[Senate Hearing 112-913]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-913
BULLYING-FREE SCHOOLS: HOW LOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL EFFORTS CAN HELP
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FIELD HEARING
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION,
LABOR, AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON
EXAMINING SOLUTIONS TO CREATE BULLYING-FREE SCHOOLS, FOCUSING ON HOW
LOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL EFFORTS CAN HELP
__________
JUNE 8, 2012 (Des Moines, IA)
__________
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COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
TOM HARKIN, Iowa, Chairman
BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming
JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee
PATTY MURRAY, Washington RICHARD BURR, North Carolina
BERNARD SANDERS (I), Vermont JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania RAND PAUL, Kentucky
KAY R. HAGAN, North Carolina ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
AL FRANKEN, Minnesota PAT ROBERTS, Kansas
MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island MARK KIRK, Illinois
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
Pamela Smith, Staff Director, Chief Counsel
Lauren McFerran, Deputy Staff Director
Frank Macchiarola, Republican Staff Director and Chief Counsel
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
__________
STATEMENTS
FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 2012
Page
Committee Member
Harkin, Hon. Tom, Chairman, Committee on Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions, opening statement......................... 1
Witness--Panel I
Ali, Russlynn H., Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, U.S.
Department of Education, Washington, DC........................ 3
Prepared statement........................................... 5
Witness--Panel II
Calbom, Linda M., Western Regional Manager, U.S. Government
Accountability Office, Sammamish, WA........................... 12
Prepared statement........................................... 14
Witnesses--Panel III
Domayer, Emily L., Student, Morningside College, Sioux City, IA.. 18
Prepared statement........................................... 20
Bisignano, Penny, Consultant for Bullying Prevention and
Intervention, Iowa Department of Education, Des Moines, IA..... 22
Prepared statement........................................... 24
Gausman, Paul R., Ed.D., Superintendent, Sioux City Community
School District, Sioux City, IA................................ 28
Prepared statement........................................... 31
Reilly, Ellen, Learning Support Specialist, Davenport Community
Schools, Moline, IL............................................ 38
Prepared statement........................................... 40
Shankles, Matt, Student, Linn-Mar High School, Marion, IA........ 41
Prepared statement........................................... 43
Sederquist, Liz, Student, Des Moines Area Community College,
Ames, IA....................................................... 44
Prepared statement........................................... 47
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.:
Chad Griffin, President, Human Rights Campaign............... 63
Anti-Defamation League....................................... 64
(iii)
BULLYING-FREE SCHOOLS: HOW LOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL EFFORTS CAN HELP
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FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 2012
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
Des Moines, IA.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:15 p.m. in the
cafeteria, East High School, 815 East 13th Street, Hon. Tom
Harkin, chairman of the committee, presiding.
Present: Senator Harkin.
Opening Statement of Senator Harkin
The Chairman. Thank you very much. The Committee on Health,
Education, Labor, and Pensions will come to order.
I do want to remind everyone this is an official hearing of
the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee of the
U.S. Senate. It is a non-partisan hearing because it is an
official hearing.
And we have a court reporter someplace. OK, we do have our
court reporter. OK. And you can hear me? Thank you very much.
I might, at the end of this, as I like to do in field
hearings, ask people maybe if they've got some observations,
suggestions. If you do, the court reporter would like to have
your name. When you stand up, if you could just loudly announce
that.
We have a roving mic; right, Tom? OK, thank you.
First of all, I want to thank our interim superintendent,
Dr. Ahart, for helping us set this up. Our principal here is
Steve Johns. I know he couldn't be here, but I want to thank
him and all the people at East High School, and Gail Soesbe.
Thank you again very much for helping to arrange this.
What I will do is I'll have an opening statement; I'll
introduce our witnesses. We have three panels today. We'll go
through and we'll hear their testimony, and then we'll have
some questions, and then we'll see if people in the audience
might have something they want to add also.
All children deserve equitable access to quality public
schools where they can learn and thrive. Yet, every day
countless students are denied this opportunity because they
don't feel safe.
While the rate of serious violent crime among youth has
actually gone down a little bit, there's another statistic
that's going up, and that's the percentage of young people who
have been bullied at school.
Approximately 20 percent of kids from all walks of life
experience bullying. It is alarming that 85 percent of students
with disabilities have been bullied. Even higher than that, 94
percent of students with Asperger's syndrome have been bullied.
Lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender youth are also at
heightened risk. According to data released just yesterday by
the Human Rights Campaign, LGBT youth are more than two times
more likely to be verbally harassed and called names at school,
physically assaulted, kicked or shoved, or excluded by their
peers because they are ``different.''
The top concerns of non-LGBT students in school, when
they're polled, are grades, college, and career. LGBT students,
when they're polled, say they're most concerned about their
non-accepting families and bullying at school.
Being the victim of bullying has adverse effects on mental
health, concentration, and, of course, academic outcomes. And
as Iowans, we have been reminded recently that bullying can
lead to suicide in some cases. Our hearts go out to the family
of Ken Weishuhn of Primghar who took his own life earlier this
spring after coming out as gay and being bullied for it.
It's also tragic that many students are unable to access
their education because bullying makes it unbearable for them
to go to school. I've heard from all too many young people who
were compelled to drop out of school because of the hostile
climate and lack of protections at schools. We will hear from
one such student today who is very brave to come forward and
talk about her experiences.
Some were able to complete their education only through GED
classes because they were denied the high school experiences
that their peers were able to enjoy.
We all need to be a part of the solution. We need to teach
children to respect differences. As adults, we have to set the
examples by modeling civility and empathy for others. Research
shows that efforts to foster positive conditions for learning
result in higher academic outcomes for students.
The wrong approach and, quite frankly, the irresponsible
approach is to just brush it off by saying it's a rite of
passage or it's just kids being kids.
Today we'll hear from young people, educators, community
leaders, policymakers, experts who have stepped forward as part
of the solution. Some of our witnesses are making a difference
in communities here in Iowa. We'll hear from the distinguished
Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights. We'll also
hear about new findings and recommendations from the Government
Accountability Office on how the Federal Government can make
things better.
Most important, however, I draw your attention to the
testimony of the three students that we have had here to hear
firsthand from their accounts. That is the most important.
With that, let me proceed. I'll introduce our first panel.
Our first panel is our Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights
at the Department of Education, Russlynn Ali. She's responsible
for enforcing Federal civil rights laws in our Nation's
schools, colleges, and universities, and for ensuring that
institutions receiving Federal funds do not engage in
discriminatory conduct related to race, sex, disability or age.
Previously, Ms. Ali served as top assistant to the
president of the Children's Defense Fund, as assistant director
of policy and research at the Broad Foundation, as vice
president of the education trust, and in numerous other
government advisory positions. She has taught at the University
of Southern California Law Center and the University of
California at Davis.
Madam Secretary, we welcome you to Iowa. Your testimony
will be made a part of the record in its entirety, and I'd ask
you to proceed as you so wish, and if you could sum it up in 5
to 7 minutes, I'd sure appreciate it. Welcome to Iowa.
STATEMENT OF RUSSLYNN H. ALI, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR CIVIL
RIGHTS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. Ali. Thank you, Senator Harkin. It is my honor to be
here today and talk a little bit about what we in the
Department of Education are doing to help ensure that schools
are safe for all students and free from bullying and
harassment. I really want to especially thank you on behalf of
Secretary Duncan for your tireless work on this issue,
especially for our Nation's most vulnerable young people.
I, too, have been heartbroken to learn about what far too
many students experience in our schools: suicides, torture,
mental confinement that leads to depression and sadness and,
particularly for our purposes, the inability to learn. If
students do not feel safe, they simply cannot learn.
I had the honor of meeting very early on in the
administration with the mother of a young suicide victim, Carl
Walker-Hoover. I met Ms. Walker-Hoover on what would have been
the week of her son's 11th birthday. He was bullied and
harassed to the point where he believed he needed to take his
own life to escape from it. And I will never forget that day in
the very early spring in March 2009, as we were leaving, and
Ms. Walker said to me, ``He didn't even know he was gay. He was
bullied because he was gay, so they thought, but he didn't even
know he was gay.'' He was 10 years old. He might not know
whether he was gay.
And it dawned on me then, and until now, those young
students, in far too many instances, actually aren't bullied
because of their sexual orientation. They're bullied because of
the perception that they are not acting like a boy enough, or
they are not acting feminine enough if they are females.
When we as a society tolerate a culture in which children
bully and harass each other, we fail to live up to the
principles of fairness and equality upon which our schools and
our country were founded. It is particularly true when bullying
is based on personal characteristics such as race, sex, sexual
orientation, gender identity, religion or disability.
We are working on this issue in a number of ways, and have
been for the last 3 years in particular. I know you are
familiar, as are many in the audience I'm sure, with the White
House Conference on Bullying Prevention. We are actually having
our third annual summit coming soon where we are bringing
together, from across the country, educators and students and
community groups to learn more about this issue and to help
prevent it going forward.
The President has explained that bullying is not something
we have to accept. As parents, as teachers, as students, as
members of the community, he said we can, all of us, take
steps. Everyone needs to feel like they exist in a climate in
which they belong.
The way we are doing this in the Department is--I'd like to
talk about three things in particular. One, ensuring resources
and support in training and technical assistance for educators
in order to help them both understand the issue and how to
eradicate a culture in their schools that might give rise to
bullying and harassment, to help the courageous leaders like
Paul Gausman, who I know we will hear from later today.
Now, of course, there is no universal one-size-fits-all
approach to fixing this. We recognize the pervasiveness of the
problem. The data you cited is illustrative. We have also seen
recent data that shows that over 3 million students have also
been physically assaulted behind bullying and harassment. It is
not, in other words, just teasing.
We are stressing this first through ensuring that those
with the greatest responsibility and that are in the position
to best help change at the local level, local educators and
local community members, have some support. We have distributed
funds through the Safe and Supportive School grants to 11
States. That fund in Iowa has been put to some extraordinarily
good use, and I know we will hear from Penny later on today,
who will give us details.
We are also moving forward on technical assistance,
ensuring that everyone everywhere can come to us, ask us how to
help, that there's a place to go for best practices on how to
stop what's happening in our Nation's schools. We have launched
a Web site. You can visit that at stopbullying.gov. We have
also produced a resource document analyzing all of the bullying
laws across the country and gleaning best practices from States
that are doing amazing things.
We still have a long way to go. There are, fortunately, 49
States today that have some kind of bullying law on the books,
but no one, no two share the same definition. We do not have a
common definition yet for what bullying is, certainly not at
the Federal level.
It is also, though, about vigorously enforcing the Nation's
civil rights laws where they apply, protections based on race,
ethnicity, color, sex discrimination and disability
discrimination. We have seen, though, that we don't have
jurisdiction over sexual orientation, that the civil rights
laws can help for precisely what I talked with you about a few
minutes ago and what I learned from Ms. Hoover-Walker.
Those young children, if they are not bullied because of
their sexual orientation but because of gender stereotyping,
then the civil rights laws can help. It was the first time the
Department of Education ever addressed this issue under title 9
in this way.
We have launched a number of proactive investigations. We
have received nearly 2,000 complaints just in the last 2 years
alleging harassment across all the statutes in our
jurisdiction. That is more than ever before and, in fact, was a
34 percent increase just from last year alone. As we track the
data this year, it looks like by the end of this fiscal year we
will receive even more.
We have launched proactive investigations to ensure that we
find out the systemic discrimination where it is happening, not
waiting for citizens to file complaints with our office. And we
are also, due in no small part to your support and leadership,
finally able to collect data across our Nation's schools about
incidents of bullying and harassment across the statutes in our
jurisdiction and those students that were disciplined for it.
This was the first year we collected the data. Next year we
will have data across all schools in the country.
Despite the fact that schools are still struggling with how
to even report these data or collecting it internally, we've
seen about 85 percent of the Nation's school children
represented in our survey and over 100,000 incidences of
students subjected to harassment, over 160,000 instances of
students disciplined for some kind of harassment.
These are but some ways to help. We have a lot more to do.
In working with you and with communities across the country, we
hope to see some real progress.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Ali follows:]
Prepared Statement of Russlynn H. Ali
i. introduction
Thank you for inviting me to participate in this hearing. On behalf
of Secretary Duncan and myself: thank you, Senator Harkin, for all your
work on preventing bullying, particularly on behalf of those student
populations that are disproportionately affected by bullying. I
appreciate the opportunity to share with you the work that the
Department is doing to support schools in their efforts to provide all
students with a high-quality education in a safe learning environment,
free from discrimination, harassment, bullying, and violence.
Bullying of any student for any reason is unacceptable. When
students are bullied, they cannot feel safe. If they do not feel safe,
they cannot learn. And if they do not learn, they cannot reach their
full potential as students, citizens, and human beings.
If adults allow this to happen, then not only may we have violated
students' civil rights, but we may also have profoundly interrupted
their development as human beings, and, in the most tragic instances,
cost them their very lives.
Ignoring, tolerating, or responding ineffectively to bullying can
poison the school environment for all students: for the students who
are targeted and victimized, and for the students who witness it, at a
time when it is vital for students to learn lessons on peer contact,
social interaction and humanity that they will carry with them after
they leave school.
When educators, parents, or students tolerate a culture that allows
children to bully and harass each other, physically, socially or
emotionally, based on their race or ethnicity, national origin or
immigration status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion,
physical or mental disability, or for any other reason--we fail to live
up to the principles of fairness and equity on which this country was
founded.
ii. department of education bullying-prevention efforts
The Department's work begins with the recognition that the real
work of preventing bullying happens at the local level, in schools and
playgrounds and college campuses, in homes, on the streets, and in
community centers across the Nation. Teachers' and school
administrators' good judgment, common sense, and knowledge of the
school community are critical to crafting an effective response to
harassment and bullying. And parents and community organizations play
no less important a role. We encourage and support community-based
approaches to addressing peer harassment and bullying and changing the
school climate so that such conduct does not occur or recur. Each
school has the ultimate responsibility to create a safe learning
environment and to ensure that its policies, practices, and procedures
protect all students from abuse, violence, and discrimination. There is
no universal, one-size-fits-all approach that will be right for every
school or all students; and the Department makes no effort to mandate
one.
