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PRC Investigation 003 | Parent Research Center

Investigation 003 Evidence Board and Primary Source Archive

Who Decides a Student Is a Threat? Follow each claim to the governing document and its limits.

How to read this evidence

This board distinguishes historical federal guidance, statutory law, federal privacy guidance, state implementation materials, federal research findings, and state oversight findings. Each claim includes its source, pinpoint, evidence classification, and required qualification.

Evidence labels are DOCUMENTED, HISTORICAL DOCUMENT, INDEPENDENTLY CORROBORATED, REGULATORY FINDING, and INVESTIGATIVE LEAD. A label describes the evidentiary role; it is not a credibility score. No unsupported motive or intent is inferred from authorized capability or institutional consequence.

Claim-by-claim Evidence Board

Parent studying school photographs and documents pinned to a research board
Following documents and their context — illustrative image.

EB-01 — CLM-003-01

DOCUMENTED / HISTORICAL DOCUMENT

What it establishes: In 1998, federal guidance explicitly warned schools not to treat warning signs as a predictive checklist for individual children.

What it does not establish: Historical guidance; it does not control current law or prove that every later threat-assessment system follows the same safeguards.

Precise pinpoint: PDF viewer p. 15, “Use the Signs Responsibly” / Early Warning Signs
Intent Ladder: Level 1 Stated Purpose

Primary sources: SRC-01: Early Warning, Timely Response: A Guide to Safe Schools. Source pinpoints and qualifications.

EB-02 — CLM-003-02

DOCUMENTED

What it establishes: A threat assessment can involve a multidisciplinary team, not merely a principal or counselor acting alone.

What it does not establish: Actual team composition varies by jurisdiction and district.

Precise pinpoint: Entire FAQ
Intent Ladder: Level 2 Authorized Capability

Primary sources: SRC-05: What is a threat assessment team?. Source pinpoints and qualifications.

EB-03 — CLM-003-03

REGULATORY FINDING

What it establishes: Federal FERPA guidance allows some education-record sharing with outside threat-assessment team members when specific school-official and legitimate-interest conditions are met.

What it does not establish: This is not a blanket permission to share records with anyone; the conditions and redisclosure rules matter.

Precise pinpoint: Entire FAQ; school-official / legitimate-educational-interest conditions and redisclosure limits
Intent Ladder: Level 2 Authorized Capability

Primary sources: SRC-06: Does FERPA permit sharing education records with outside threat assessment team members?. Source pinpoints and qualifications.

EB-04 — CLM-003-04

REGULATORY FINDING

What it establishes: Texas law requires campus coverage by a threat-assessment team and gives that team responsibility to assess specified threats or behaviors and determine interventions.

What it does not establish: Texas is a case study, not a statement of nationwide law.

Precise pinpoint: §37.115(c), (f)
Intent Ladder: Level 2 Authorized Capability

Primary sources: SRC-02: Texas Education Code §37.115 — Threat Assessment and Safe and Supportive School Program and Team. Source pinpoints and qualifications.

EB-05 — CLM-003-05

REGULATORY FINDING

What it establishes: In Texas, the parent must be notified before the student threat assessment and offered an opportunity to participate and submit information.

What it does not establish: Notice and participation are not the same as parental veto or prior consent; emergency action is expressly preserved.

Precise pinpoint: §37.115(f-1)
Intent Ladder: Level 2 Authorized Capability

Primary sources: SRC-02: Texas Education Code §37.115 — Threat Assessment and Safe and Supportive School Program and Team. Source pinpoints and qualifications.

EB-06 — CLM-003-06

REGULATORY FINDING

What it establishes: In Texas, threat-assessment materials are retained in the student’s school record until the student’s twenty-fourth birthday.

What it does not establish: Record-access, transfer, and destruction rules should be checked against current district policy and other applicable law.

Precise pinpoint: §37.115(j-1)
Intent Ladder: Level 3 Operational Practice

Primary sources: SRC-02: Texas Education Code §37.115 — Threat Assessment and Safe and Supportive School Program and Team. Source pinpoints and qualifications.

EB-07 — CLM-003-07

INDEPENDENTLY CORROBORATED

What it establishes: Texas guidance distinguishes making a threat from posing a threat, and state implementation now standardizes assessment documentation through Sentinel.

What it does not establish: Sentinel is Texas-specific; do not generalize it to other states.

Precise pinpoint: TxSSC toolkit landing/requirements; TEA Threat Assessments section
Intent Ladder: Level 3 Operational Practice

Primary sources: SRC-03: School Behavioral Threat Assessment Toolkit · SRC-04: School Behavioral Threat Assessment Toolkit — Requirements · SRC-11: Safe and Supportive Schools — Behavioral Threat Assessment / Sentinel. Source pinpoints and qualifications.

