Pennsylvania statute requires that school entities are to establish threat assessment teams, procedures, and reporting protocols. The threat assessment process is a prevention strategy used to identify and assess threats of violence before the act occurs. Our school uses a standard procedure for responding to student threats of violence called “threat assessment.” Our threat assessment guidelines were developed and extensively tested and have been adopted by thousands of schools across the country. The basic idea is that when a student communicates a threat to harm someone, the threat assessment team will do an assessment to determine how serious the threat is and what can be done to prevent the threat from being carried out. The job of the threat assessment team is to determine how serious the threat is and how to respond to it. Research has shown that the vast majority of threats can be resolved safely and without drastic consequences such as school expulsion. In most cases, threats are a sign that a student is frustrated, angry, and in need of help resolving a problem. A goal of threat assessment is to address this underlying problem.