But we also recognize that bullying and harassment are serious
problems across the country, and thus appropriate subjects for a
national commitment in response. Secretary Duncan, my colleagues in the
Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and the entire Department are engaged in
a coordinated effort to address bullying and harassment in our schools.
The Department serves as a leader in the Federal Government's anti-
bullying efforts, which are coordinated through the Federal Partners in
Bullying Prevention Steering Committee. In collaboration with its
Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention, comprised of nine Federal
agencies, the Department has hosted two National Bullying Summits
(August 2010 and September 2011) and participated in a first-ever White
House Conference on Bullying Prevention. We will host the third Annual
National Bullying Summit in August 2012. These summits bring together
non-profit leaders, educators, researchers, parents, and youth to
discuss and identify areas that need additional guidance and
clarification.
In part as a result of our conversations with youth, parents,
educators and other community leaders about this issue, we have, among
other efforts, (1) issued policy guidance on Federal laws that apply to
bullying, (2) provided resources based on best available research and
practice, (3) vigorously enforced Federal civil rights laws, (4)
improved data collection on bullying and harassment, and (5)
coordinated efforts across government and with non-governmental
organizations.
(1) Issuing Policy Guidance on Laws That Apply to Bullying
We have issued written policy guidance to clarify for schools how
Federal and State laws may affect a school's policies and procedures as
they apply to bullying and harassment.
To better understand the landscape of State bullying laws and model
policies, the Department issued a letter in December 2010 outlining key
components of State anti-bullying laws. We followed up in December 2011
with a report analyzing each State's inclusion of those components in
their laws. In late 2012, we expect to release a report that will
analyze the impact such laws have on the day-to-day efforts to address
bullying in schools and districts.
In my office we've focused on addressing common practices and
situations at educational institutions that we believe affect their
compliance with civil rights laws.
The Office for Civil Rights is responsible for enforcing laws that
prohibit discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, and
disability. In October 2010, we issued a Dear Colleague letter to
clarify the relationship between bullying and discriminatory harassment
under the civil rights laws enforced by the Department. The letter
explains how student misconduct that falls under an anti-bullying
policy also may trigger responsibilities under Federal civil rights
laws and reminds schools that failure to recognize discriminatory
harassment when addressing that misconduct may lead to inadequate or
inappropriate responses that fail to remedy violations of students'
civil rights. The letter also offers examples of racial and national
origin harassment, sexual harassment, gender-based harassment, and
disability harassment, and illustrates how a school could respond
appropriately in each case.
That letter also made clear, among other things, that although
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 does not cover
discrimination based solely on sexual orientation, bullying that
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students face frequently
involves sex discrimination--that is, discrimination about the
students' failure to conform to sex stereotypes or to behave in a so-
called gender appropriate manner. This type of discrimination is
covered under title IX. We included an example in our policy guidance
to remind schools and universities that the fact that harassment (1)
targets LGBT students, (2) includes anti-gay comments, or (3) is based
in part on a target's actual or perceived sexual orientation does not
relieve a school of its obligation under title IX to investigate and
remedy overlapping sexual- or gender-based harassment.
We also provided clear examples demonstrating how the law applies
in specific scenarios. For instance, we included a scenario in which a
student, because of his learning disability, was called names and
physically assaulted in school and while on a school bus. We then
described how the school should have adopted a comprehensive approach
to dealing with bullying, which may include counseling and discipline,
training for staff on responding to harassment of students with
disabilities, and monitoring locations where harassment takes place, to
ensure that it does not resume. We believe that by providing clear
examples of how schools might respond to particular situations, we can
help to prevent many acts of bullying, harassment, and discrimination
from occurring.
In June 2011, the Department released another letter reminding
schools of their obligation to provide equal access to student-
initiated groups or clubs under what is known as the Equal Access Act,
a law passed by Congress nearly 30 years ago to ensure equal access to
extracurricular clubs in secondary schools. This law has been invoked
when schools in the United States have refused to accommodate
student-initiated clubs with an LGBT theme, such as ``Gay-Straight
Alliances.'' Such clubs have been shown to help reduce bullying of LGBT
youth and create a safer climate for all youth.
Notwithstanding the Department's efforts in this area, it is clear
that certain categories of students are still not receiving adequate
legal protection. The Obama administration, including the Department,
therefore supports legislative efforts to address this problem,
specifically the Student Non-Discrimination Act and the Safe Schools
Improvement Act.
(2) Providing Resources Based on Research and Practice
We need to help administrators and teachers understand bullying-
prevention research, and laws, and to develop and implement policies
based on the best practices. We have leveraged our resources to offer
tools, training and technical assistance to combat bullying and
harassment.
Department staff and senior leadership regularly attend and present
at meetings of various groups and constituencies to help increase
awareness and knowledge on bullying and the resources available for
affected individuals and their families. Recent and upcoming events
include the White House Conferences on LGBT Safe Schools and LGBT
Families, a local anti-bullying summit in Michigan, the White House
Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islander's Stakeholders
meeting, the policy committee for the American Foundation on Suicide
Prevention, the Southeastern State Pupil Transportation Conference, and
the Society for Prevention Research Annual Conference. In an effort to
help coordinate these activities, the Department's subject-matter
experts also regularly communicate and provide technical assistance to
many of the organizations engaged in bullying-prevention campaigns,
including the Cartoon Network's Stop Bullying, Speak Up! Campaign, Lady
Gaga's Born this Way Foundation, and the Bully Project, LLC. A few
weeks ago, I addressed the UNESCO meetings on Effective Policy and
Practice to Address Homophobic Bullying in Educational Institutions,
which built on the work already being conducted on this issue during
the UN's first-ever international consultation to address bullying
against LGBT students.
OCR has 12 regional offices around the country that are equipped to
provide technical assistance to educational institutions as they work
to address and prevent civil rights violations. In addition, the
Department funds 10 Equity Assistance Centers nationwide that provide
training, materials and technical assistance to State or local
education agencies to assist educators, schools and communities in
reducing harassment, bullying and prejudice based on race, national
origin or sex. And, the Department funds 10 regional Disability and
Business Technical Assistance Centers that provide information and
referral, technical assistance, and training on the Americans with
Disabilities Act, including on disability-based bullying and
harassment.
The Department also funds two technical assistance centers. The
Safe and Supportive Schools Technical Assistance Center provides
assistance to schools and districts to understand school climate
issues, develop assessment systems, and implement prevention
programming, and the Positive Behavior and Intervention Supports (PBIS)
Technical Assistance Center provides support for schools implementing
PBIS. PBIS is a multi-tiered school-wide approach to establishing a
social culture that is helpful for schools to achieve social and
academic gains for all children while minimizing problem behavior.
Just last month, a group of Federal agencies including the
Department of Education re-launched a Web site that illustrates
concrete steps everyone can take to prevent and respond to bullying.
You can visit it at www.stopbullying.gov. The site features a
comprehensive map of State anti-bullying laws, guidance on how to
prevent and respond to bullying, and interactive webisodes for kids.
Because the greatest responsibility for addressing bullying and
harassment resides at the local level, we know that it's important to
distribute funds to help States and communities do this important work.
For example, the Department has awarded Safe and Supportive School
grants to 11 States to measure school safety at the building level and
to support changes in those schools with the greatest needs. The
ultimate goal of the grants is to create and support safe and drug-free
learning environments, and increase academic success for students in
these high-risk schools. One of those grants went to Iowa, and is
supporting efforts here at East High School. The Departments of
Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice have, for the past 13
years, engaged in a unique collaboration to award grants to local
education authorities across the Nation through the Safe Schools/
Healthy Students initiative. Funding is provided to many school
districts around the country, including Sioux City Community School
District, to support school and community partnerships to integrate
systems that promote the mental health of students, enhance academic
achievement, prevent violence and substance use, and create safe and
respectful school climates. Bullying prevention has been a key
component of this initiative. Another example is the Department's
funding for the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) to develop a specific
anti-bullying technical assistance initiative in BIE schools in Indian
Country.
We've invested in other grant initiatives to help at-risk and high-
poverty schools and neighborhoods, and to improve teaching and learning
conditions and school climates generally, so that we're not just
addressing bullying and harassment but the entire school environment.
These are examples of the kinds of tools, training and resources
that we've provided at the Federal level. And we want to continue to
support States and school districts in their efforts, because robust
efforts at the Federal level must be accompanied by equally vigorous
enforcement, capacity-building, and knowledge-building at the local
level.
(3) Vigorously Enforcing Federal Civil Rights Laws
It is important to go beyond establishing good laws and policies:
we must also vigorously enforce them. The Department has a very open
complaint process that enables any member of the public, whether
directly harmed or not, to file a complaint with our office. Over the
past 2 years our office has received nearly 2,000 complaints of
harassment based on race, color, national origin, sex or disability in
educational institutions. We also engage in proactive investigations--
compliance reviews--when we believe that systemic violations may be
occurring on a campus-, school-, or district-wide basis, and when the
underlying problem is particularly acute or national in scope. We can
also initiate ``directed investigations'' where we believe something
might be going on in an educational institution and believe our
presence will help resolve the situation before we have received a
complaint. Since fiscal year 2009, OCR has initiated 14 of these
proactive investigations on all forms of harassment covered by the laws
OCR enforces.
For example, OCR and the Department of Justice (DOJ) conducted a
joint investigation of a school district to determine whether students
in that district were subjected to peer harassment based on non-
conformance with sex stereotypes in violation of Title IX of the
Education Amendments of 1972 and Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of
1964. Students told our attorneys that they were constantly harassed
(some almost every day for years) because of their failure to conform
to gender stereotypes. Female students reported being called ``manly,''
``guy,'' or ``he-she''; male students reported being called ``girl,''
and ``gay boy,'' and being told, ``you're a guy, act like it.'' A
female student reported being told to ``go kill herself '' and students
said they were threatened and subjected to physical assaults because of
their nonconformity to gender stereotypes. Some of these students
suffered from physical and mental health problems. Some students
stopped attending school for periods of time, left the school district,
or dropped out of school entirely. We also found that the school
district knew about the harassment, that the district did not take
effective action to stop the harassment and that, as a result, the
harassment continued and in certain instances escalated. In March 2012,
after extensive settlement negotiations with the school district, we
achieved a court-approved consent decree. As part of the consent
decree, the school district agreed to take all reasonable steps to
prevent and eliminate sex-based harassment, and to respond promptly and
appropriately to all reports of harassment. The district also agreed to
implement a number of specific reforms, including policy changes,
hiring new staff focused on ensuring equity and safety, conducting
additional training for students and staff, mental health counseling
for bullying victims, surveying students to assess school climate and
student behavior, and establishing student peer-based leadership
programs.
Students with disabilities are disproportionally affected by
bullying behavior and are often more vulnerable to bullying than
others. We received a complaint from a middle school student with
cerebral palsy who alleged that he was bullied and harassed at school
and on the school bus, including being kicked in the legs in the
cafeteria and being hit with bottles at a pep rally. The student was so
severely harassed that he requested home schooling. OCR successfully
obtained an agreement with the school district to set up a ``hot line''
for the child to use to report any future concerns, and to provide
better monitoring in the cafeteria and on the bus. OCR conducted
training for all school staff, and the district agreed to provide
training to all students at the middle school. The district also agreed
to fully implement policies on the discipline of students for peer
bullying and harassment, and to report incidents to parents in a timely
matter.
I describe these outcomes to highlight another approach of ours--
which is to craft more robust remedies designed to empower the entire
school community to address issues of harassment. Our remedies are not
just ``top-down'' (involving policy change and training), but also from
the ``ground up'' (engaging schools and communities).
(4) Improving Data Collection on Bullying and Harassment
At the Federal level, another approach we've used is to take data
collection to another level to be able to monitor the ``equity
health,'' of schools around the Nation.
In March of this year, we unveiled the latest installation of a
transformed Civil Rights Data Collection or ``CRDC.'' The CRDC is a
representative sample from 2009-10 covering 85 percent of the Nation's
students--that's 7,000 school districts and 72,000 schools. Next year,
it will be expanded to all schools. The CRDC allows us to track which
schools have policies on bullying and harassment and which do not. We
also track the number of students reported to have been bullied and
harassed, the number of incidents of bullying and harassment, and the
number of students disciplined for bullying and harassment. All of
these data are self-reported by schools. Because many schools weren't
keeping track of these data, the quality of the data will improve with
time. Not only will these data shine a light on the problem nationally
and locally, but they will help individual schools across the country
know who is being bullied or harassed, how often, and why, and be
accountable for the safety of their students, and help the Department
support States, school districts and schools in those efforts.
A consistent theme heard at the initial Bullying Prevention Summit
was the absence of a uniform definition of bullying that can inform
both research and in policy. The lack of a uniform definition restricts
the applicability and comparability of research and makes it difficult
to monitor trends in bullying over time. We are working with the
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to help the field reach a consensus
on what bullying is, and to improve understanding and development of
ways to combat it. A definition is expected to be released this fall.
(5) Coordinating Across Government and With non-Governmental
Organizations
The Department also actively forms partnerships with other
government agencies and with non-governmental and civic organizations
to combat bullying and harassment. These strategic partnerships have
brought together a cross-section of local, State and national
organizations whose different perspectives and experience have created
a rich discussion on how to eradicate bullying in our schools.
Within the Government, we have partnered with nine Federal agencies
to ensure that bullying is addressed from all angles. And, we are
collaborating internationally as well, as other countries have similar
issues regarding school climate and we can learn from each other's
experiences. We recently agreed to work with the Republic of Korea,
which is very concerned about school violence, to examine data and
policies to address bullying and ensure school safety.
