WASHINGTON -- One in every 5 middle and high school students has complained of being bullied at school and the number of reports of sexual assault on college campuses has more than tripled over the past decade, according to a federal study released Tuesday.
"There are areas of concern in terms of bullying and rates of victimization being high," said Lauren Musu-Gillette, one of the authors of the report by the National Center for Education Statistics and the Justice Department. "We are seeing a long-term decline, but we still want people to be paying attention to areas where rates are still high."
Even though the overall prevalence of bullying has been declining in American schools over the past decade, 21 percent of students aged 12-18 reported being bullied in 2015, the report found. That was slightly below the international average.
"Bullying is a public health issue because it really affects the mental wellness and health of students and, as we know, at the extreme end it can lead to everything from suicide to reactive violence," said David Osher, vice president at the American Institutes for Research. "Because it happens, it doesn't mean it has to happen."
The picture was bleaker for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. Thirty-four percent of students who identified as LGBT complained of bullying, compared with 19 percent who identified as heterosexual.
"It's a high number and a disproportionate number in comparison. We still have a lot of homophobic bias and it plays itself in schools," said Charol Shakeshaft, an education professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. "Those students are singled out and isolated and harassed."
The report also found a significant rise in reports of sexual assault on university campuses. Such instances jumped from 2,200 in 2001 to 6,700 in 2014. Musu-Gillette cautioned however, that it is not clear from the research whether the number of actual sex crimes has increased or whether victims now feel safer reporting them to authorities.
Sexual misconduct in schools was also a problem. During the 2013-14 school year, 65 percent of public schools recorded one or more violent incidents. Less than 2 percent of those crimes were sexual battery and 0.2 percent were rape or attempted rape.
Other statistics are more encouraging, according to the government report. The number of school deaths dropped from 53 in the 2013 school year to 48 in 2014. Nonfatal incidents of violence and theft at schools are also occurring less frequently. There were 841,000 such occurrences in 2014, compared with 850,100 the previous year.
Alcohol consumption has also gone down. In 1993, 48 percent of students reported recent alcohol use, compared with 33 percent in 2015.
A Section on 05/17/2017