West Virginia school safety

Among the five West Virginia districts that rank safest on this page, Roane County Schools is the only one where every school in its scored set — 5 of 5 — had records complete enough to score. In the others, some schools reported too little to grade. That gap, between a school we can vouch for and a school we cannot, is what this page is actually about.

The state's records hold up comparatively well. 46 schools, 6.6% of the state's 700, fall into our doubtful-reporting grades, D or E. Nationally the same share is 11.3%. That means fewer schools here submitted numbers we can't reconcile with what schools their size normally report. It does not mean West Virginia children are safer than children elsewhere. The comparison behind every grade is national and is not adjusted for state. Differences between states in this collection are differences in reporting behavior, and nothing in the data lets us turn them into differences in child safety.

What you can look up

409 of the state's 700 schools have a published safety score, built from the 2021-22 federal Civil Rights Data Collection. Each school is compared against roughly 1,500 schools nationwide closest to it in enrollment that teach the same grade levels. We publish a score only for schools graded A or B — the ones whose records we believe. A school with no score is not a school we are withholding something about; it is the method declining to guess. A C means the school reported almost nothing but is small enough that a genuine zero is ordinary — not evidence of safety, but not implausible. D and E mean schools of that size normally report several incidents, or ten or more, and this one reported almost none. That is a records problem. It is not a finding about violence, and you should not read it as one.

West Virginia has 60 school districts. 32 have enough scoreable schools to rank. The rest still appear here school by school, but a district rank resting on a few scored schools would tell you more about who filed complete paperwork than about the district, so we leave it off. Of the ranked districts, Wood County Schools comes out safer than 85% of ranked US districts, Putnam County Schools and Roane County Schools safer than 84%, Greenbrier County Schools 79%, and Berkeley County Schools 75%.

Safest ranked cities in West Virginia

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 West Virginia city with schools

Every West Virginia school district