And with our invaluable non-governmental partners, including many
in the education and civil rights communities, we've been able to
accomplish so much more than what we'd be able to do alone.
iii. conclusion
Through our collective efforts, and in partnership with other
agencies and other experts in education and civil rights, we believe
that we can help provide students, parents, and local school districts
with the tools that they need to adopt more effective approaches to
preventing and addressing bullying, harassment, and discrimination. The
Department of Education is committed to working to ensure that every
student has the opportunity to receive a high-quality education at a
safe school, free from discrimination and harassment.
In conclusion, let me reiterate my appreciation for the opportunity
to participate in this hearing. This topic is so important. When we
curb bullying, we contribute to the educational success of each child.
We remove barriers to achievement, and we reaffirm our national
commitment to provide an equitable educational opportunity for every
child.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Madam Secretary.
The complaints, the 2,000 instances that you got in, did
that come through the Web site?
Ms. Ali. Yes.
The Chairman. Mostly the Web site?
Ms. Ali. Yes, mostly through the Web site.
The Chairman. Let's say it one more time. What is that Web
site?
Ms. Ali. Oh, I'm sorry. The Web site I mentioned earlier
was stopbullying.gov. Our Web site at OCR on the ed.gov Web
site for the Office for Civil Rights, you will see a complaint
filing process. We have 12 regional offices across the country
and over 600 attorneys, investigators and staff.
The Chairman. So I take it you would encourage people that
have incidents and things like that to basically get that
information in, right?
Ms. Ali. Absolutely. We are duty-bound to evaluate every
complaint and vigorously enforce. The Secretary called, on the
foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL, for a re-
invigoration of the Office for Civil Rights, and we are doing
just that.
The Chairman. One of the things I think that most people
don't understand, and try to help me understand this a little
bit better, civil rights laws cover--you're an expert, you're a
lawyer, you know all this--it covers nearly everything, but it
doesn't cover sexual orientation. So how can you or the Justice
Department intervene if, in fact, it's not covered as a civil
right?
Ms. Ali. These are on a case-by-case basis, and we again
examine all of the facts to determine where bullying and
harassment is sexual orientation, and unfortunately we don't
have jurisdiction based on that. But in most that I have seen,
in addition to sexual orientation bullying and harassment,
students again are also bullied and harassed because they're
not conforming to gender stereotypes. That has long since been
sex discrimination in the employment context. We have now made
it clear, over the last 3 years, that it is also sex
discrimination under title IX, which protects students in
colleges and universities all across our country from sex
discrimination.
The Chairman. Thank you. You said we've already had two
White House summits.
Ms. Ali. Yes.
The Chairman. The third is this summer, I think in August,
if I'm not mistaken.
Ms. Ali. Yes.
The Chairman. Out of those summits, as I understand it,
come suggestions about how we approach this. I was asked, we
were both asked before we officially started here by the press,
what is the proper role of the Federal Government in this.
So I ask you, from the Department of Education's
standpoint, tell me how you look at proceeding on this in a
supportive manner for school districts around the country. Give
me a thumbnail sketch, if you will, of what you think are the
most important things that we, you and I at the Federal level,
can do to help support those schools that actually do have good
policies, take those examples and extend them to other schools,
because there are some good schools that have good policies in
this country. How do we spread that around the country?
Ms. Ali. I think there are a couple of ways, certainly in
conversations like this, and with your leadership and others.
The civic conversation that has emerged over the last couple of
years is leading to real action. It is leading to students no
longer willing to tolerate a culture of bullying and harassment
around them. I heard from young people just a few weeks ago who
said they refuse to be silent anymore, and they are launching
campaigns even though they have not been victims themselves to
ensure that no student sits by and watches this anywhere, nor
do their community members.
It is also about, in these cases where we are vigorously
enforcing, Seth Walsh's tragic suicide in Tehachapi, CA comes
to mind. His mother filed a complaint with our office. She
explained to us what Seth experienced, that for years he was
told he wasn't masculine enough, that because he had female
friends he was often ridiculed as being a girl. People didn't
like the way he talked or the way he dressed. It got to the
point where Seth avoided certain areas in school, where he
would hide in the library to avoid unkindness.
His mother and he reported it to school officials for
years, and minimal things happened, if anything. In fact, many
believed that if students were bullied and harassed because
they were a member of the LGBT community, that there was
nothing that adults could do precisely because of the civil
rights vacuum when it comes to protecting those students.
As we investigated, we realized that there had been a civil
rights violation suffered by Seth. It was too late,
unfortunately, for him, but not too late to ensure that
Tehachapi was cured and that no student would have to suffer
the way Seth did. Our resolutions are robust and they are about
eradicating the culture and helping leaders sustain a healthy
and positive environment.
Climate checks are so hugely important for educators to
actually know whether their students feel safe. That is a part
of many of our resolutions. Those are the kinds of practices
that educators can engage in across the country so that they,
too, can do a self-reflection, if you will, about what's
happening in their schools and meet students' needs where they
are.
The Chairman. Madam Secretary, thank you very much for
coming all the way out here to Iowa. More than that, thank you
for your lifetime of work on behalf of children.
There are a lot of unsung heroes around this country who do
a lot of things you don't hear about. I just want you to know
that Russlynn Ali has spent her life working on behalf of
underprivileged kids, kids that come from disadvantaged areas,
and you've set a great example for a lot of these kids through
your own personal achievements. But more than that, you haven't
forgotten to leave the ladder down for other kids, too.
So I want you to know I appreciate it very much. Thank you
for being here, and thank you and Secretary Duncan, and also
President Obama for leading on that side, on the executive
branch side, in this area, and as I said, walking the walk.
The President, as I keep pointing out, this is the third
summit at the White House on bullying, and I know that
Secretary Duncan has taken effective steps also. I appreciate
you and the Office of Civil Rights for not only being proactive
but also back-stopping the President and the Secretary in their
great work, too.
Ms. Ali. Thank you, Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you. You can please stay. I know you
probably have a plane or something to catch, but thank you
again for coming out to Iowa.
Ms. Ali. Thank you. Really, your leadership has been the
guide for so many, and certainly mine, for me as well. I am one
of those kids that we talk about not being able to learn very
much, and it's about helping you ensure that we help them.
Thank you.
The Chairman. I look forward to working with you.
Ms. Ali. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Madam Secretary.
Now we'll call our second panel.
The second panel is Linda Calbom, the Western Regional
Director for the U.S. Accountability Office. In this role, she
is responsible for the operations of the Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Seattle, and Denver field offices. She is also
responsible for directing several engagements in GAO's
Education Workforce and Income Security Team, including work
focusing on school bullying.
Prior to joining GAO in 1990, Ms. Calbom was a senior audit
manager with Deloitte and Touche in Seattle, WA.
I'm trying to get something cleared up here.
Thank you very much. The GAO is releasing a report today,
Friday, June 8, on school bullying. Legal protections for
vulnerable youth need to be more fully assessed, and our
Western Regional Director, Linda Calbom, is here to address us
about this study that was just done by the GAO.
Welcome. Your statement will be made a part of the record.
If you could sum it up, I'd sure appreciate it. Thanks.
STATEMENT OF LINDA M. CALBOM, WESTERN REGIONAL MANAGER, U.S.
GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE, SAMMAMISH, WA
Ms. Calbom. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you for having us here today to talk about the results of our
work in that study which you and other members of the committee
requested.
As you well know and mentioned in your statement, millions
of American youth are subjected to bullying each year, and it
is all across the country. While much is being done at the
local, State, and Federal levels to address this growing
epidemic, there continues to be a need for more information
about legal and practical approaches to combating bullying.
In this context, you asked us to address the following
questions: first, what is known about the prevalence of school
bullying and its effects on the victims; second, the approaches
that selected States and local school districts are taking to
combat school bullying; third, the legal options Federal and
State Governments have in place when bullying leads to
allegations of discrimination; and finally, how the key Federal
agencies, including Education, are coordinating their efforts
to combat bullying.
As you mentioned, we did just release our report. It's
entitled, ``School Bullying: Extent of Legal Protections for
Vulnerable Groups Needs To Be More Fully Assessed,'' and I
think there were some copies made available of the report here.
In this report, we addressed the questions I just
mentioned, and we make recommendations to the Departments of
Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice, who are all
working on this issue together, to help address the issues that
we identified in our work. Today I'm just going to very briefly
sum up our findings and the recommendations in that report.
In addressing your first question, we found that bullying
is indeed widespread, impacting somewhere between 20 and 28
percent of youth, and that it has, as you said, long-lasting
and sometimes very detrimental effects on victims. However,
data on who is being bullied and how often is limited and
sometimes conflicting due to inconsistent definitions and
demographic information collected in national surveys on school
bullying.
Federal agencies are currently working on developing a
uniform definition of bullying but have not yet decided whether
to expand the type of demographic information gathered in their
surveys. Because of this, we included a recommendation in our
report that the three agencies work together to develop
information in future surveys on the extent that youth and
various vulnerable groups are, in fact, being bullied.
Regarding the approaches that States and school districts
are taking to combat bullying, we found that all eight States
that we selected for review had enacted anti-bullying laws, and
all of the six school districts we reviewed had established
anti-bullying policies and procedures. However, the States, as
the Secretary just mentioned, the States all varied in how they
defined bullying, who they protected, and what they required
the schools to do to address bullying.
The six school districts we talked to told us about a range
of different approaches they take to tackle bullying, including
several in adoption of a prevention-oriented framework that's
geared toward improving overall behavior in schools, and
several schools also sponsored events such as Rachel's
Challenge and Ryan's Story that are geared toward promoting a
positive overall culture in the school that can also help
prevent bullying.
As far as the legal options when bullying leads to
allegations of discrimination, we found that Federal and State
civil rights laws offer some protections but that vulnerable
groups are not always covered, as was mentioned earlier. For
example, Federal agencies lack jurisdiction under civil rights
statutes to pursue discrimination cases based solely on
socioeconomic status or sexual orientation, as you were talking
about earlier. The civil rights laws in the eight States we
reviewed, while they often went beyond the protections afforded
at the Federal level, were mixed as to what classes of
individuals were protected. Therefore, the extent of
protections available under civil rights laws for bullying
victims can literally depend on the State that they live in.
And finally, Mr. Chairman, we found that despite all the
good coordination efforts by Education, HHS, and Justice to
carry out research and provide information to the public on
bullying, there has not been information gathered on States'
civil rights laws as they relate to bullying. This information
is key to understanding where there may be gaps in civil rights
protections for students who are bullied, which is why we
recommended that Education do a one-time compilation of State
civil rights laws and procedures.
Our recommended analysis of these legal gaps, paired with
additional demographic information on the frequency of bullying
of vulnerable groups, would be instrumental in helping
policymakers determine whether additional actions are needed to
protect vulnerable groups who are most often the target of
school bullying.
That concludes my prepared remarks, Mr. Chairman, but I'm
happy to answer any questions you might have for me.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Calbom follows:]
Prepared Statement of Linda M. Calbom
Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member Enzi, and members of the committee:
I am pleased to be here today to discuss the results of the work that
you and other members of the committee requested on school bullying. It
is estimated that millions of American youths have been bullied by
their peers, including physical, verbal, and electronic attacks.\1\
Some of these incidents, including some where bullying has been linked
by the media to teen suicide, have received widespread attention,
resulting in heightened awareness of bullying, as well as a wide range
of actions at the Federal, State, and local levels to address the
behavior. Some of these incidents involved bullying based on personal
characteristics, including race, religion, or sexual orientation, and
have also raised questions about the role and availability of Federal
and State civil rights protections. Given the dynamic and rapidly
changing nature of these efforts, governments at all levels, as well as
the public, face a growing need for information about possible legal
and practical approaches to combating bullying. My statement is based
on our report released yesterday, which addresses the following
objectives:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ For the purposes of this testimony, the term ``bullying'' is
used to reflect behavior that is intended to inflict harm, repeated
over time, and characterized by an imbalance of power between the
perpetrator(s) and victim(s). Some sources refer to similar behavior as
``harassment,'' and may use the terms interchangeably.
What is known about the prevalence of school bullying and
its effects on victims?
What approaches are selected States and local school
districts taking to combat school bullying?
What legal options do the Federal and selected State
governments have in place when bullying leads to allegations of
discrimination?
How are key Federal agencies coordinating their efforts to
combat school bullying?
To address these objectives, we reviewed research on the prevalence
and effects on victims; analyzed State bullying laws, and school
district bullying policies; interviewed officials from the Departments
of Education (Education), Health and Human Services (HHS), and Justice,
and a nongeneralizable sample of eight States and six school districts;
and reviewed selected relevant Federal and State civil rights laws.
More information on our scope and methodology is available in the
issued report.\2\ We conducted our work on which this testimony is
based from April 2011 through May 2012 in accordance with generally
accepted government auditing standards.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ GAO, School Bullying: Extent of Legal Protections for
Vulnerable Groups Needs to Be More Fully Assessed, GAO-12-349
(Washington, DC: May 2012).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although definitions vary, including definitions used by Federal
agencies, many experts generally agree that bullying involves intent to
cause harm, accompanied by repetition, and an imbalance of power.
Notably, bullying is distinct from general conflict or aggression,
which can occur absent an imbalance of power or repetition. For
example, a single fight between two youths of roughly equal power is a
form of aggression, but may not be bullying. When bullying occurs, it
may take many forms, including physical harm, such as hitting, shoving,
or locking someone inside a school locker; verbal name calling, taunts,
or threats; relational attacks, such as spreading rumors or isolating
victims from their peers; and the use of computers or cell phones to
convey harmful words or images, also referred to as cyberbullying.
Bullying often occurs without apparent provocation and may be based on
the victim's personal characteristics. For example, youth may be
bullied based on the way they look, dress, speak, or act. To address
bullying, Federal, State, and local governments have a range of efforts
under way, including studies of the prevalence of bullying, laws to
prevent and address bullying, and antidiscrimination laws that, for
certain stated classes of students, can be used in some circumstances
to address discrimination resulting from bullying.
