Bullying in California Schools: How the Golden State Ranks In Nation

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, CA — Watch the kids leaving the school grounds. Are they happy, surrounded by friends? Are they dragging their feet, last one to leave campus all by themselves? Though parents would like to think they've got it all figured out, bullying problems continue to persist across the nation. WalletHub analysts recently estimated that a child is bullied somewhere in the United States every seven minutes.

"It may be the son or daughter of someone you know, or worse, it may be your own," they said in a recent report."According to the National Education Association, more than "160,000 children miss school every day out of fear of being bullied."

According to the report, only four in 100 adults will intervene, and 11 percent of the child’s peers might do the same. The rest — 85 percent — will do nothing.

Read: 2016’s States with the Biggest Bullying Problems.

Identifying states which endure the greatest amount of bullying, WalletHub’s compared 45 states and the District of Columbia. Metrics used included the rate of bullying incidents to the costs of truancy in schools. Added to the list was online bullying.

With 1 being the biggest, and 23 average, California ranked 36th percentile in the rate of high school students who were bullied on the property, 38th percentile in the amount of students bullied online, 31st in high school students who were involved in physical fighting at school.

States which experienced the highest percentage of students being bullied on school grounds included District of Columbia, Maryland and Louisiana. In the state of California students were among them most likely to be truant— or to stay home rather than face potential bullying, in a tie with New York and Texas.

California currently has both anti-bullying laws and anti-bullying polices in place to ensure campuses are safe for students. Asking one of the WalletHub experts with regard to her experiences, Associate Professor Karyl E. Ketchum of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at California State University, Fullerton campus discussed her thoughts on children at risk of being bullied.

"Rather than asking what puts a child at risk of being bullied we'd be much better served asking, what creates a school climate where bullying happens and, what puts a child at risk for exhibiting bullying behaviors?" she said. "

Ketchum believes that bullying behaviors are not the inevitable result of a particular child’s presence at school but that it is the result of a particular kind of social environment, while Doctoral candidate and Instructor of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University, Monica Bixby, stated that children become at risk of bullying when they look, talk or act differently than their peers.

"Youth who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual are often considered different and are more likely to be both threatened and injured at school due to bullying," she said. "Additionally, while boys and girls are both at risk of being bullied, they are bullied in different ways."

According to Bixby, boys are more likely to be bullied through threats and physical aggression while girls are more likely to have their reputations or relationships damaged rather than experience physical harm.

How a Bully is Created

Experts polled in the WalletHub survey believe that factors of creating a bully can include:

• Negative home environment
• Children with delinquent peers
• Children who reside in disadvantaged or unsafe neighborhoods
• Children with prior experiences of victimization

"Children who are the victims of bullying often become bullies themselves," Bixby said.

Chronic Bullying

"There are many schools where students find the support they need and bullying—chronic, long-term, peer-on-peer verbal and/or physical abuse—does not happen," she said. "When we ask why particular children are at risk of being bullied, we are blaming the victim. This is, in fact, what often happens in our schools as well."

Blaming the victim is a potential reason that students may miss out on school for fear of being bullied. Often, parents of children who have been bullied, will keep them home until the problem can be dealt with or resolved, especially in elementary school grades.

"I cannot tell you how many times I have been called in to help with a school bullying case only to find that all kinds of well-intended measures have been taken by the school that ultimately act to further stigmatize the student who has been bullied, ignore the student or students who have been inflicting the bullying, and completely dismiss the importance of assessing the school’s larger social climate," she said.

To Ketchum, bullying is a symptom of larger cultural issues within the school environment.

Protection from Cyberbullying

Technology plays a role in every day life, and parent responsibility is key in helping their children understand age appropriate understanding of the dilemmas and dangers of living their lives online.

With younger children, screen time is shared time with parent monitoring of online activities. For older children, Ketchum feels that regular age appropriate conversations about social media and cyberbullying are of key importance.

"I can tell you that the conversations I had with my daughter leading up to the instance of cyberbullying she experienced were critical in establishing a level of trust that allowed her to tell me what was happening and ask me for help," she said.

Across the country, laws are in place to protect students from acts of bullying. Ketchum feels that despite the laws in place there is a lack of enforcement at the state level of current bullying laws.

"Even in my state, California, where we have some of the best laws in the country, these laws remain unenforced and therefore unevenly implemented in schools and districts across the state," she said. "Show me a state where safe school laws are enforced, and I’ll show you one where variability in levels of student safety at school and instances of bullying are dramatically diminished."

Keep Schools and Families Accountable for Bullying

WalletHub suggests that bullying results in many negative consequences for the victim and the bullies, their parents, their schools and society as a whole. Here is how California weighed in on the national bullying prevalence and prevention poll.

With middle of the road results, California still has a long way to go to ensure students won't have to be afraid of being bullied in the classroom.

Bullying Prevalence & Prevention in California (1=Biggest, 23=Avg.):

• 36th – Percent of High School Students Bullied on School Property
• 38th – Percent of High School Students Bullied Online
• 31st – Percent of High School Students Involved in Physical Fight at School
• 27th – Percent of High School Students Who Missed School Out of Fear of Being Bullied
• 32nd – Percent of High School Students Who Attempted Suicide
• 38th – Number of Psychologists per Capita
• 33rd – Percentage of School Districts with LGBT Protections

For the full report, please visit: https://wallethub.com/edu/best-worst-states-at-controlling-bullying/9920/

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