Rhode Island school safety

In Lincoln, all six schools in the district's scored set had records complete enough to grade. That is the reason Lincoln ranks where it does — not because its schools proved something their neighbors couldn't, but because their paperwork left us nothing to doubt.

What this page grades is reporting. Rhode Island had 319 schools in the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection, and we publish a safety score for 170 of them. The rest show no score, which is the method working rather than a hole in it. Each school is compared to roughly 1,500 schools nationwide closest to it in enrollment that teach the same grade levels. Among peers that reported anything at all, we take the 25th percentile of the incident rate — a deliberately low bar. A school reporting less than a quarter of what that implies for its size has not given evidence of safety. Some of those schools are small enough that a genuine zero is ordinary; we grade those C and say no more. Others are the size where schools normally report several incidents, or ten or more, and reported almost none. Those are the D and E schools.

Twenty-five schools here fall in that doubtful band: 7.8% of the state, against 11.3% nationally. Read that as a statement about records, not about children. Reporting practice differs from state to state, and this comparison is not adjusted for state, so the lower share means Rhode Island schools filled out the federal collection more consistently than the national average. It does not mean children in Rhode Island are safer than children elsewhere. This data cannot answer that.

How the districts compare

Rhode Island has 63 school districts, and 11 of them have enough scoreable schools to rank. A district needs a real base of gradeable records before a ranking means anything, and most districts in the state are too small to clear it.

Lincoln ranks safer than 96% of ranked US districts, with 6 of the 6 schools in its scored set complete enough to score. Blackstone Valley Prep A RI Mayoral Academy and East Providence both rank safer than 93% — Blackstone Valley Prep with 6 of 6, East Providence with 7 of its 12. Cranston follows at 87%, with 19 of 23, and Warwick at 85%, with 7 of 18.

Those counts describe each district's scored set, not its full roster of schools. A district figure is also an average; the school your child actually attends may sit well above or below it. Start with that school's own page.

Safest ranked cities in Rhode Island

Percentile is against all ranked U.S. cities (higher = safer). Only cities with ≥5 trustworthy-data schools are ranked. Home value is Zillow's ZHVI.

Safest ranked districts

Every Rhode Island city with schools

Every Rhode Island school district