In summary, with regard to the prevalence and effects of bullying,
our findings suggest that reported levels of bullying and related
effects are significant. Research shows that bullying can have
detrimental outcomes for victims, including adverse psychological and
behavioral outcomes. According to four nationally representative
surveys conducted from 2005 to 2009, an estimated 20 to 28 percent of
youth, primarily middle- and high school-aged youths, reported they had
been bullied during the survey periods. However, differences in
definitions and questions posed to youth respondents make it difficult
to discern trends and affected groups. For example, the surveys did not
collect demographic information by sexual orientation or gender
identity. Education and HHS are partially addressing the issue of
inconsistent definitions by collaborating with other Federal
departments and subject matter experts to develop a uniform definition
of bullying that can be used for research purposes. However, gaps in
knowledge about the extent of bullying of youths in key demographic
groups remain.
Selected States and school districts are taking various approaches
to reducing bullying. The bullying laws in the eight States that we
reviewed vary in who is covered and the requirements placed on State
agencies and school districts. For example, six of the States cover a
mix of different demographic groups, referred to as protected classes,
such as race and sex or gender, in their bullying laws, while two
States do not include any protected classes. With respect to school
districts, each of the six districts we studied adopted policies that,
among other things, prohibit bullying and describe the potential
consequences for engaging in the behavior. Also, school district
officials told us that they developed approaches to prevent and respond
to bullying. For example, several school officials said they
implemented a prevention-oriented framework to promote positive school
cultures. Both State and local officials expressed concerns about
various issues, including how best to address incidents that occur
outside of school.
We also found that while Federal and State civil rights laws may
offer some protections against bullying in certain circumstances,
vulnerable groups may not always be covered. Federal civil rights laws
can be used to provide protections against bullying in certain
circumstances, but some vulnerable groups are not covered and therefore
have no recourse at the Federal level. For example, Federal agencies
lack jurisdiction under civil rights statutes to pursue discrimination
cases based solely on socioeconomic status or sexual orientation. Some
State civil rights laws provide protections to victims of bullying that
go beyond Federal law, but Federal complainants whose cases are
dismissed for lack of jurisdiction are not always informed by Education
about the possibility of pursuing claims at the State level.
Finally, regarding Federal coordination efforts to combat bullying,
we found that a variety of efforts are under way, but that a full
assessment of legal remedies has not been completed. Specifically,
Education, HHS, and Justice have established coordinated efforts to
carry out research and disseminate information on bullying. For
example, The Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention Steering Committee
serves as a forum for Federal agencies to develop and share information
with each other and the public, and http://www.stopbullying.gov
consolidates the content of different Federal sites into one location
to provide free materials for the public. In addition to these efforts,
education has issued information about how Federal civil rights laws
can be used to address bullying of protected classes of youths and is
conducting a comprehensive study of State bullying laws and how
selected school districts are implementing them. However, no similar
information is being gathered on State civil rights laws and procedures
that could be helpful in assessing the adequacy of legal protections
for victims of school bullying.
In conclusion, we found that the nature and extent of protections
available to students who are bullied depend on the laws and policies
where they live or go to school. Education and Justice have taken
important steps in assessing how Federal civil rights laws can be
applied and Education has completed a study of State bullying laws, but
neither agency has assessed State civil rights laws and procedures as
they may relate to bullying. More information about State civil rights
laws and procedures is a key missing link that is needed by
administration officials and decisionmakers alike, to assess the extent
of legal protections available to students who have been bullied.
Furthermore, while multiple efforts to collect information about
bullying have been under way for several years, the prevalence of
bullying of youths in certain vulnerable demographic groups is not
known. A greater effort by key Federal agencies to develop more
information about the extent to which a broader range of demographic
groups are subject to bullying and bullying-related discrimination
would better inform Federal efforts to prevent and remedy bullying.
This information, together with an assessment of Federal and State
legal protections, could also aid policymakers in determining whether
additional actions are needed to protect vulnerable groups of youths
who are most often the target of school bullying.
To allow for a more comprehensive assessment of Federal and State
efforts to address bullying, our report includes recommendations to
Education to compile information about State civil rights laws and
procedures that relate to bullying and to develop procedures to
routinely inform individuals who file complaints of discrimination
stemming from bullying about the potential availability of legal
options under their State's anti-discrimination laws; and to Education,
HHS, and Justice to develop information about bullied demographic
groups in their surveys of youth and to use this information and other
information from studies of State bullying and civil rights laws to
assess the extent to which legal protections against bullying exist for
vulnerable demographic groups. Education and HHS generally agreed with
our recommendations, although Education took issue with our
recommendation that it compile information about State civil rights
laws and procedures as they pertain to bullying. In response, we
clarified that recommendation to address some of their concerns, but we
continue to believe that a one-time compilation of State civil rights
laws and procedures would be beneficial, and provide a basis, along
with other information, for analyzing the overall legal protections
that are available for vulnerable demographic groups. A more complete
discussion of agency comments is provided in the report.
Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member Enzi, and members of the committee,
this concludes my prepared remarks. I will be happy to answer any
questions you may have.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Ms. Calbom, and thank
you for the study.
I just might again inform people that a year ago in March
2011, this committee asked the GAO to do the study. So it was a
committee request. They've done a thorough study for a whole
year, and this is the result. We got the report back, which was
just released today and which Ms. Calbom was just referencing.
I think one of the key things is what you just said, and
I'm just reading from your statement, that a greater effort by
key Federal agencies to develop more information about the
extent to which a broader range of demographic groups are
subject to bullying and bullying-related discrimination would
better inform Federal efforts to prevent and remedy bullying.
Then you also said more information about States' civil
rights laws procedures is a key missing link that we need to
know and understand.
I assume by that, are you suggesting that perhaps this
would be a proper area for the Department of Education, the
Federal Department of Education, to engage in collecting that
kind of information?
Ms. Calbom. Yes. We feel that if they took that type of
information, which they could collect--and we purposely used
the word ``compile'' because we're not asking them to do an in-
depth analysis of case law. We know that would be very
difficult and time-consuming. But if they compiled the
information on States' civil rights laws, if they looked at
that in conjunction with the study they just finished on the
State bullying laws so we can see who is covered under that,
lay that over the Federal civil rights laws, and then you can
take a look at where are the gaps in the law. And then if you
look at that in conjunction with gathering the demographic
information, it's like here are the students most often being
targeted, here are the students that aren't covered. What do we
need to do?
The Chairman. I just said to my staff that I think this is
something we need, based upon your findings and your
suggestions, something we need to take back to the Department
of Education and see if we can't implement that there.
I wanted to ask you, in your work for the study, were there
any State bullying laws or civil rights laws that stood out to
you as the strongest in protecting vulnerable groups? Anything
there?
Ms. Calbom. Yes. It's interesting because I asked my team
that same question the other night just to see if we had some
examples. All the States are very different. I mean, some
States cover a lot of different demographic groups, like I
believe California covers quite a few groups specifically. But
then you have Massachusetts, I believe, that is pretty broad
because they want to make sure everybody is covered and they
don't leave anybody out.
It varies all across the board from State to State whether
certain protected classes--both in the civil rights and the
State bullying laws, whether they are specifically mentioned or
not, or whether they keep it very broad.
The Chairman. Some of our witnesses who will be on the next
panel talk about Dr. Dan Olweus, right? Oh, it's like a V,
that's right. Olweus. That's right. I've been told that before,
too. That he had three definitions that agree on bullying. It's
aggressive behavior characterized by unwanted negative actions.
No. 2, it involves a pattern of behavior repeated over time.
And No. 3, bullying relies on an imbalance of power or
strength.
When I read those, and then there's a couple of people that
had these in their testimony, I'm wondering if demographic
groups is the right way to structure this. It doesn't mention
anything in there about demographic groups. It could apply to
anyone.
Ms. Calbom. Right.
The Chairman. Some kids are bullied because maybe they're
smaller in stature or they have physical characteristics that
somebody feels that they should bully them on, but they're not
a protected class.
So I'm just wondering out loud. Is demographic groups the
right way to address this? I'll ask the next panel that, too. I
was just wondering if you have any thoughts on that.
Ms. Calbom. Yes, I do. I think part of the reason that we
wanted to recommend or did recommend that more information be
gathered about demographic groups is to show that very thing,
that all kinds of kids are being bullied for all kinds of
reasons, and as I think everybody would agree, all kids should
be protected.
The Chairman. That's right. Exactly.
Thank you very much, Ms. Calbom. Thank you for the study,
and thank you for the report.
Ms. Calbom. My pleasure.
The Chairman. Thank you very, very much.
Ms. Calbom. Thank you for holding the hearing, Mr.
Chairman. It's a very important topic.
The Chairman. Thanks for coming here from Seattle, too. I
appreciate that. Thank you.
We'll go to our next panel, and I'd like to call them all
up: Penny Bisignano, Emily Domayer, Dr. Paul Gausman, Ellen
Reilly, Matt Shankles, and Liz Sederquist. If you could all
take your places here, wherever your name appears.
Again, I thank you all for being here. You've been here to
see our other witnesses. Each of you has a statement. I read
them last night. They're all great statements. They will all be
submitted to the record in their entirety, so I would ask you
to sum it up in 5 minutes or so, and then we'll engage in a
nice discussion.
We will go from left to right. I will try not to intervene
until we get to the end, although sometimes somebody says
something that I've got to respond to or ask a question about.
If you could just take 5 to 7 minutes. I don't mind if you
go 5 minutes or so. Once you start getting close to 10, I might
get nervous.
First I'm going to introduce Emily Domayer, born in Des
Moines in 1987, grew up in Sioux City, IA, graduated from Sioux
City North High School in 2006. She was diagnosed with
Asperger's syndrome at age 12.
In 2005, she attended the Iowa Youth Leadership Forum, a
statewide gathering of high school students with disabilities
who have leadership potential. She has come back every year as
a counselor. She considers herself to be an advocate for people
with disabilities, particularly those on the autism spectrum.
She's been playing violin since she was 9 years old.
Emily, welcome, and please proceed.
STATEMENT OF EMILY L. DOMAYER, STUDENT, MORNINGSIDE COLLEGE,
SIOUX CITY, IA
Ms. Domayer. The boy pointed at people and said, ``Dumb,
dumber, and dumbest.'' When he said ``dumbest,'' he pointed at
me.
I was 7 years old the first time I was bullied. I was so
shocked and stunned that I didn't know how to react or what to
do. All I really knew was that what he had said was wrong and
that his words stung like vinegar on a cut.
It was in second grade that I first realized I was
different. I felt like I was in and from a different world from
my classmates. Sometimes they would talk about me as if I
wasn't there, condescendingly explaining my behavior to each
other, saying ``she always does that.''
It was the kids who were in the popular crowd who picked on
me the most. They were a small group of girls and boys, kids
who seemed to be well-liked by the teachers. Later, I looked
back at these early experiences and knew that I was so confused
about everything, who I was, why I behaved the way I did, why I
didn't understand how to make friends. I was perceived by
others to be the shy kid. I was not diagnosed with Asperger's
syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder, until I was 12, which is
a very late diagnosis.
I wanted to tell my parents that I was getting bullied but
I did not know how to explain what was happening. Thankfully,
when I was in third grade, the bullies were in the other class.
We had two classrooms for each grade. Unfortunately, the
bullying got worse when I was in fourth grade. A new girl moved
into my neighborhood--I'll call her Girl A--and she behaved
well in front of my parents and other adults. But when their
backs were turned, she had the personality of a vicious
junkyard dog. It took me many years to realize that she chose
me because I was vulnerable. I didn't have any friends, and it
was difficult for me to make friends. The rules of friendship
were completely foreign to me.
One time, she and another student picked on me when the
teacher was out of the room. They called me Queen of the Dorks
and put an imaginary crown on my head. I was very hurt by their
actions.
Our teacher once said, after discovering that some of the
students were arguing, that we should all get along because we
were all friends. I knew even then that wasn't going to fix
anything.
In second, fourth and fifth grade, my peers verbally abused
me almost every day about the clothes I wore. I didn't dress
like they did. I didn't wear the latest cool clothes. I was not
a cool kid. I didn't pay attention to celebrities in the news
or watch the same TV shows the other kids watched.
In my childhood, I just wanted to be a happy kid who felt
free to be myself. I wanted to be a kid, but my classmates were
not OK with that. They knew I wasn't cool, and they used every
opportunity they could find to make me feel like I would never
be good enough to be their friend.
They were relentless. They made fun of the speech I wrote
at the end of the year for the anti-drug program DARE. My
Halloween costume wasn't cool. When I gave a presentation in
Social Studies, they laughed at me and asked me questions in a
mocking tone of voice. I always hated PE because I wasn't very
coordinated and my peers were impatient and unkind toward me. I
always felt like I was never good enough.
The only reason I ever felt comfortable going to school
when I was being bullied was that I got along very well with my
teachers. In fifth grade, my teacher gave me a hug every day
after school was over. I needed it.
Fifth grade was the worst of all. There was another girl,
Girl B, who chose me as her target. The whole school year, she
seemed to enjoy treating me like garbage. She pulled my hair,
kicked me in line, and made fun of my clothes whenever she
could. One time my mom came to school, and after she left, Girl
B made fun of my mom wearing a scarf on her head. It was winter
time. I was furious, but because I didn't know how to handle
the situation, I kept my rage inside.
Recess is hell for most students on the autism spectrum
because it is about socialization, an area people on the
spectrum struggle with most often. I usually spent most of my
time during recess talking with either the recess monitor, who
was also one of the lunch ladies, or one of my few friends. I
felt comfortable talking with the monitor because she was nice
to me, unlike my peers.
One day on the playground I was standing around just
talking with someone when Girl B suddenly came up to me and
told me to come with her. I told her I didn't want to. She
started to ask me why, and she wouldn't stop it. After not
being satisfied with my answers, she grabbed me by the arm and
gave it a snake bite, twisting my arm very hard with both her
hands and causing severe pain. I found a teacher, and she sent
Girl B to the principal's office. After my mom learned about
the incident, she came to school to speak to the principal, who
said that Girl B was having issues at home. Not much else was
done.
