Indiana had more than 9,000 cases of bullying reported in its schools last year, but even that may fall short of what actually occurred between schoolchildren last school year. In fact, officials expect even more. According to the Associated Press and the Indianapolis Star, student advocates say Indiana needs more data to fully assess the size of the problem in Indiana.
What is known from an Indiana Department of Education Website is that of 9,396 reports of bullying, 44 percent were verbal incidents. Another 21 percent were physical. The rest involved written or electronic threats and social shunning.
According to the wire story, Indiana Safe Schools coordinator David Woodward said the data from the first year of the program is insufficient to provide a full assessment of bullying, only starting point.
He said the data may be most useful in helping individual school districts understand the scope of their problems.
Interestingly enough, of the state’s more than 1,000 schools, 240 reported no bullying incidents, a difficult-to-believe statistic.
This data comes to Hoosiers as the result of a 2013 law endorsed by parents of bullying. It requires Indiana public schools to begin collecting data on bullying incidents. Looking at those schools that reported no bullying, they either need to tell the other schools how they do it, or they need to sharpen their reporting skills.
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