.
Communication infrastructure for families, media, and the broader community.
Continuity of operations planning — what does the school day look like in the week following an incident?
Longer-term support for affected students, families, and staff.
Honest debrief of what worked and what did not, to inform future practice.

The principal who has thought seriously about post-incident response is the principal whose school can actually recover from an incident if one occurs.

What the Research Still Doesn't Tell Us

Honest leadership requires acknowledging the limits of current evidence.

Which specific drill protocols produce the best balance of skill mastery and mental health protection? The National Academies report explicitly identifies this as an open question and calls for further research.
How do these decisions translate across schools serving different communities? Much of the research base is not disaggregated by community demographics, and there is reason to believe that drill practices that work in one context may not transfer cleanly to others.
What is the cumulative psychological impact of multi-year drill exposure? Most studies look at single-drill or single-year effects. The cumulative effect of three years of middle school drill exposure is less well-studied.
How do emerging threats (AI-generated content, swatting, online radicalization pipelines) change the safety landscape? The threat environment continues to evolve faster than research can evaluate it.

The Bottom Line for Middle School Principals

School safety preparedness is one of the most consequential leadership responsibilities a middle school principal carries. It is also one of the areas where the gap between standard practice and strongest evidence is widest.

The most authoritative research body in the country — the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine — released a consensus report in October 2025 calling for substantial changes to how schools conduct active shooter drills. The federal Department of Education has issued formal guidance against simulated violence elements. The peer-reviewed research suggests that lockdown drills build skill mastery while full simulations often do not. Most schools, despite this evidence base, continue to operate from practices developed before the evidence existed.

The middle school principal who reads the National Academies report, the federal REMS guidance, and the recent peer-reviewed research is the principal positioned to make decisions grounded in evidence rather than in inherited practice. The decisions you make about drill design, mental health support, threat prevention, family communication, and the broader safety framework will shape the daily experience of your students, the long-term psychological health of your community, and the school's capacity to respond if an incident occurs.

This is not advocacy for a particular safety approach. It is advocacy for evidence-based decision-making in a field where the evidence has finally caught up to the practice — and where the practice now needs to catch up to the evidence.

Lead the decisions consciously. The outcomes — for your students, your staff, and your community — depend on it.

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