I am particularly concerned about students who are unable
to communicate that they are being bullied. Before I was able
to advocate for my disability, I had no idea how to let the
adults around me know that I was being bullied. How can
students with autism who have little or no verbal abilities
inform responsible adults if they are being bullied?
I wished that my elementary school teachers and
administrators had done more to address bullying. I felt so
alone. It doesn't matter who you are, what you look like, how
you dress, what faith you believe, how you learn, whatever, no
one should have to feel afraid to go to school. Bullying is not
a rite of passage.
It is so heartbreaking to me to think of young children and
teens who have committed suicide because they were bullied so
much they felt the only solution was to end their lives. Every
student has the right to have a safe learning environment.
School should be a place where students feel comfortable to be
themselves. A school's No. 1 priority above all else should be
safety. When students don't feel safe, how can they learn?
Bullying will become less prevalent when teachers, school
administrators and parents are honest and open about what
behavior is tolerated and what is not. Bullying will go away
when schools, parents and students work together so that kids
understand that bullying will not be tolerated.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Domayer follows:]
Prepared Statement of Emily L. Domayer
The boy pointed at people and said, ``dumb,'' ``dumber'' and
``dumbest.'' When he said ``dumbest,'' he pointed at me. I was 7 years
old the first time I was bullied. I was so shocked and stunned that I
didn't know how to react or what to do. All I really knew was that what
he had said was wrong and that his words stung like vinegar on a cut.
It was in second grade that I first realized that I was different. I
felt like I was in and from a different world from my classmates.
Sometimes they would talk about me as if I wasn't there,
condescendingly explaining my behavior to each other, saying, ``She
always does that.''
It was the kids who were in the ``popular'' crowd who picked on me
the most. They were a small group of boys and girls, kids who seemed to
be well liked by the teachers. Later, I looked back at these early
experiences and knew that I was so confused about everything--who I
was, why I behaved the way I did, why I didn't understand how to make
friends. I was perceived by others to be the ``shy kid.'' I was not
diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder, until
I was 12, which is a very late diagnosis. I wanted to tell my parents
that I was getting bullied, but I did not know how to explain what was
happening.
Thankfully, when I was in third grade, the bullies were in the
other class. We had two classrooms for each grade.
Unfortunately, the bullying got worse in fourth grade. A new girl
moved into my neighborhood, (I'll call her ``Girl A'') and she behaved
well in front of my parents and other adults. But when their backs were
turned, she had the personality of a vicious junk-yard dog. It took me
many years to realize that she chose me because I was vulnerable; I
didn't have many friends, and it was difficult for me to make friends.
The rules of friendships were completely foreign to me.
One time, she and another student picked on me when the teacher was
out of the room. They called me ``queen of the dorks'' and put an
imaginary crown on my head. I was very hurt by their actions. Our
teacher once said, after discovering that some of the students were
arguing, that we ``should all get along because we are all friends.'' I
knew even then that was not going to fix anything.
In second, fourth and fifth grade, my peers verbally abused me
almost every day about the clothes I wore. I didn't dress like they
did; I didn't wear the latest, ``cool'' clothes. I was not a ``cool''
kid. I didn't pay attention to celebrities in the news or watch the
same TV shows the other kids watched.
In my childhood, I just wanted to be a happy kid who felt free to
be myself. I wanted to be a kid. But my classmates were not OK with
that. They knew I wasn't cool, and they used every opportunity they
could find to make me feel like I would never be good enough to be
their friends. They were relentless. They made fun of the speech I
wrote at the end of the school year for the anti-drug program DARE. My
Halloween costume wasn't cool. When I gave a presentation in Social
Studies, they laughed at me and asked me questions in a mocking tone of
voice. I hated P.E. because I wasn't very coordinated and my peers were
impatient and unkind toward me. I always felt like I was never good
enough.
The only reason I ever felt comfortable going to school when I was
being bullied was that I got along very well with my teachers. In fifth
grade, my teacher gave me a hug every day after school was over. I
needed it.
Fifth grade was the worst of all. There was another girl, (Girl B)
who chose me as her target. The whole school year, she seemed to enjoy
treating me like garbage. She pulled my hair, kicked me in line, and
made fun of my clothes whenever she could. One time, my mom came to
school, and after she left, Girl B made fun of my mom wearing a scarf
on her head. (It was winter) I was furious, but because I didn't know
how to handle the situation, I kept my rage inside.
Recess is hell for most students on the autism spectrum because it
is about socialization--an area people on the spectrum struggle with
most often. I usually spent most of my time during recess talking with
either the recess monitor, who was also one of the lunch ladies, or one
of my few friends. I felt comfortable talking with the monitor, because
she was nice to me, unlike my peers. One day on the playground, I was
standing around, just talking with someone, when Girl B suddenly came
up to me and told me to come with her. I told her I didn't want to. She
started to ask me why, and she wouldn't stop it. After not being
satisfied with my answers, she grabbed me by the arm and gave it a
``snakebite,'' twisting my arm very hard with both her hands and
causing severe pain. I found a teacher and she sent Girl B to the
principal's office. After my mom learned about the incident, she came
to school to speak to the principal, who said that Girl B was having
issues at home. Not much else was done.
I am particularly concerned about students who are unable to
communicate that they are being bullied. Before I was able to advocate
for my disability, I had no idea how to let the adults around me know
that I was being bullied. How can students with autism who have little
or no verbal abilities inform responsible adults if they are being
bullied?
I wish that my elementary school teachers and administrators had
done more to address bullying. I felt so alone.
It doesn't matter who you are, what you look like, how you dress,
what faith you believe, how you learn, whatever--nobody should have to
feel afraid to go to school. BULLYING IS NOT A RITE OF PASSAGE! It is
so heartbreaking to me to think of young children and teens who have
committed suicide because they were bullied so much, they felt the only
solution was to end their lives. Every student has the right to have a
safe learning environment. School should be a place where students feel
comfortable to be themselves. A school's No. 1 priority, above all
else, should be safety. When students don't feel safe, how can they
learn? Bullying will become less prevalent when teachers, school
administrators, and parents are honest and open about what behavior is
tolerated and what is not. Bullying will go away when schools, parents
and students work together so that kids understand that bullying will
not be tolerated.
Note: I was born in Des Moines, in 1987. I grew up in Sioux City,
IA, and graduated from Sioux City North High School in 2006. When I was
12, I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism. In
2005, I got a great opportunity to attend the Iowa's Youth Leadership
Forum (YLF), a statewide gathering of high school students with
disabilities who have leadership potential. I have come back every year
as a counselor, because I continue to see the tremendous, life-changing
effect YLF has on the students as well as the staff. I consider myself
to be an advocate for people with disabilities, particularly those on
the autism spectrum. I have been playing violin since I was 9 years
old. I love cats and I love to read.
The Chairman. Emily, I can't comment much about your violin
playing, but I can sure say you are one heck of a writer and
speaker.
Ms. Domayer. Oh, thank you.
The Chairman. Boy, that was tremendous.
Ms. Domayer. Thanks.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Now we'll turn to Penny Bisignano, an Educational
Consultant for the Iowa Department of Education as part of the
Safe and Supportive Schools Grant team, with her focus on
bullying prevention and intervention.
Prior to joining the grant team at the Iowa Department of
Education, she served as a consultant to the Department and
provided training and networking for the statewide network of
Olweus--got the V in there this time--Bullying Prevention
Program Trainers, and facilitated projects in school
improvement and teacher quality.
Penny coordinated a Federal elementary school counseling
grant for Des Moines Public Schools, coordinated the Counselor
Education Program at Iowa State University, and served as a
school improvement coordinator for Area Education Agency 11 in
Iowa.
Again, welcome. I read your testimony. It will be made a
part of the record in its entirety. Please sum it up, if you
can.
STATEMENT OF PENNY BISIGNANO, CONSULTANT FOR BULLYING
PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION, IOWA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, DES
MOINES, IA
Ms. Bisignano. I sure will. Thank you.
Thank you, Emily. As you were speaking, I thought about the
calls that we receive at the Department of Education from
parents and students about what they're experiencing and how
difficult this is. I heard the term ``relentless'' and ``I felt
so alone.'' And we hear that, and it's so powerful. It's
something that we really need to work on every single day, and
that's really my job at the Department of Education.
I'm really honored to be here today, Senator Harkin, and
thank you, everyone, for the opportunity.
I would really like to focus on three areas and be as brief
as I can. We talked about the definition of bullying and how
challenging that is that we don't have perhaps a Federal
definition, although we do appreciate at the stopbullying.gov
site that we do have and follow a definition that helps us in
our work, and that is that bullying is really unwanted
aggressive behavior among school-age children that involves a
real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated. I
think about relentlessly, the repeated things, Emily, that you
talked about, and has the potential to be repeated over time.
Bullying includes actions like making threats, spreading
rumors--and often we think that's not serious, but it's very
serious--attacking someone physically or verbally, and
exclusion. Very often, it begins with exclusion. In elementary
school, we see that as one of the strategies that help to make
kids feel left out.
Again, I think you mentioned this, Senator Harkin, the
researcher and really father of bullying prevention, Dan Olweus
from Norway, says bullying is peer abuse, and I think we need
to really pay attention to the fact that this is an abusive
behavior. It's an act of violence.
What we can do and what we know that is encouraging to us
is that we really have a guideline around some best practices.
I'd just like to have us hear those. There are really 10 that
guide us.
No. 1 is, in a school, we need to focus on the social
environment of the school, and that means addressing the
climate, the climate in which our kids come there every day to
learn.
No. 2 is to assess the nature and extent of bullying. Often
we don't ask. We say we don't have bullying here, but unless
we're really surveying our students, and now we know that we
need to ask parents and family and staff as well, so that we
have data to make good decisions.
We need to get support from the adults in the environment.
Everybody needs to be engaged in this. It's not something that
one teacher can do or one staff member. It's not something that
happens with just a few, but we need everybody engaged.
There also needs to be a group that shepherds the work. If
we're going to address bullying, we need those who are
passionate, have it in their heart to do this, and that should
include parents and students, as well as community.
It's so critical, and I heard this earlier, to train all of
the adults in the school around bullying prevention, getting
everybody to join. When I heard Emily's story, I think we all
need to join so that we can understand what this is, the harm
that's caused.
We need to create and enforce very specific rules to
address bullying, make sure that we're addressing this in
classrooms, increase our supervision, and intervene
consistently and appropriately. Seventy percent of teachers in
a survey we know believed that they intervened almost always,
while students, 25 percent of students believed that the
teachers intervened almost always. So there's a real
discrepancy in our perceptions.
And then it all has to continue over time.
What we're doing in Iowa, very quickly, is that we have
been leaders in bullying prevention since 2004, even before our
law was passed in 2007. We intentionally have two nationally
certified trainers around bullying prevention and intervention
in every area education agency, and with our Safe and
Supportive Schools grant there's someone who is assigned to
each one of those schools to provide that.
We've hosted ICN sessions, workshops and webinars, and
continue to do that.
We have ongoing guidance from our department attorney,
Carol Greta.
And again through the grant, we have provided this last
spring our first full-day intake and investigator training.
Across the State of Iowa, we had 400 educators participate in
that. We will continue that work.
We know that when somebody tells you that something has
happened, we need to pay attention to that.
We are partnering with Iowa State Extension and Outreach
around youth engagement for each one of our grant schools. So
we have youth teams that are really there to help us, really,
to understand and know what we can do to address bullying and
to improve the climate overall. That's really what that's
about.
We've also partnered with the Iowa Pride Network in a Safe
Schools certification program which includes both an audit of
the Iowa bullying laws so that schools are meeting the
components of the law, and then elements for addressing
bullying more comprehensively in each of our schools.
In the fall we will launch at the Department of Education a
refined data collection system from every school in the State
of Iowa, which will give us much more information about all
those categories that are in our Iowa law of students who may
be bullied.
And just one consideration, in closing, for thinking about
the future. All areas that support student learning, we call
that learning supports in Iowa, and they need to receive the
same level of priority and legislation and funding as reading,
math, and other academics. School climate has a significant
impact on the child and student's ability to learn. It's as
important to know if a student is safe as it is to know his or
her achievement scores.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Bisignano follows:]
Prepared Statement of Penny Bisignano
Good afternoon, ladies and gentleman. I am happy to be with you on
this very important occasion to talk a little bit about bullying in
schools, something that I spend every day of my life thinking about and
making efforts to address.
My name is Penny Bisignano and I am a consultant at the Iowa
Department of Education and part of the Iowa Safe and Supportive
Schools Grant Team. My area of specialization is bullying and
harassment in schools. Every time I tell someone what I do, they tell
me their own story of bullying. Usually they talk about something they
experienced or are experiencing or about someone in their family or in
a friend's family. Bullying is everywhere. I take calls daily from
parents whose children are suffering both physically and mentally. They
tell me their kids aren't focused on learning and academics when they
fear for their physical or emotional safety at school every single day.
I know they are right.
Today I will focus my 5 minutes on four areas.
1. The definition of bullying and the best practices for addressing
it.
2. What we are doing in Iowa to address bullying.
3. The key components of the Iowa Anti-Bullying Anti-Harassment
Law.
4. Considerations for moving forward.
how is bullying defined?
Bullying is more complex than physical or verbal harm. It is a form
of violence in schools. The Federal stopbullying.gov defines bullying
as,
``unwanted, aggressive behavior among school-aged children that
involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is
repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time.
Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading
rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding
someone from a group on purpose.''
Researcher, expert, and author Dr. Dan Olweus has a similar
definition, one that identifies bullying as peer abuse. He says,
``A person is bullied when he or she is exposed, repeatedly
and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more
other persons, and he or she has difficulty defending himself
or herself.''
These definitions agree on three components of bullying.
