Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource Today

Ane in three California middle school and loftier school students reported having been harassed or bullied at least one time in the previous year, according to new data from a statewide student survey.

Thirty-4 pct of students in grades seven, 9 and 11 said they had been bullied one or more times, co-ordinate to the 2011-thirteen California Healthy Kids Survey, which is administered by the California Section of Education. That rate is roughly the same as the 33 pct of students in those grades who reported having been bullied in the 2009-11 California Healthy Kids Survey, although that survey used different methodology. (Come across map below for county-by-county data on bullying reported in 2011-thirteen by seventh graders.)

Nationally, the percentage of students who report having been bullied has decreased slightly or remained the aforementioned in recent years, said John Kelly, a board fellow member of the National Association of Schoolhouse Psychologists, a Maryland-based membership organization.

"You lot've got to have a skilled, socially intelligent teacher in the classroom," said Bridget Early on, a social worker at Everett Eye Schoolhouse in San Francisco. "When kids say mean things, the instructor tin can squash information technology correct then."

In recent years, widely publicized bullying incidents, including the anti-gay harassment of Seth Walsh, a 13-year-old gay student from Tehachapi who committed suicide in 2010, accept led to federal and country laws, including Assembly Bill 9, known as Seth's Law, in California, that require schools to do more to protect student rubber. Studies have found that schools tin reduce bullying through research-based approaches that build relationships and social skills, institute behavior norms and foster empathy.

"It's a lot about how classroom civilisation is prepare," said Bridget Early, a social worker at Everett Heart School in San Francisco. "You've got to have a skilled, socially intelligent teacher in the classroom," she said. "When kids say hateful things, the instructor can squash information technology right so."

At Everett, she said, classroom teachers agree weekly classroom circles to check in with students on topics including bullying, are coached to create a welcoming environment including greeting students with a grin, and utilize social and emotional strategies as role of classroom teaching. 1 such strategy is the Good Behavior Game, in which center school students and teachers decide which classroom behaviors they'd similar to encounter reduced, such every bit talking out of plough, and then teams of students compete to follow the rule and win a prize. The Good Beliefs Game has been widely studied and proven to have long-term furnishings on students' mental health, booze and drug use and smoking.

The bullying information come every bit school districts in California are newly required by the State Board of Education to create a written plan for a positive "school climate," to be measured by surveying students, teachers and parents about their sense of safety at school, among other indicators. These efforts must exist part of districts' iii-yr planning documents, known as Local Control and Accountability Plans, which first took effect on July 1, 2014.

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Districts will be updating their planning documents, including their schoolhouse climate improvement initiatives, this jump. "Information technology's a time for districts to pay attention to what they're really doing, and whether information technology's having whatever effect," said Gregory Austin, director of the Wellness and Human being Development program at WestEd, a San Francisco-based research organization that designed the California Healthy Kids Survey. WestEd has created a "What Works" brief that describes what teachers and administrators can practice to reduce bullying, including being "visible, active and interested" in how students are behaving, peculiarly in unstructured times such as passing periods between classes.

Equally defined past WestEd, a positive schoolhouse climate includes caring relationships between teachers and students, physical and emotional safety, and academic and emotional supports that help students succeed – the reverse of a schoolhouse culture where bullying is ignored.

In 2014, the Centers for Affliction Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Educational activity identified iii key elements of bullying: unwanted ambitious behavior, observed or perceived power imbalance and repetition of behaviors or high likelihood of repetition.

Seventh-grade students reported the highest rates of bullying or harassment, with 39 percentage proverb they'd experienced one or more incidents. Rates declined somewhat as students moved to higher grades, with 34 percent of 9th-graders and 27 percentage of 11th-graders reporting having been bullied. The data were released on Kidsdata.org, a project of the Palo Alto-based Lucile Packard Foundation for Children'due south Health.

The difficulties for eye schoolhouse students were reflected in a related survey in which 51 percent of middle schoolhouse teachers – compared to 27 percent of elementary school teachers and 39 percent of high school teachers – said bullying was a moderate or severe problem at their school. That information is from the 2011-thirteen California School Climate Survey, administered by the California Department of Education.

Race or national origin was the leading reason cited by students to explain why they were targeted for bullying in all grades. The 2d almost mutual reason was that peers thought the student was gay or lesbian, the analysis said.

Higher percentages of African-American, Asian-American, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students reported bullying incidents, compared to students from other racial and ethnic backgrounds.

The 50 largest school districts in California take all listed actions they will take to address schoolhouse climate in their planning documents, according to a study by Fight Offense: Invest in Kids California. Seventy percent say they plan to implement positive subject area approaches that emphasize building relationships with students or allowing them to make amends, rather than taking more punitive deportment. These approaches include Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, Restorative Practices or restorative justice, and social emotional learning.

A 2022 report published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine constitute that Schoolwide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, a framework that uses an array of programs and a database to rail behavior incidents and interventions, had a significant effect in reducing bullying incidents reported by teachers.

The 2011-13 California Good for you Kids Survey departed from previous methodology by collecting information from a randomly selected grouping of 109 secondary schools that are representative of the state. Participating districts were given a fiscal incentive to administrate the survey, in society to insure that the results would be representative enough to fulfill the state requirement that students in grades vii, 9 and 11 be surveyed every two years on substance use.

Previous California Healthy Kids Surveys accept nerveless data from as many as 1 million California students, merely a 2010 federal funding change led to a refuse in the number of schools participating. Districts across the state continue to administer the survey and analyze results about student behavior, health and sense of connection to schoolhouse.

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