Washington school safety

Tukwila School District turned in a complete set for the 2021-22 collection: all five schools in its scored set had incident records solid enough to grade. That is less common than it sounds, and it is why Tukwila sits at the top of this page rather than further down among districts whose records left gaps.

Here is what you can take from the school pages below. A published safety score means one thing — the school's reported incident numbers, measured against roughly 1,500 American schools closest to it in enrollment that teach the same grade levels, look like real records. We publish a score only for schools graded A or B. In Washington, 1,419 of 2,563 schools clear that bar. The rest show no score. That is the method working, not a hole in it.

The lower grades describe paperwork, not danger. A C means a school reported almost nothing but is small enough that a genuine zero is common — not evidence of safety, but not implausible. D and E mean schools of the same size normally report several incidents, sometimes ten or more, and this one reported almost none. We grade 261 Washington schools D or E. Those are records we cannot verify. They are not a finding about violence in those buildings, and should not be read as one.

Those 261 schools are 10.2% of the state, against 11.3% nationally. Washington's reporting is a little more consistent than the country's overall. It does not tell you Washington schools are safer. Nothing here is adjusted for state, because differences between states in this data are differences in how adults fill out forms.

The districts that rank highest

Of Washington's 330 school districts, 79 have enough schools with gradeable records to be ranked at all. The others fall out because too few of their schools produced records complete enough to score. Among those that do rank, Tukwila School District comes in safer than 98% of ranked US districts, with 5 of the 5 schools in its scored set complete enough to grade. Eastmont School District and Wenatchee School District each rank safer than 97%, at 9 of 12 and 11 of 17. Bellevue School District is safer than 96%, at 24 of 31. Enumclaw School District is safer than 95%, at 5 of 10. Those counts describe each district's own scored set — how much of its record we could actually check — not its full roster of schools.

Safest ranked cities in Washington

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 Washington city with schools

Every Washington school district