The Cost of Public School Bullying
How much do you think bullying in schools affects school attendance rates? Bullying for various reasons -- from ethnicity, religion or you name it -- is responsible for many children not wanting to go to school anymore.
In California there is an estimated 10.4% absentee rate in secondary school from 2011-2013 due to students reporting they do not feeling safe there and didn't go to school for at least one day in the past month. In 2007-2008, the sverage daily attendance (ADA) as percent of enrollment was 10.6% in California, and 8.9% for all secondary schools in the USA.
What is the "right" number of students not going to school because they don't like being mistreated by others, like bullies? Is 10% too high? What about 5%? What about 1%? What number is tolerable?
For the public education system, the attendance rate is used to determine funding for schools. This isn't about the statist school system, or public vs. private schools, or either of them compared to homeschooling. Bullying can happen anywhere. Imagine a voluntary community funded schooling system if that makes it easier. We would fund a school based on the students who go there. The attendance rate does something similar. I'm not saying it's the best measurement to use student presence instead of enrollment.
Bullying then turns into quite a social issue when we consider the schools being affected in the money they have to fund activities or upkeep. It's not only the 10% or so of students that avoid school, socialization and other social development who are affected, but the other 90% as well both in terms of the school funding possibilities and the overall negative environment within the schools where mistreatment of others occurs.
The economics of bullying and the affect on the school system was recently researched by the University of Texas at Austin. They estimated a yearly $276 million loss of funding to schools in California alone as a result of children not going to school because they don't want to be mistreated by others and feel unsafe being there. I totally understand that position. Why be somewhere that you are being mistreated? A good move is to get out of that situation.
How much do you think each student is "worth" in terms of state funding for their education? According to the analyses in the research, each student that attends daily gets about $50 USD in funding for their school. Again, this is for California alone.
45% of the students reporting absenteeism from feeling unsafe also said it was for biased reasons of either race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability or sexual orientation. Dividing the $276,000,000 into those categories results in the following estimates for bullying:
- race/ethnicity: $78,000,000
- religious bias: $54,000,000
- gender bias: $54,000,000
- sexual orientation: $62,000,000
- disability bias: $49,000,000
Many children are affected in multiple categories. I added the total to $297 million, so that must be why it doesn't add up without taking that into consideration. And this doesn't factor in being bullied for other reasons like socio-economic bias, or someone just not liking another, or just wanting to prey on those that appear weaker and more vulnerable as many bullies do. The research also estimates about 19% of bullied students don't miss any school, but that doesn't mean they don't suffer from being mistreated by others, or don't develop depression or anxiety, or get affected to the point of poorer academic performance.
Many people are aware of how public schools struggle for funds. Bullying affects attendance and their ability to get adequate funding in many cases. Even if this was a voluntary service a community engaged in, bullying would be a public social community concern despite not using attendance rates as a reason to cut funding to the school. There is an issue going on that is making the lives of individuals intolerable where they don't even want to be around others. Bullying is not something to be tolerated, ever.
It's a touchy subject, and something that many of us have been affected by. If you want to share you're experiences, please go ahead; if not, no worries :)
A hard subject indeed. The problem is also for the "responsible" kids as most of the time they have a rough time in their homes and "learned" that bullying the others is the only survivor method. I don't say that the focus should be on "aggressors" only but they are also kids that suffer a lot in their lives. I would like so much to see in the public system subjects as empathy and social awareness and I believe this would be the chance to change the bad behavior. As long as we as adults judge the others our children will mirror this and will enter in the same bad cycle in a more aggressive way as they don't know yet the social norms.
Judging is fine. Don't just judge on superficial crap, but judge justly. A bully is a bully, and indeed they suffer to be doing what they do. They need the most help in order to stop what they are doing and repeating the cycle of abuse. Thanks for the feedback.
I think this is a great point, which goes hand in hand with public school being voluntary, what would the adults teach the prodigy, would they borg out and follow the Common Core or chose to do away with the social experiments that are public schools, aimed at delivering obedience or non critical thoughts, instead opting for discussing and recognizing certain truths about experience, like empathy. We could be educating tiny philosophers and creative geniuses instead of robbing children of sensibilities.
Bullying is a sensitive subject for most people.
Bullying is not something that's confined to schools though, you can find instances of bullying here.
How much better would the educational system be if those who didn't want to be there, were allowed to opt out? Compulsory attendance, in this case does more harm than good.
Has anyone done a cost/benefit analysis to see what the overall effect would be, not just in monetary terms, if school was allowed to be attended only by those children whose families were involved enough that they chose for their kids to be there?
I can speak from experience that the current anti-bullying crap that comes from schools is totally ineffective. I have 2 teenage children, and in my opinion, that money might just as well be flushed down a toilet.
Good points, be free to opt out. But that's child abuse in some "laws" lol. The programs don't do much at all like you say. Thanks for the feedback.
Thanks for posting thoughtful content that spurs dialog.
You're welcome ;)
Opting out directly translates to not graduating. In our world, kids who don't graduate have a limited future ahead of them. Until post-secondary institutions start accepting students based on other forms of merit/employers disregarding formative education as a requirement nothing will change.