1. Bullying is aggressive behavior characterized by unwanted,
negative actions.
2. Bullying involves a pattern of behavior repeated over time.
3. Bullying relies on an imbalance of power or strength.
Bullying can take many forms, including derogatory speech,
exclusion or isolation, physical attacks, the spreading of rumors,
taking or damaging money or property, threats, and forced actions. It
can be racially or sexually motivated. And, it can take place in person
or via cell phones or Internet (cyber bullying).
best practices for addressing bullying
At stopbullying.gov, the Health Resources and Services
Administration (HRSA) provides 10 Best Practices for bullying
prevention and intervention. It is important that all 10 be in place in
order to effectively address bullying in schools.
1. Focus on the social environment of the school. When we address
the social environment in school, we really address the climate for
learning, as a climate of safety and respect promotes student success.
The insecurity, lack of control, and sense that nobody cares that come
with bullying make it difficult for students to focus on academics.
Some bullied students may stop coming to school altogether.
2. Assess the nature and extent of bullying in each school. In
order to specifically target areas for improvement, we must know what
kind of bullying is occurring and the degree to which it is occurring.
Data from anonymous student surveys can help inform and motivate adults
to take action, help administrators and educators tailor prevention
strategies, and serve as a baseline from which schools can measure
their progress in reducing bullying.
Surveys provide data regarding whether and how students are
bullied, whether and how they report such treatment, and if they are
afraid of being bullied. They also give insight into off-campus ``hot
spots'' for bullying and the degree to which students feel bullying is
tolerated at their school. Finally, surveys identify numbers of
students who engage in bullying others and who try to help students
they see being bullied.
The most recent Iowa Youth Survey (2010) of 6th, 8th, and 11th
graders was taken by 86 percent of 359 public school districts and 17
percent of 183 non-public schools.
Students bullied one or more times in the previous 30 days--50
percent.
Students' perceptions of whether teachers or adults tried to stop
bullying:
``almost always'' or ``often''--52 percent;
``almost never,'' ``once in a while,'' or ``sometimes''--48
percent.
Data from the largest national data base on bullying among U.S.
students (Olweus & Limber, 2010) present additional data. It included
524,000 student surveys from 3d -12th graders in more than 1,500
schools in 45 States.
Students involved in bullying 2-3 times a month (as one who
bullied, one who was bullied, or both)--21 percent girls and 25 percent
boys.
Bullied students had reported the bullying to a teacher or other
adult at school--<33 percent.
Student feelings when they see a student their age being bullied:
``feel sorry for''--83 percent.
Student responses to bullying:
``try to help''--35 percent girls and 29 percent boys;
``don't help but believe I should''--30 percent girls and 22
percent boys.
3. Obtain support from adults, including school staff and parents
to address bullying prevention. Every adult has to be engaged in the
work: school staff, bus drivers, nurses, school resource officers,
custodians, cafeteria workers, librarians, parents and community
members--especially agencies serving youth. When students know that
adults take their experiences seriously and are working to stop
bullying, they will move from being bystanders to being defenders of
the cause.
4. Form a leadership group that ``shepherds'' the work to address
bullying. This group should be made of representatives from the entire
school community, including parents and students. Often student
advisory groups form from within the student body to focus on bullying
prevention; they can provide suggestions and feedback to the leadership
group.
5. Train all the adults in the school in bullying prevention. As
one of the top five hot spots for bullying in school is in the
classroom with the teacher present, staff training that is based on
solid research specific to bullying must take place in every school.
Training should not be a one-time event, like an assembly, speaker,
curriculum, video, song, or public service announcement. Bullying
prevention training needs to be ongoing and, again, specific to
addressing bullying. Programming must be comprehensive and should
become part of the way the school operates daily, part of the culture.
All adults need to understand:
1. The nature of bullying and its effects.
2. How to respond if they observe bullying.
3. How to work with others at the school to help prevent bullying
from occurring.
Remember bullying is not just a problem behavior, it is peer abuse
that impacts the physical and mental health of students. Stopping
bullying is more than addressing discipline issues as they arise, it is
about stopping harm. Adults must take the first step in changing school
climate.
6. Create and enforce very specific rules to address bullying and
set expectations for students. It is not enough to rely on typical
behavior codes that do not explicitly forbid bullying. School rules
need to use the term ``bullying'' and make it clear that the school not
only expects students not to bully, but expects them to be good
citizens and not passive bystanders when they are aware of bullying.
Providing clear rules specific to bullying makes sure that students are
aware of adult expectations. Those rules must be enforced by all adults
in the school setting and supported by parents and community members.
Rules should be posted and included in classroom discussions and
individual interventions.
7. Include a classroom component in bullying prevention programs.
Setting aside time weekly or at least bi-weekly for upper grades to
discuss bullying and peer relations helps to build community and
contributes to the overall school climate. This discussion should not
be something created and delivered to students. It gives them a key
role in creating a climate in which all students feel safe and engaged
in school.
8. Increase supervision in areas where bullying is occurring.
Students know where the ``hot spots'' or problem areas are for bullying
and readily disclose those areas when asked. Bullying is known to
thrive in areas where adults are not present or not vigilant, such as
hallways and stairwells. Increasing supervision in those places can be
very helpful in reducing instances of in-school bullying.
9. Adults must intervene consistently and appropriately. Even if
adults are unsure whether they are witnessing bullying, it is important
they stop the event and assure that students are safe. Students need to
know that adults will respond and take their safety seriously.
Research shows adults overestimate their effectiveness in stopping
bullying. When surveyed, 70 percent of teachers believed they
intervened ``almost always'', while 25 percent of students agreed with
the same. (Charach et al., 1995)
It is important to note here that, unless there has been
professional development for staff regarding what bullying is and how
to intervene, these statistics will not improve.
10. Bullying prevention and intervention should continue over time.
The work does not ever stop but needs to become a part of everyday
school processes and procedures. In order to create lasting changes to
the social norms of the school and create a safe and caring environment
of learning for each and every student, kids and adults--including
parents and community members--need to stay engaged. There is no ``end
date'' for bullying prevention and intervention.
what we are doing in iowa
Iowa has been a leader in bullying prevention and intervention
since 2004, 3 years before the passage of the Anti-Bullying Anti-
Harassment Law of 2007.
Financed (via Department of Education) national
certification in Olweus Bullying Prevention Programming for two
consultants in each of the Area Education Agencies.
Commissioned and trained over 30 Olweus Bullying
Prevention Program Trainers statewide to serve 20 Safe and Supportive
Schools (SSS) grant-funded schools and provide consultation and support
for additional 27 high schools not selected for funding.
Provide trainers with ongoing professional development,
resources, and networking.
Hosted webinars focusing on bullying prevention and
intervention specific to cyberbullying, best practices in bullying, and
engaging the community in efforts to address bullying.
Provided initial training for nearly 400 Iowa educators in
intake and investigation of reports of bullying incidents.
Formed core team of adults and students and student leader
teams in SSS Grant schools to lead anti-bullying efforts, guided by
Department of Education/Iowa State Extension and Outreach partnerships.
Partnered with The Iowa Pride Network and their Safe
School Certification Team to audit components of the Iowa Anti-Bullying
Anti-Harassment law for each of the grant funded schools and additional
non-funded schools.
Contracted with the Safe School Certification Team to
complete an 18-24 month Certification under the Safe School
Certification Model.
Committed to facilitate the next steps for SSS Grant
schools and others in further professional development around improving
investigation skills for reports of bullying and harassment in schools.
Finally, in the fall of 2012, the Iowa Department of Education will
launch a refined bullying/harassment data collection system for Iowa
schools. This system is meant to collect incident report data from all
districts in the State and will provide more specific data around types
of bullying occurring, locations of bullying incidents, number of
students involved in bullying, whether reports are founded or
unfounded, kinds of consequences applied in bullying incidents and
more.
In addition to our prevention work at the Department of Education,
we take phone calls on a very frequent basis from parents who feel
their concerns around bullying have not been addressed. We work to
bridge the communication gap that has developed and help schools and
families to resolve some challenging situations.
When Iowa school districts are visited as part of the State
accreditation process and on all equity site visits, bullying and
harassment policies are examined to assure they meet the expectations
in the Anti-Bullying Anti-Harassment Law. During the visit, multiple
groups are interviewed and questions regarding bullying and harassment
are included in those interviews. That data is given back to all
districts so they can address issues that appear and to recognize and
acknowledge their successful efforts to address bullying as well.
key components of the iowa anti-bullying anti-harassment law (ia code
section 280.28)
Each public district must have a policy around bullying
and harassment.
Failure to adopt a policy with all the required components
could subject an accredited nonpublic school or school district to a
possible loss of accreditation.
Expectations for inclusion in the policies are:
Statement that bullying and harassment are against
State and school policy.
Description of expected behaviors of all parties
relative to prevention, reporting, and investigation of
bullying/harassment.
Consequences and remedial actions for those who
violate the policy.
A procedure for reporting bullying/harassment.
Identification by job title of the school official
responsible for ensuring the policy is implemented and
identification of the person/persons responsible for receiving
reports of bullying/harassment.
Procedure for prompt investigation of complaints.
Identification of the person(s) responsible for
conducting the investigation.
A statement that investigators will consider the
totality of circumstances presented in determining whether
conduct objectively constitutes harassment or bullying under
this section.
A statement of the manner in which the policy will be
publicized.
The law's definition of bullying includes electronic
bullying.
The law includes protection for 17 traits or
characteristics, whether they are real or perceived in the instance of
bullying, but is not limited to those 17 (in 2007 the Iowa Legislature
amended the Iowa Civil Rights Act. [Iowa Code Chapter 2160] to add
sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected
statuses).
The school improvement advisory committee, a required
committee for each accredited nonpublic school and each school
district, must discuss anti-bullying efforts annually.
Only one of the following four needs to be met in order to
define behavior that creates an objectively hostile school environment:
1. Places the student in reasonable fear of harm to the
student's person or property.
2. Has a substantially detrimental effect on the student's
physical or mental health.
3. Has a substantially detrimental effect on the student's
academic performance.
4. Has the effect of substantially interfering with the
student's ability to participate in or benefit from the
services, activities, or privileges provided by a school.
considerations for moving forward
1. All areas that support student learning need to receive the same
level of priority in legislation and funding as reading, math and other
academics. Since school climate has a significant impact on the child/
student's ability to learn, it is as important to know if a student is
safe from bullying and harassment in your school as it is to know his/
her achievement scores. It is as important to know a school's safety,
engagement, environment index score (e.g. from the Safe and Supportive
Schools grant) as it is to know the school's academic achievement
average score.
2. Any bullying legislation needs to have provisions for required
professional development for all staff regarding bullying prevention,
including all adults who interact with students.
3. Legislation needs to include the expectation that schools
regularly (at least yearly) administer anonymous surveys to students,
parents and staff on the status of bullying and other school climate
issues. Schools should be accountable for showing how survey data is
used to make programming and other decisions regarding climate.
4. Assure in legislation and in funding that prevention and
intervention programming is evidence-based, is specific to bullying,
and encompasses the HRSA Best Practices. Bullying has become a high
profile topic. It will be important to be grounded in good practices
and steer schools away from those increasing resources in print and
online by people that have little or no proven impact in reducing
bullying. We need to expect quality, evidential strategies that truly
fit with violence prevention and peer abuse. Just as they are in
academic areas, our strategies for bullying prevention must be
evidence-based.
5. Students, families and communities must all be empowered to feel
they are part of this work.
more considerations
In future legislation, outlining the specific, harmful
effects of bullying will help to address it fully.
Require that adults report bullying (similar to the report
of child abuse) when they see it or have a reason to suspect it.
Add more support for targets of bullying and families of
targets.
Put more teeth in laws that forbid retaliation after
reporting incidents of bullying.
Reporting incidents of bullying and individual
interventions around those incidents is not as effective as a systems
approach.
Targets of bullying are often bullied not because they
have any particular characteristic but simply because they are there.
I close with this quote taken from Dr. Justin Patchin, speaking May
21, 2012 at the Minnesota Task Force on Bullying Prevention called by
Governor Mark Dayton.
``We need legislation that is prescriptive, thoughtful,
evidence-based, and supported with adequate resources. If
legislators are serious about doing something to stop bullying,
they must move beyond the rhetoric and provide appropriate
resources for schools, parents, law enforcement, and other
community institutions to tackle this problem. Focusing on
improving the climate at school can have a significant impact
on a host of problematic behaviors. If students believe that
they are cared about at school, and they value those
relationships with their teachers, counselors, and
administrators, they will in turn refrain from engaging in
behaviors that would risk damaging those relationships. That
said, bullying and cyberbullying are not just school problems,
they are societal problems. Everyone has a role and
responsibility to do something, and it can start right here
with us today.''
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Penny, and thank you
again. I thought those 10 points were very succinct, very well
done.
Next we turn to Dr. Paul Gausman, currently superintendent
of schools for the Sioux City community school district. In
this position, he has direct oversight of the educational
process for more than 14,000 students in Sioux City.
Formerly, he was superintendent of schools for the West
Central school district in South Dakota. In addition to his
duties in Sioux City, Dr. Gausman is currently on staff as a
performing artist clinician with the Yamaha Corporation of
America in the area of marching percussion, concert percussion,
and drum set.
I didn't know all that about you.
Mr. Gausman. I didn't know you were going to read the whole
bio.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. He holds a doctorate in educational
leadership from the University of St. Thomas and St. Paul and
an education specialist degree from the University of Sioux
Falls, a Master of Science degree in educational administration
and supervision from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and a
Bachelor in music education from the University of Nebraska at
Lincoln.
Dr. Gausman, again, welcome. Thank you for your great
leadership in the Sioux City school district. Your testimony,
again, is part of the record, and please proceed.
STATEMENT OF PAUL R. GAUSMAN, Ed.D., SUPERINTENDENT, SIOUX CITY
COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT, SIOUX CITY, IA
Mr. Gausman. Thank you, Senator, and thank you for hosting
this event. I'm going to begin.
