When it comes to school safety, bullying is teachers鈥� top concern, even more so than school shootings or drugs on campus, according to a recently released . That鈥檚 despite the fact that federal data show that bullying in schools has declined a bit since 2009.
Taken together, the data illustrate how persistent a challenge bullying remains for schools, even as policymakers in most states have taken action to address the issue.
鈥攖hey are less engaged and their learning suffers, according to one study that tracked a group of kindergarteners through 12th grade. And contrary to popular belief, being bullied does not in and of itself make children more resilient.
Research has found that students who are bullied or left out are more likely to take future social rejections much more personally鈥攂elieving that there is something wrong with them and taking longer to bounce back from rejection鈥攖han teens who felt accepted by their peers.
While schools have reported a decline in bullying incidents over the past decade or so, separate surveys of high school students found that bullying in school has remained mostly flat, only declining the first full year of the pandemic when many students were learning from home full- or part-time.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention鈥檚 found that around 20 percent of high school students reported being bullied at school in its biennial surveys between 2011 and 2020, dropping to 15 percent in 2021. The percentage of teens reporting that they had been cyberbullied remained mostly flat between 2011 and 2021.
Bullying is a major concern for parents as well educators. A Pew Research Center survey of parents conducted in the fall of 2022 found that nearly three-quarters of parents said they were either very or somewhat concerned about their child being bullied, up from 60 percent in 2015.
Following are four charts that depict the state of bullying in U.S. public schools鈥攆rom its frequency, to where it happens in the school building, to what鈥檚 being done about it.