Homeschooling isn't an answer for most families either before anyone brings that up. I've got several friends who were homeschooled by uneducated parents and failed at life (one in prison, two whores, only one made it = that's one out of four).
I see a lot of people with college degrees fighting for those server jobs at Applebees.
And those Guaranteed Student Loans that were dangled in front of them for college NEVER go away.
@dwinblood had a great post about Education the other day.
There are fatal flaws in the educational system currently in use, unless it really is their intention to create compliant & obedient workers. Then it's functioning perfectly.
I'm glad you brought this up. People act like bullying isn't a problem in schools anymore, when in fact it's even more of a problem. Just because kids don't talk about it doesn't mean it isn't there. Cyberbullying is also a big factor. Social media is so prevalent these days that people will bash others on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, etc. Schools don't factor this in because they can't physically see it. If there was an initiative towards tackling bullying, I believe we would see a big change. If people knew how much money was being lost because kids are too afraid to go to school, you can believe others would get involved. Plus, I'm tired of this PC culture. If someone defends themselves from a bully by fighting them, the bully is considered the "victim." Like when did everything become so twisted that it's even wrong to defend yourself? You're supposed to let them hit you and not do anything? No wonder kids don't want to come to school. We need to change the way we look at these things or else the problem will only get bigger. Thanks for sharing!
Good points on the social media aspects that isn't looked at as well. Thanks for the feedback.
You're supposed to get an arbiter to stop them from retaliating even more next time, yes. We're still talking about bullying and not self defense right, or you're ok with entering into that discussion, because from my point of view bullying is a learned/copied behavior, and it doesn't get unlearned by force, and self defense needs justification past bullying.
In the wide world, if someone is bullying type, you ignore them, move away from them. But in the school, there is no where to escape.
Further, if you retaliate against a bully, you are seen as the problem and punished.
The "tell a teacher" is even worse, as it never solves the problem, it just makes it worse. You know, that dreaded walk home. Or the bathroom. Or the lunch hall.
And none of this addresses the real issues of bully-victim dynamics.
Everyone talks about helping the victim... by giving them the opposite of good advice. And no one wants to work with the bully, although they really need help.
Yeah, the bully needs to stop. Helping the victim cope doesn't do anything lol. The bully is the one that needs the help really. Things are backwards.
When my neighbor's kid was bullied for being a "geek" day in and day out. It affected her so much that one day she stopped eating in an effort to "disappear" from this world as she put it. My question is WHY did it take her parents so long to DO SOMETHING about it? Homeschooling is an option in this country. To all of you parents out there: At the FIRST INSTANCE, ACT IMMEDIATELY.
Yeah, and sometimes the parents don't know. Kids are afraid to speak up, appear weak, ec.
On one hand, bullies are usually from shitty families. But I don't think it gives them justification to lash out on others. Instead, they should know not to do it because they know how it feels. But they're kids and without guidance, they act on impulse. So, really, the bullies should be also the focus of help and rehabilitation. The victims don't usually speak up anyway for fear of making things work. And as sad as it is, others wont help because then they could be put on the shit list, too. Not to say dont focus on the victims. They need help to cope with the trauma. But they're like a symptom and the bullies the disease. If we only cure the symptom and not the disease, then the main problem won't stop.
Side note: I had a horrible experience with some bullying today. Social media but damn this article hit home as it reminded me of how my sister was bullied in school and she never told any of us at home. No indication whatsoever. I had a teacher who tried to bully me but it reached my parents so that got resolved at least.
Yup, always go for the the root cause, the bully. Without that changing, it keeps happening, repeating. Fear is powerful, so many fear standing up or speaking up. Thanks for the feedback.
Bullying is truly a big problem and it just seems like nobody does anything to reduce this percentage. At least, not enough I mean...
Yeah, most walk away, or stand there and watch, and some cheer on in support with laughter, cheering, etc.
So Bullying has two effects just like debit and credit rule in accounting.
Effect on child's future (Dr)
Income of public schools (Cr)
Hehe, interesting way to put it ;)
Bullying is a big problem worth addressing and it's not something that happens exclusively in public schools. It happens in informal adolescent peer circles, on social media, in private schools and basically anywhere where there are children gathered together.
Despite this fact, the cost is much higher than I expected it to be and even if the methods used have some built-in bias, I expect an objective figure to remain astronomical. Unfortunately, this is not an easy issue to tackle and it's probably impossible for it to get uprooted altogether. But it can surely be diminished.
Yeha, more awareness of it and recognizing it as a problem will help.
Bullying is an externality that affects our society detrimentally. I'm wondering if there's a way to internalize such cost, for example, making parents of offending children pay a fine or something. Money can be used as a tool to modify social behavior. While my proposal may sound insane, I'm not sure if there's a better way to internalize the cost of bullying.
Some kids are bullies not by their parents but other factors. Parents can't stop them either. Something happened outside of their control. The responsibility is ultimately with the individual who does the wrong behavior, and working with them needs to happen to heal their damaged psyche.