Less than 3 percent of all students in this state were involved in violence at school, a drop from the previous year, according to an annual safety report released yesterday by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

	Online Graphic School Safety Report, 2004-2005

The School Safety Report for 2004-05 shows a decline in school violence for the second year in a row and significant decreases in fights, assaults on students, burglaries, racial and ethnic intimidation and incidents involving firearms.

"Schools are getting safer," said Mike Storm, spokesman for the Department of Education. "Schools are doing a better job of reporting violence and making sure students have safer school environments."

The report is a summary of data reported by the state's 501 school districts and all of its intermediate units, vocational technical schools and charter schools.

It shows incidents involving firearms dropped by 38 percent; burglaries are down by 43 percent; incidents of intimidation fell by 25 percent and other types of harassment declined by 23 percent.

"Some of it's attributable to efforts at the local school level and some of it has to do with more accurate reporting," Mr. Storm said. "Over the past three years, the Department of Education has done a lot of work to make sure schools understand ... what needs to be reported."

But at least one national organization that monitors school violence is concerned that Pennsylvania and other states are relying on flawed data that may not reflect an accurate picture of crime in schools.

"Nationally, we are seeing an increase in school violence," said Ken Trump, of National School Safety and Security Services in Cleveland. "I find it very hard to believe violence is going down in Pennsylvania schools because its very inconsistent with what we are seeing."

Most state figures on school violence are under-reported," Mr. Trump said.

A national survey recently done by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network to document the experiences of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students indicates that more than four out of five of them experience physical, verbal or sexual harassment at school.

Public schools in Pennsylvania reported 66,974 incidents of violence in 2004-05, which is 1,464 fewer incidents than last year.

Ten schools were identified in the study for being persistently dangerous, all of them in Philadelphia.

School administrators are responsible for reporting the incidents of violence and weapons possession to the Department of Education. School superintendents, charter school administrators and executive directors of vocational-technical schools and intermediate units are responsible for verifying the accuracy of the data.