From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Bullying, Hate Crimes and Violence in K-12 Public
Schools

Description: Millions of students experience hostile behaviors like
bullying, hate speech and violence each year while in school. The
Departments of Education and Justice have issued reminders to K-12
schools about their obligations to protect students and address
harassment and discrimination. We learn more from GAO’s Jackie Nowicki.

Related GAO Work: GAO-22-104341, K-12 Education: Students’ Experiences
with Bullying, Hate Speech, Hate Crimes, and Victimization in Schools

Released: November 2021

[Jackie Nowicki:] Bullying has serious negative effects on all students,
victims and bullies alike.

[Music:]

[Holly:] Hello and welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report. Your source for
news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm
Holly Hobbs. A brief warning to our listeners: This episode of our
podcast discusses acts of bullying and violence, including sexual
violence, that may not be appropriate for children, and may be upsetting
to some listeners. Millions of students experience hostile behaviors
like bullying and violence each year while in school.  The departments
of Education and Justice have issued reminders to public schools about
their obligations to protect students, especially when bullying and
violence targets students from racial, ethnic or religious minority
groups, LGBTQI+ and immigrant students. Today will find out more from
GAO’s Jackie Nowicki, an expert on K-12 education and a Director in our
Education, Workforce and Income Security team. Thanks for joining us.

[Jackie Nowicki:] My pleasure, Holly.

[Holly:] So, Jackie, our report looked at a range of activities
happening in schools. Can you give us any idea of how big of an issue
this is—starting with bullying?

[Jackie Nowicki:] Sure. So, when we analyze nationally representative
federal survey data, we found that bullying is widespread. About 94% of
principals reported that bullying occurred at their school. We're
talking about one in five students between the ages of 12 and 18. That's
about 5.2 million kids, who were subjected to repeated aggressive
behaviors like being made fun of, or threatened, pushed, tripped or
coerced. And among those 5.2 million bullied students, about one in four
were bullied because of their identities. To give you a sense of what
this looks like, we found one case caught on video where students
physically assaulted a Muslim student, yanked her hijab off and taunted
her with anti-Muslim slurs. And we also know that these numbers are
likely underreported because fewer than half of all bullied students
reported the bullying to a teacher or another adult.

[Holly Hobbs:] How about hate speech?

[Jackie Nowicki:] Using the same federal survey data, we found that hate
speech is pervasive and hate crimes rose in recent years. We estimate
that about 5.8 million students saw hate words or symbols written at
schools.  That's one in four kids exposed to hate, like racial and
homophobic slurs, anti-Semitic slurs and symbols, references to lynching
and the Holocaust, and anti-immigrant rhetoric. And to give you an
example of what that looks like, we found examples of students telling
Latino and Latina students to go back to your country or saying ‘Where's
your passport?’  Native students were called savages, and an Asian boy
was told to go back to China and take the virus back with him.

[Holly Hobbs:] And hate crimes?

[Jackie Nowicki:] Available data shows that they're on the rise as well,
and the FBI says hate crimes are under-reported. The most recent data
available are for school years 2015-16 and 2017-18. And during that time
period reported hate crimes in schools nearly doubled from about 3,000
incidents to 5,700 incidents. We found that hate crimes based on race or
color, national origin or ethnicity, and sexual orientation increased
the most.

[Holly Hobbs:] What about violent interactions?

[Jackie Nowicki:] So the numbers of reported rapes and attempted rape
seem to have held steady the last few years. We estimated that over
1,000 rapes or attempted rapes occurred in over 700 schools in school
year 2017-18. Sexual assaults were somewhat more common and increased by
an estimated 17%. And the number of schools reporting at least one
sexual assault increased by over 50%. Physical attacks with and without
weapons are also on the rise.

[Holly Hobbs:] And does this problem increase in prevalence as kids get
older?

[Jackie Nowicki:] So this is an interesting one. We found that middle
school students were more likely to be bullied than high school
students.  And we also found that students in smaller schools were more
likely to report being bullied than students in larger schools. And
school climate also seems to matter. So, for example, we found that
schools where widespread disorder is occurring were more likely to
report that bullying and cyberbullying occurred daily, weekly or
monthly.