EB-08 — CLM-003-08

DOCUMENTED

What it establishes: In the Secret Service sample of forty-one targeted school attacks, every attacker exhibited concerning behavior before the attack.

What it does not establish: This is a selected set of completed targeted attacks; it does not tell us how common those behaviors are among students who never become violent.

Precise pinpoint: Executive Summary; comparison table near report end (41 incidents; concerning behaviors)
Intent Ladder: Level 1 Stated Purpose

Primary sources: SRC-07: Protecting America’s Schools: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Targeted School Violence. Source pinpoints and qualifications.

EB-09 — CLM-003-09

DOCUMENTED

What it establishes: A separate Secret Service study analyzed sixty-seven reported and averted school-attack plots from 2006 through 2018 and concluded that targeted school violence is preventable.

What it does not establish: The report expressly says the open-source sample does not include every plot and should not be used to infer trend frequency.

Precise pinpoint: Part I, Overview of the Plots, p. 9 of report PDF text; 67 averted plots, 2006–2018
Intent Ladder: Level 1 Stated Purpose

Primary sources: SRC-08: Averting Targeted School Violence: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Plots Against Schools. Source pinpoints and qualifications.

EB-10 — CLM-003-10

REGULATORY FINDING

What it establishes: In TEA’s 2024–25 sample covering about thirty percent of Texas districts, ninety-six percent met the threat-assessment record-retention requirement, while 22.93 percent had not ensured each team completed required threat-assessment training.

What it does not establish: These are compliance findings from the districts assessed in that cycle, not a statewide prevalence estimate for all districts or students.

Precise pinpoint: PDF pp. 16–22; especially p. 22 display / parsed P21 lines 575–591
Intent Ladder: Level 4 Institutional Consequence

Primary sources: SRC-09: Annual Report 2024–2025: School Safety and Security in Texas. Source pinpoints and qualifications.

Intent Ladder: purpose, authority, practice, consequence

Level 1 — Stated Purpose

School-safety agencies state that threat assessment is intended to prevent targeted violence and connect concerning individuals with appropriate intervention.

Level 2 — Authorized Capability

Law and FERPA guidance authorize multidisciplinary assessment, specified information gathering/sharing, parental notification/participation, and interventions under defined conditions.

Level 3 — Operational Practice

Texas has moved threat assessment into standardized team procedures, record retention, inter-district transfer rules, annual reporting, and Sentinel documentation.

Level 4 — Institutional Consequence

A safety judgment can create a durable student record and can influence discipline, mental-health referrals, law-enforcement involvement, special-education review, and future school handling. This is a documented institutional consequence, not proof of improper intent.

Primary sources: SRC-02: Texas Education Code §37.115 — Threat Assessment and Safe and Supportive School Program and Team · SRC-04: School Behavioral Threat Assessment Toolkit — Requirements · SRC-06: Does FERPA permit sharing education records with outside threat assessment team members? · SRC-07: Protecting America’s Schools: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Targeted School Violence · SRC-10: Mandatory Safe and Supportive Schools Program Reporting · SRC-11: Safe and Supportive Schools — Behavioral Threat Assessment / Sentinel. Source pinpoints and qualifications.

Primary Source Archive

Multidisciplinary group, including a uniformed officer, discussing papers around a school meeting table
A multidisciplinary school meeting — illustrative image, not a documented assessment.
Historical federal warning
Texas statutory authority
Federal team and privacy guidance

SRC-05 — What is a threat assessment team?

U.S. Department of Education — Student Privacy Policy Office
Current FERPA FAQ accessed October 2026

Source classification: VERIFIED PRIMARY/FEDERAL GUIDANCE
Pinpoint: Entire FAQ

Read the original: What is a threat assessment team?

Texas implementation and administrative reporting
Federal prevention research
State oversight and compliance

SRC-09 — Annual Report 2024–2025: School Safety and Security in Texas

Texas Education Agency, Office of School Safety and Security
2025 report covering 2024–2025

Source classification: VERIFIED PRIMARY/STATE OVERSIGHT REPORT
Pinpoint: PDF pp. 16–22; District Vulnerability Assessments; Safe and Supportive Schools Team findings

Read the original: Annual Report 2024–2025: School Safety and Security in Texas

Research transparency and corrections

Examine the original documents, the scope of each finding, and what the evidence does not establish. Read PRC’s methodology, consult the Evidence Classification Guide, or contact PRC with a source-based correction.

Continue the research

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