Penny noticed that Emily used the word ``relentless.''
The word that struck me, Emily, when you used it over and
over again, was ``cool.'' You weren't cool enough. You said
that, I think, four or five times.
I am here as the superintendent of schools from Sioux City,
IA to introduce you to one of our coolest graduates we've ever
had, Emily.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Oh, that's right. You're a graduate.
Ms. Domayer. Yes, that's right.
Mr. Gausman. She's also a hero, as far as I'm concerned.
But I do want to acknowledge to her that this community, in
one way or another, failed you, and I'm certainly sorry about
that.
Senator, as you know, we've had a 12-year partnership with
the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention. The Waitt
Institute was created by the founder of Gateway Computers. The
Waitt Foundation has partnered with our district to provide
funding and curriculum and training around the area of bullying
and violence in schools.
We were originally approached by our partners at the Waitt
Institute recently to participate in a national documentary on
bullying in the American schools, and our participation was to
highlight some of the progressive programs and significant
success of our work on bullying in our schools.
You see, Senator, we became visible on a national stage
because we were the first school district in the Nation to
create and implement a workplace bully prevention program for
our staff members. We believe that in order to expect the best
behavior from our students, we must make certain that we have
policies and procedures in place to assure that our adults are
also modeling the most positive behavior possible.
I want to be clear, though, that the documentary filmmakers
of this national film, now titled ``Bully,'' were quite honest
with us that they would also like to spend some time in our
district looking for a specific student or situation where they
could see the reality of bullying from the perspective of an
individual who was bullied. And while we're not particularly
proud of all that is presented in the documentary, we do
celebrate that our district has some of the most progressive
bully prevention programs available today. Yet, we acknowledge
that that work of art shows you--and I know you watched that
recently--some of our dirty laundry, if you will, related to
the challenges of bullying in American schools.
I believe that the end result of that documentary is a work
of art that's compelling and emotional and challenging. I'm
proud of our school board for stepping forward and having the
courage to engage the national discourse on bullying, the most
important topic of our day.
We do continue to believe in the importance of community
and national dialog on the challenges of bullying. Our
participation in this documentary has created some of the most
rich and most meaningful discussion in our own community about
what the entirety of the community can do to assist and support
schools in our efforts to prevent bullying.
You see, that's our perspective, Senator, that bullying is
best defeated by prevention, not by reaction. Many of the
programmatic solutions--and I want to be clear. I think I have
now heard from just about every company in the Nation selling
an anti-bullying product.
[Laughter.]
Most of those products deal with how to react to or respond
to bullying.
Our district, our board of education, and our community
continue to work toward the prevention of bullying-like
circumstances. We have consistently said that we are not unique
because we have bullying in our schools, but we do want to
become unique by being the school district that makes a
difference.
You see, bullying is not specific to schools. Bullying is
all around us. It's visible in shopping malls, places of
worship, sporting events, community events, et cetera.
Research tells us that only about 25 to 50 percent of
children who are bullied actually tell an adult about the
incidents, and we've certainly witnessed that low level of
reporting in our schools. We have a challenge of finding ways
to have students feel safe and comfortable in reporting those
instances to us.
As an example, one of the ways that we've discovered that
we can find bullying without even the reports is that it became
apparent to us that we needed high quality audio and video
systems on each of our buses. We implemented brand new systems
in our buses last year. We have about 70 buses, and we now have
staff members who not only drive the bus, Senator, they spend
time during the day watching sample footage from each of those
systems looking for challenges.
We have also now fully implemented some of the most
progressive curriculum in the area of bully prevention
education. Thank you to the Safe and Supportive Schools grants.
The curriculum that we have is entitled Second Step for
students in K-8; a program where older high school students
work with younger high school students, titled Mentors and
Violence Prevention; and a program in after-school activities
titled Coaching Boys Into Men. That's a program where we work
with students to understand why they may be coached to be
assertive or aggressive on a field of play, but that same level
of assertive or aggressive behavior may not be acceptable in
other areas of their lives.
We have also made changes to our school board policies
regarding bullying, hazing and harassment, and those policies
are not just documents. They are action items for us in our
district.
Finally, I would like to point out that I believe our
biggest challenge of the day very likely deals with cyber
bullying, the use of electronic devices and gadgets, the
Internet, to bully one another as a result of the anonymity
offered or the lack of face time that gives bullies the
opportunity to thrive.
Senator, I encourage you to consider the many examples that
are presented today, but don't stop just at the compelling
nature of those immediate examples. Consider this as it truly
is, an epidemic. It is bigger than a single person. It's bigger
than a single staff member or a school building or a school
district. It is our culture, and our culture must change.
I regret that any student in any school district has a less
than positive experience as a part of their education. I
acknowledge that we in the Sioux City Community School District
are like many others. We're in a district of continuous
improvement. We know that we must study the data, we must
listen to our customers and our constituents, and we must
create meaningful change for the future. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gausman follows:]
Prepared Statement of Paul R. Gausman, Ed.D.
My name is Dr. Paul Gausman, and I am honored to be the
superintendent of schools for the Sioux City Community School District.
The Sioux City Community School District is the fourth largest district
in Iowa with 14,000 students in about 30 school facilities. We are
honored to have the opportunity to teach our student population that is
made up of a fairly high percentage of students of poverty and growing
racial and ethnic diversity.
The Sioux City Community School District has enjoyed a 12-year
partnership with the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention. The Waitt
Institute was created by the founder of Gateway computers, Ted Waitt,
who, with other members of his family, are graduates of our fine
schools. The Waitt Foundation has partnered with our district providing
funding, curriculum, and training for staff and students over our
dozen-year relationship.
The Sioux City Community School District was approached by our
partners at the Waitt Institute to participate in a national
documentary on bullying in the American schools. Originally, our
participation was to highlight some of the progressive programs and
significant successes of our work to prevent bullying in our schools.
We became visible on a national stage, because we were the first
district in the Nation to create and implement a thorough workplace
bully prevention program for our staff members. We firmly believe that
in order to expect the best in behavior from our students, we must make
certain that we have policies and procedures in place to assure that
our adults are modeling the most positive behavior possible.
The documentary filmmakers of this national film now titled
``Bully'' were quite honest with us, however, that they would also like
to spend some time looking for a specific student or a specific
situation where they could see the reality of bullying from the
perspective of an individual who was bullied. While we are not
particularly proud of all that is presented in that documentary, we do
celebrate that our district has arguably some of the most progressive
bully prevention programs available today. Yet, we acknowledge that the
work of art shows you some of our ``dirty laundry'' related to the
challenges of bullying in American schools. I believe the end result is
a documentary that is compelling, emotional, and challenging.
When we gave the filmmakers permission to film in our schools, our
School Board members stepped forward and gave their consent as well. I
am proud of our Board for having the courage to engage the national
discourse on the most important topic of the day. Students must
absolutely feel safe to have a chance to be successful in school, and
at times, we as an entire culture fail those students on this basic
need and right.
We continue to believe in the importance of community and national
dialog on the challenges of bullying in American society. Our
participation in this documentary has created some of the richest and
most meaningful discussion in our community about what the entirety of
the community can do to assist and support schools in our efforts to
prevent bullying. You see, that is our perspective, that bullying is
best defeated by prevention, not by reaction. Many of the programmatic
solutions; and believe me I have heard, by participating in this
documentary, from just about every company selling any anti-bullying
product in this great Nation; many of those products deal with how to
react, how to respond when bullying occurs. Our District, our Board of
Education and our community continue to work toward the prevention of
bullying-like circumstances. We have consistently said that we are not
unique because we have bullying in our schools, but we want to become
unique by becoming the school district that has made a significant
difference. You see, bullying is not simply specific to schools,
bullying is all around us. It is visible in our shopping malls, our
places of worship, our sporting events, community events; it is simply
magnified in our schools because we are a people-centered organization.
Research tells us that only about 25 percent to 50 percent of
children who are bullied, actually ever tell an adult about the
incidents, and we have certainly witnessed that low level of reporting
in our schools. We have an ongoing challenge of finding ways to have
students feel safe and comfortable reporting incidents to a school
employee in a timely manner. In addition and at times, the victim does
not want to contribute information during the investigation for fear of
retaliation. Again, this is an area where we can improve.
While we are recognized as a district that is progressive in making
a difference in the challenges of bullying in our schools, and we were
the 2011 recipient of the ``Lighting the Way'' award from the Waitt
Institute for positive differences dealing with bullying and violence
in our culture; we recognize that we cannot stop learning. As an
example, it became apparent that we needed high quality audio and video
recording systems on each and every bus in our District. We implemented
brand new audio and video systems in our buses last year, and we now
have staff members who not only drive buses, but they spend time during
the day watching sample footage from each of those systems, looking for
challenges.
We have now created stronger relationships between our
transportation department and our building principals, so that we try
to find challenges before they are even reported to us.
We have now fully implemented some of the most progressive
curriculum in the area of bully prevention education as a result of our
continued partnership with the Waitt Institute. We have a curriculum
titled ``Second Step'' for all students in grades K-8 that teaches
students to recognize, refuse, and report bullying. We also have
components with this curriculum that connect to parents so that they
know what their students are learning in school and they can support
those items at home. We have a program in our high schools titled
``Mentors in Violence Prevention'' or ``MVP.'' This program allows
older students, typically high school juniors and seniors, to partner
with incoming freshmen students. The older students facilitate
conversations with the younger students around a series of social
scenarios depicting bullying and abusive peer culture in their school
and community. During these discussions, students talk about how they
might keep challenges from rising to a level that is significant and
how they could prevent those challenges from ever occurring at all.
We also have an after-school curriculum titled ``Coaching Boys Into
Men.'' This is a violence prevention program designed to allow high
school athletic coaches to discuss with male athletes about the
importance of respect for themselves and others with a noted focus on
the women and girls in their lives. We believe we need to work with
students to understand why they may be asked to be assertive or
aggressive on the field of play yet, that same level of aggressive or
assertive behavior might not be welcome in other aspects of their
lives.
We have also made changes to our School Board policies regarding
bullying, hazing, and harassment. Those policies are not just documents
to us, they actually guide our actions, and they give us the
opportunity to behave in different ways to prevent those challenges.
And of course, we have a very thorough staff development process
regarding these very important topics.
Finally, I would like to point out that our biggest challenge of
the day very likely deals with cyber-bullying. The use of electronic
devices and gadgets, the Internet, to bully one another, as a result of
the anonymity offered by the lack of face time that gives bullies the
opportunity to thrive.
I encourage you to consider the many examples that are presented
today; but do not stop at the compelling nature of the immediate
examples. Consider this as it truly is, an epidemic. It is bigger than
a single person; it is bigger than a single staff member, a single
school building, or a single school district. It is our culture and our
culture must change. I do regret that any student in any district has a
less than positive experience as a part of their education. We, in the
Sioux City Community School District, are, like many, a district of
continuous improvement. We must study the data, we must listen to our
customers and constituents, and we must and we will create meaningful
change for our future.
Thank you for your time.
______
Attachment.--Sioux City Community Schools
overview
Established in 2007, the Sioux City Project is a partnership
between the Sioux City Community School District, the Waitt Institute
for Violence Prevention, and the United Way of Siouxland in order to
create a structure within our schools to support the systemic
implementation of bystander, violence and bullying prevention
curriculum, programming, and public education communication. The Sioux
City Project was one of the first comprehensive, community initiatives
in the Nation to undertake a bystander intervention approach to bully
and violence prevention.
This comprehensive approach to primary prevention has been guided
by four basic goals:
1. To increase the number of youth who believe violence and
bullying are wrong.
2. To increase the number of youth willing to intervene and take
action against violence and bullying.
3. To decrease the incidents of violence and bullying in schools.
4. To increase the number of adults who talk to youth about
bullying and violence against women and girls being wrong.
curriculum & programs
Second Step Curriculum
Second Step teaches students in grades K-8 to recognize, refuse,
and report bullying; to be assertive and build friendships. From 2008-
10, Second Step was phased into the District's curriculum and strategic
plan.
Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) Program
The MVP program allows the partnership of older students, typically
high school juniors and seniors, with freshman students. The older
students facilitate conversations with freshman students around a
series of social scenarios depicting bullying and abusive peer culture
in school and community settings. During the MVP sessions, scenarios
are viewed from the perspective of a bystander and discussions are
conducted based on the participants' impression of how wrong the
behaviors may be, how likely they see themselves taking an active role
in preventing the behavior from continuing or playing out, and then
deciding on possible options for them to intervene in the role of an
active bystander.
Since the implementation of the MVP program, approximately 300 high
school educators, 100 community partners, 800 student mentors, and
8,500 high school students have been positively influenced by the
content.
Coaching Boys into Men
Coaching Boys into Men is a violence prevention program designed
for high school athletic coaches to inspire and teach male athletes
about the importance of respect for themselves, others, and
particularly the women and girls in their lives. Since the
implementation of the Coaching Boys into Men program, over 120 Sioux
City Community School District coaches and 600 student athletes have
been influenced by the content.
Bully Prevention Advocates
In addition to the curricular items, the Sioux City Community
School District firmly believes that all of our employees are role
models for students. We became the first school district in the Nation
to write, adopt, and actively implement school board policy to address
workplace bullying. Comprised of employees from all job
classifications, Bully Prevention Advocates provide assistance with
awareness and facilitate resolution and complaint procedures.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
findings
Throughout the Sioux City Project, student perceptions and
attitudes are gathered annually through the use of the Waitt Institute
for Violence Prevention--Sioux City Community School District: Student
Perception Survey, or WIVP/SCCSD, surveying how wrong the students
believe certain behaviors are, how likely they would be to intervene as
a bystander when confronted by certain behaviors, how likely they
perceive other peers might intervene in similar situations, and how
often adults talk to them about dating violence and bullying being
wrong. Each section of the survey contains the same 18 behaviors that
represent a continuum of violent and abusive behaviors, i.e., types of
abuse: verbal, emotional, sexual, and physical. General findings of the
WIVP/SCCSD student survey are described in this document.