[Holly Hobbs:] Jackie, do we know what the role of social media has been
in either providing evidence of incidents or escalating them?

[Jackie Nowicki:] Yeah. So, you know, social media plays a big role in
both of those things. Over 80% of principals reported regular or
occasional cyberbullying in the schools. So we saw this play out in a
school, for example, where students held slave auctions of their Black
peers. And, as they say, the internet is forever. So on the one hand,
you know, they're out there and existing and may continue to hurt
targeted student groups, and they can affect school climate negatively.
On the other hand, because they are hard to remove, it becomes a little
easier document.

[Holly Hobbs:] So what are schools doing to address hostile behaviors
like these?

[Jackie Nowicki:] Well, schools do have a number of tools that can help
address hostile behaviors and contribute to safe, secure environments.
So we found that nearly every school offered teacher and staff training
to address these kinds of behaviors and to build those kinds of positive
school environments. But schools that offered training specifically on
bullying policies had less regular bullying compared to schools that did
not offer that type of specific training.

[Holly Hobbs:] So how have schools and school districts responded

[Jackie Nowicki:]  So some have responded to these incidents by issuing
statements condemning them or implementing the kinds of training that we
just talked about. Some of them have conducted listening sessions with
students or parents in the community, or they've established protocols
for addressing hate speech on campus. And a lot of them have created
spaces in their schools that celebrate diversity. And that does seem to
have a positive effect.

{Music}

[Holly Hobbs:] So Jackie just told us that incidents involving bullying,
violence, and sexual violence in K-12 public schools are increasing. And
that schools are taking steps to address them.  But that incidents,
particularly among students who are minorities in their
communities—whether because of their race, religion, or identity—are on
the rise as well. So Jackie, what is the Department of Education’s and
Justice's role in all of this?

[Jackie Nowicki:] So both the Departments of Education and Justice have
responsibilities for enforcing federal civil rights laws that protect
students based on their identity. And both agencies have issued
reminders to schools about their obligations to address this kind of
harassment and discrimination.  In the work that we did on bullying, we
mainly focused on education's efforts to respond to complaints it
receives about hostile behaviors. We found that education uh response
sort of responded to these complaints faster in recent years, but the
reasons for that when we dug a little deeper were interesting. So partly
it was because they were dismissing more complaints than they had
previously. And partly it's because they received fewer complaints in
the first place. And that seemed counterintuitive to us given the
findings that we've just been discussing.

[Holly Hobbs:] So what’s going on here?

[Jackie Nowicki:] So we talked to a number of civil rights experts and
organizations to gain more insight into what might be going on there.
And they generally told us that they stopped submitting complaints or
advising clients to submit complaints because they had lost confidence
in Education's recent approach to addressing civil rights violations in
schools. So, for example, one civil rights organization said that when
education rescinded its guidance on protections for transgender
students, they were reticent to encourage LGBTQ students to file
complaints and instead encourage them to file directly in court. The
good news is that this year education has begun to review or reinterpret
certain guidance, and that may, in the long run, help revive confidence
in its civil rights office.

[Holly Hobbs:] And last question, what's the bottom line of this report?

[Jackie Nowicki:] I think in the short term, we know that students who
are bullied may avoid school and their academic performance may suffer.
But over the longer term, we also know that bullying has serious
negative effects on all students, victims and bullies alike. Things like
depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse, criminal convictions and
suicide. And with these behaviors on the rise, it's just really
important that school communities continue to try to create environments
where students from all backgrounds and all walks of life feel safe and
are valued and respected for who they are.

[Holly Hobbs:] That was Jackie Nowicki talking about GAO's recent report
on bullying and other types of victimization in K-12 public schools.
Thanks for your time, Jackie.

[Jackie Nowicki:] Thanks so much for having me, Holly. Take care.

[Holly Hobbs:] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report.
There are resources for those who experience bullying and violence—such
as the website StopBullying.gov. If you or someone you know has
experienced sexual violence, please contact the National Sexual Assault
Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. Acts of bullying and violence can cause
stress for both the victim and the aggressor, and could result in
thoughts of suicide. If you need help, please contact the National
Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
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