Locks, Lights, Out of Sight: Assessing Students’ Perceptions of Emergency Preparedness across Multiple Lockdown Drills

Despite their proliferation in schools across the U.S., the impact of lockdown drills on students remains largely understudied. Despite their goal of preparing students–along with teachers and school staff–for situations like the 2018 shooting in Parkland, FL, questions have been raised in both the public and academic discourses about whether such practices achieve their desired end or instead produce fear and anxiety. To date, however, there is but one study that assesses the perceptions that students have about these drills. The present study seeks to fill such a gap by exploring how students in a large New York school district feel about their safety and preparedness in the wake of receiving instructional training and undergoing several lockdown drills.