Bullying in Schools Is Not Going Away

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It was in the year 1175 that the French theologian and poet Alain de Lille first wrote the proverb, “All roads lead to Rome.” When it comes to understanding the problems in American education, it might not be all roads, but a lot of them lead to bullying.

From 2011-2019, the percentage of high school students who were bullied in school held steady at roughly 20%, according to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. But by the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many students were schooling at home, the rate dropped for the first time in a decade, to 15%. Unfortunately, by 2023, when most students had returned to traditional, in-person schooling, bullying rates rebounded to 19%. 

The data signals that schools are no closer to curbing bullying now than they were back in 2011. Even worse, other survey data of parents and teenagers indicates that schools could be regressing when it comes to their approach to bullying.  According to an EdChoice survey of parents in June 2022, only 48% of parents felt their child’s school was doing a good job handling bullying. When asked the same question in June 2024, the percentage of parents who felt their child’s school was effective at handling bullying dropped to 44%. 

EdChoice asked the same question in a survey of American teenagers, and the same pattern emerged. In an October 2022 survey, only 37% of teenagers felt their school handles bullying well, while only 33% of teens responded similarly to the same question in the most recent survey fielded in August 2024

Schools’ inability to make significant progress in reducing bullying has contributed to the growth of other key issues plaguing schools. Take absenteeism, for example, a problem with which bullying has historically been intertwined. According to the 2023 YRBS, 13% of high school students did not go to school because of safety concerns. This is up 4 points from 2021, and 7 points from 2015. 

This idea is reinforced by data from the August 2024 EdChoice survey of teenagers. When asked why chronic absenteeism has increased over the past few years, 29% of teens pointed to bullying as a reason. When asked about possible ways to get chronically absent students back to class, 51% of teens said more efforts to reduce bullying would prove effective.  

The mental health crisis is no different. The impact of bullying, for both bullies and victims of bullying, on mental health is well documented. A December 2022 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper found that suicide rates among teens fell sharply in March 2020, when many schools across the country shifted to online or hybrid learning models. The paper also found, using data from the YRBS survey, that bullying victims were more than three times likelier to attempt suicide than students who were not bullied. While schools are scrambling to supply enough mental health services for their students, they shouldn’t ignore ways to decrease the demand for such support. A concerted effort to reduce bullying can help do so. 

Schools were already in an uphill battle before the COVID-19 pandemic. Issues of safety, mental health, and absenteeism, to name a few, were all prevalent before 2020. The pandemic exacerbated many of these existing problems, and then some. Safety issues have evolved to where even the safety measures meant to help and prepare students have shown an adverse effect on their mental health. As for the mental health crisis, schools are counted on to help fight this battle (despite limited resources to do so) now more than ever before. Absenteeism was certainly an issue before the pandemic but skyrocketed to unprecedented levels as schools returned to in-person learning. 

It is entirely unrealistic to expect that bullying will ever be completely eradicated from America’s schools. That said, it is mind-boggling that bullying has impacted roughly 20% of teenagers consistently for over a decade. Even a relatively marginal decrease, from 20% to 15%, can have a profound impact in this environment, as we observed from the decrease in teen suicide rates in March 2020. Schools struggled mightily during the pandemic, but the decrease in bullying during that time is a beacon of hope. It is possible, and the positive effects can be widespread. While schools are searching high and low for answers related to mental health, safety, and absenteeism, making progress with bullying should be the place to start.



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