Research on averting school attacks is a growing focus to keeping schools safe. This includes crisis prevention and intervention with a particular emphasis on violence and bullying.

Amanda Nickerson, Ph.D, director of the Alberti Center for Bullying Abuse Prevention at the University at Buffalo, says the research was primarily focused on high school students. The work started with bullying, cyberbullying and sexual harassment. Officials work to educate and empower students on what to look for and identify that there is a problem and a warning sign.

They then equip students with different options on how to intervene depending on the situation.

“If is is safe to do so, directly intervening and saying you know 'stop,' you know, this is OK. Or 'I’m concerned about you. I’m concerned about this other person,' " Nickerson said. "Then reporting it to a trusted authority so that they can do something about it. Certainly for threats. We need to educate them to do that.

"It’s really the people who can do the threat assessment and follow through on it that that are needed. We don’t want kids to have the role that they need to be the ones to stop that.”

More Department of Homeland Security-funded training is happening to look for potential signs of targeted violence and how to be an engaged bystander.

Nickerson said that, traditionally, kids don’t want to be "the rat." She notes some of these violent events could have been stopped, though, if someone had said something.