In 2023, 22% of MO high school students reported being bullied on school premises the year before.
When choosing schools, families look at indicators of school and neighborhood safety.
Students who have experienced bullying are more likely to change schools, but research is not conclusive on whether students are more likely to be bullied in their new schools.
A national survey found that 28% of middle schools, 15% of high schools, and 10% of elementary schools reported bullying incidents at school at least once a week (Burr et al. 2024). In 2023, 19% of U.S. high school students reported being bullied on school property the year before (Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2024). In MO, 22% of high school students reported being bullied on school property in 2023 (CDC n.a., Figure 1). Girls were more likely than boys to be bullied, and LGBTQ+ students were more likely than cisgender and heterosexual students to be bullied at school.
Figure 1. MO High school students bullied on school property. Prevalence of MO students being bullied on school property by sex, race, grade, and sexual identity in the 12-months before the survey in 2023. Data from CDC n.a.
Open enrollment allows parents to send their children to school in districts different from where they reside (Fossey 1994). While research has examined the effects of open enrollment programs on academic achievement, it has not explicitly addressed whether students who transfer schools through open enrollment are more likely to be bullied (Carlson et al 2011, Ozek 2009).
One study found that perceptions of school safety did not predict participation in open enrollment, but families who opted for open enrollment were slightly more likely to rate their neighborhood school as unsafe compared to those who stayed (Morris 2013). Recent studies indicate that families consider neighborhood safety, disorder within school, and school climate when choosing schools other than the school in their assigned school district (Burdick-Will et al. 2024, Hailey 2020). This is independent of academic performance, location, and student demographics (Hailey 2020). Schools with high rates of student turnover are associated with lack of safety, respect, and engagement (Bradshaw et al. 2009).
For New York City families choosing public high schools, perceptions of safety are also shaped by a feeling of how they would fit in to the school (Hailey 2022). Families anticipated feeling most welcome in schools with the highest proportion of their racial group and least in those with the lowest representation of their racial group.
A survey of about 2,000 students attending public schools in seven U.S. cities looked at how changing schools affected bullying, compared to the bullying students experienced before changing schools (Carson et al. 2013). Students who experienced bullying were more likely to change schools. For students who changed schools within the same district, middle schoolers experienced less bullying after the change, but high schoolers did not.
Studies in the U.S. have found no conclusive evidence that new students are more likely to be bullied (Rambaran et al. 2020, Vandell et al. 2021). A small study showed that students in schools that regularly combine classrooms or grades may be at higher risk of being bullied, however the evidence is not conclusive (Rambaran et al. 2020). In schools where class composition is stable, bullying tends to happen among students in the same grade, without evidence of newcomers being more at risk of bullying. In another study, students who moved two or more times from kindergarten to 5th grade reported higher levels of bullying (Vandell et al. 2021). However, after comparing racial groups, family factors, and non-movers vs. various numbers of moves, moving more often did not have a clear link to the child’s social and academic performance in 3rd or 5th grade.
In contrast to the U.S., studies in Finland found that new students tend to experience more bullying than established students with higher risk the first year of entering a new classroom (Tenhunen et al. 2024b). In addition, students who had changed schools because of bullying were more likely to be bullied in their new schools (Tenhunen et al. 2024a, Tenhunen et al. 2024b). However, having friends in the classroom decreased the risk of bullying (Tenhunen et al. 2024b).
References
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Burdick-Will J, Gebo L, Williams AD (2024) Anywhere but here: Neighborhood violence and local school preferences in Baltimore City. Sociology of Education, 97(1):1-20. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00380407231197394
Burr R, Kemp J, Wang K (2024) Crime, Violence, Discipline, and Safety in U.S. Public Schools: Findings from the School Survey on Crime and Safety: 2021–22 (NCES 2024-043). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Available from https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2024043
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (n.d.) 1991-2023 High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data. Available at http://yrbs-explorer.services.cdc.gov/.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2024) Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary & Trends Report: 2013–2023. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/dstr/index.html
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