2008-2011 Bystander Attitude, Perception, Behavior
Goal 1: Youth who believe violence and bullying are wrong.
Favorable trends on 10 of 18 behaviors (55 percent).
Goal 2: Youth likely to observe ``others in my school'' intervening
against violence and bullying. Favorable trends on 13 of 18 behaviors
(72 percent).
Goal 3: Youth willing to intervene against violence and bullying.
Favorable trends on 12 of 18 behaviors (67 percent).
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Since 2008, the Sioux City Community School District has surveyed
parents at spring conferences for their thoughts regarding school
climate and the quality of education. Results show the District is
making positive gains in violence awareness, prevention, and education.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The percentage of high school youth in the Sioux City Community
School District receiving one or more discipline referrals for a
``minor'' behavior infraction decreased and the percentage of high
school students receiving three or more discipline referrals decreased.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Dr. Gausman. That was
very profound. Thank you.
Ellen Reilly is a learning support specialist with the
Davenport Schools. She is the district anti-bullying
coordinator, and also provides at-risk, homeless, and other
specialized services in her district of nearly 16,000 students.
She has a Master's in criminal justice and organizational
development from St. Ambrose University in Davenport, is a
certified trauma and law school specialist at the National
Trauma and Loss Institute, has been working in the area of
bullying prevention.
I saw you nodding when Dr. Gausman said prevention. So
you've been doing that for the last 12 years. Oh, you're a
certified Olweus--I'll get that name right--bully prevention
trainer, having trained over 30 schools in the last 3 years.
This is very interesting. Ellen Reilly, thank you very much
for being here, and please proceed.
STATEMENT OF ELLEN REILLY, LEARNING SUPPORT SPECIALIST,
DAVENPORT COMMUNITY SCHOOLS, MOLINE, IL
Ms. Reilly. Thank you very much. I really appreciate being
asked to be here today. In 2008 I was working for Davenport
Schools. I'd only been there for a couple of years, and after
the legislation was passed in Iowa in 2007, the anti-bullying
legislation, I became what I later learned was called annoying
to administrators in our district because I was persistent in
implementing an anti-bullying program; because, you see, even
though people know that bullying happens, and educators know it
happens, it seems to be sometimes that thing that we push
aside. It's not easy to address. It's difficult, as a matter of
fact, especially at a systemic level.
Now here we are in 2012, and Davenport Schools has
implemented the Olweus anti-bullying program in all 30 of our
buildings K-12. It was a very interesting process to do, and
not every building is implementing at the same level. We have
various levels of implementation, and that is evidenced by how
schools respond to bullying--that's probably the best way to
look at it--and also by our survey data, which we do survey on
an annual basis.
I have three points that I'd like to address specifically
today. No. 1, dealing with bullying is a complicated process.
No. 2, zero tolerance is not effective. And No. 3, to truly
address bullying in schools, we must include proper training
and ongoing support to teachers, administrators and others who
work with children, and I think we heard that from Penny as
well.
In talking about the Olweus anti-bullying program, which
I'm just going to refer to as Olweus now, it's not a
curriculum. It's not a lesson that's taught in a classroom.
It's a whole-school approach, it's systems change, and it's
looking at systems change from four different levels, that
being school-wide, in the classroom, on an individual level,
and at the community level.
At the core of Olweus, there are four anti-bullying rules.
I refer to them as the speed limit. Just because the speed
limit is posted doesn't mean you're going to follow it. But,
boy, when you see the police officer in his car, you slow down.
So I refer to the rules as the speed limit in our district.
No. 1, we will not bully others. No. 2, we will help others
who are bullied. No. 3, we will include those who are easily
left out. And No. 4, when we know someone is being bullied,
we'll tell an adult at school and an adult at home, and expect
them to do something about it.
In Davenport, we post those rules throughout the school and
in every classroom. They're even posted at our football stadium
and around local areas where students that attend our schools
also go in the community and participate in youth events. Our
community is very engaged in our anti-bullying program.
We share this information with parents on how we're going
to handle bullying in our schools. We give it to them at
conferences, in newsletters, and it's on our Web site. We
survey our students on an annual basis, and that information is
reviewed and then put together in a trend report so that
parents, teachers and students can see how we're doing in the
area of bullying prevention.
I can say that since we implemented--our first
implementation school was 2008--we have seen a decrease in the
number of bullying incidents and the number of students who are
reporting being bullied. We've seen an increase in the number
of incidents being reported, which we wanted to see. We want
students to report it when it's happening.
We've seen an increase in students reporting that adults
intervene when they see bullying, and we've also seen an
increase in the number of students who intervene and try to
support their peers when they're being bullied.
Davenport also started the Be Bully Smart campaign, and
that is a grassroots community awareness campaign on bullying
that we have engaged our police department, our parks and rec
department, Big Brothers, Big Sisters. We train their staff,
and then they in turn are able to endorse and support our
program on anti-bullying in the community.
Zero tolerance is not effective, and I want to read here
that the definition of zero tolerance is that it's usually
bringing the maximum punishment for every transgression. The
best approach to managing consequences for bullying situations,
which is what I deal with on a regular basis, is to have
someone who is well-trained in best practices address the
situation by thoughtfully discussing the incident and issuing
appropriate progressive consequences that fit the circumstance
and severity of the bullying. Consequences, especially in
bullying situations, should teach, not destroy.
And finally, to address bullying in schools, we do need to
provide training. We need to be able to accurately identify
bullying, and I've heard the definition, and Penny brought up
the definition from Dr. Dan Olweus. Our goal is to ensure that
students are safe if they experience bullying. This can include
parent conferences, safety plans, changes to schedules, one-to-
one supervision. We do whatever we can to make sure students
are safe, because the reality is that bullying is never going
to go away. We need to do prevention efforts to reduce it, and
then we need to be able to reduce the negative impact on
students.
I want to make a final statement regarding our LGBT
population and say that I believe that it is critical that we
have gay-straight alliances in every middle and high school. I
would like to see that happen. I'd like to see it happen in
Iowa, and I would like to see it happen on a national basis,
because gay-straight alliances have the same goals that Olweus
has, and that is to create safe environments in schools, to
educate the school community about homophobia, transphobia,
gender identity and other sexual-oriented issues, and then
fight discrimination, harassment and violence in schools.
I believe that when a student enters secondary school,
middle school and high school, that a GSA should have the same
importance as the French Club, the debate team, the football
team, or any other school group that exists. It should have the
same recognition and the same value.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Reilly follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ellen Reilly
Chairman Harkin, thank you for having me today. It is an honor and
a privilege to be able to speak to you about the efforts of Davenport
Community Schools to address bullying.
In 2008 as a result of the 2007 Iowa anti-bullying legislation,
Davenport Community Schools implemented the Olweus Bullying Prevention
Program in all 30 of our schools. With over 35 years of research and
successful implementation all over the world, Olweus is a whole-school
program that has been proven to prevent or reduce bullying throughout
the school setting. Dr. Dan Olweus developed the program and is often
considered the ``pioneer'' in bullying research.
There are three main points I wish to address today:
1. Dealing with bullying is a complicated process;
2. Zero Tolerance is not effective; and,
3. To truly address bullying in schools, we must include proper
training and ongoing support to teachers, administrators, and others
who work with children.
1. Dealing with bullying from the individual all the way up to the
system level is a complicated process; the implementation of a
structured bullying prevention like Olweus can help address these
challenges.
The Olweus Anti Bullying Program is designed to improve peer
relations and make schools safer, more positive places to learn. The
Olweus Bully Prevention Program is not a curriculum. It is a whole-
school, systems-change program at four different levels: schoolwide,
classroom, individual, and community.
The goals of Olweus are to:
reduce existing bullying problems among student;
prevent the development of new bullying problems; and
achieve better peer relations at school.
At the core of Olweus are four anti-bullying rules:
1. We will not bully others.
2. We will help others who are being bullied.
3. We will include others who are easily left out.
4. When we know someone is being bullied we will tell an adult at
home and an adult at school and expect them to do something about it.
Every Davenport Community Schools posts the bullying rules
throughout the school and in every classroom. Each school also holds an
annual assembly to review the rules and remind everyone of how
Davenport Schools deals with bullying. Information goes home to
parents, is presented at registration and conferences, and put in
newsletters. Students are surveyed on school climate annually and the
results are shared with students, staff, and parents. Survey
information assists each building to set goals for the following year
and improve supervision in areas where students report bullying is more
likely to occur. Davenport Schools have seen an increase in the number
of adults and students stopping bullying when they see it, an increase
in students reporting bullying if it is happening to them or someone
they know, and a decrease in the overall incidences of bullying.
Davenport has also engaged the community in our bullying prevention
efforts by training staff from Big Brothers/Big Sisters, Davenport
Police Department, Parks and Rec, our local LGBT Support organization.
Davenport also started the Be Bully Smart campaign, a community call to
action with a simple message: ``See it. Stop it. Report it.'' Using
yard signs, posters, banners, and most importantly, a Facebook Page, Be
Bully Smart brings awareness to the issue of bullying at a community
level, providing resources on bullying and bullying prevention.
2. Zero tolerance is not effective.
Zero tolerance imposes automatic punishment for infractions of a
stated rule, with the intention of eliminating undesirable conduct,
with little evidence that supports the claimed effectiveness of such
policies. It is often interpreted as bringing the maximum punishment
for every transgression. The best approach to managing consequences in
bullying situations is for someone who is well-trained in anti-bullying
best practices to address the situation by thoughtfully discussing the
incident and issuing appropriate, progressive consequences that fit the
circumstance and severity of the bullying. Consequences, especially in
bullying situations, should teach, not destroy.
3. To truly address bullying in schools, we must provide proper
training and ongoing support to teachers, administrators, and others
who work with children. Accurate identification of bullying, proper
investigation techniques and appropriate consequences are all critical
in addressing bullying.
Not all mean behavior is bullying. Bullying, as identified by Dr.
Dan Olweus, is intentional, aggressive behavior that involves an
imbalance of power and is most often repeated over time. Bullying is
peer abuse. School staff must be trained on how to properly investigate
bullying situations. Davenport Schools' goal is to ensure students are
safe if they have experienced bullying. This can include parent
conferences, safety plans, changes to schedules, one-to-one supervision
and other strategies that increase student safety. Additional training
and counseling are also options to deal with students who have been
bullied and who do the bullying. The reality is bullying will always
exist. We can only be vigilant in our efforts to prevent bullying from
happening and reduce the negative impact when it does occur.
I would like to say a few words about providing a stronger support
system for our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth in
our schools today. We are educators. We have a responsibility to
educate. As educators we must not fear openly talking about LGBT issues
in our middle and high schools. Gay teens in our schools are often
subjected to such intense bullying that they are unable to receive an
adequate education. These youth leadership organizations have the same
goals align with those of Olweus, but with a focus on the LGBT
population. Their goals are:
1. to create safe environments in schools for students to support
each other and learn about homophobia, transphobia, and other
oppressions;
2. to educate the school community about homophobia, transphobia,
gender identity, and other sexual orientation issues; and
3. fight discrimination, harassment, and violence in schools.
It is my hope that not only in Iowa, but throughout the Nation,
every middle and high school would have an active, supported Gay
Straight Alliance (GSA) in place.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Ellen, thank you very much. That's a great
leaping-off point for our next witness, Matt Shankles, who will
talk about the gay-straight alliance.
Matt is a rising junior at Linn-Mar High School in Marion,
IA, with a strong interest in theater, performing in the Prep
In-Step Show Choir, and has earned membership in the
International Thespian Honor Society.
Matt is also an advocate for safer schools, serving as co-
president of the school's gay-straight alliance. He is a
creator of a once-anonymous Twitter account to counteract
bullying. It's @linn_mar
_love.
Is that right? Did I get it right? OK.
Matt traveled to Washington, DC to attend the GLSE Safe
Schools Advocacy Summit to advocate for the Safe Schools
Improvement Act.
Matt, welcome. Please proceed.
STATEMENT OF MATT SHANKLES, STUDENT, LINN-MAR HIGH SCHOOL,
MARION, IA
Mr. Shankles. Thank you. I guess my experience with
bullying really began in eighth grade. Through a process I
won't describe, my classmates had learned that I was gay. And
although recently I've been more popular in school, after I
came out I lost probably half my friends, and they bullied me
relentlessly with slurs and threats and remarks that no one
should ever have to have said to them or directed at them or
seen directed at anyone else, on top of that.
I wasn't even free of the bullying when I left school. Even
now, if I walk home from school, people will yell obscene
things out car windows at me. So I have to take a different
street home that isn't as busy.
In October of last year, an anonymous Twitter account began
spreading false rumors about various people in my high school.
They cyber bullied me and other people, and I related to that
so much. And while all this was happening, I became more and
more depressed. I couldn't get away from it. I was always
concerned with what other people thought or what other people
needed to think, and how can we make people think something
else or how can I distract myself from it, or anything except
school work.
Those habits, as I was bullied in middle school--middle
school is really the time when you should be building the
habits to be able to concentrate on your school work, and I've
never quite been able to do that anymore.
I didn't report the bullying because I didn't think the
school administration or somebody could do anything for me, and
we do have the Olweus class meeting system in our school system
at Linn-Mar as well.
Then at one point a friend suggested that I, ``pretend to
be straight in order to stop the bullying,'' which I never
understood how I was different. I don't look at the differences
between people. I always see people as very much the same, and
I can see similarities in people who you'd never even think
they were the same until you really looked.
So I never looked at myself as any different. I didn't
understand what I needed to hide, what I needed to change, what
needed to happen in order to make it stop, although I knew that
I thought I should change myself, and that is not how you stop
the bullying. That is not what gets it fixed, because even if I
were to bend to other people's expectations of myself, they
would just bully someone else.
Eventually I came to a point in my life where I really just
didn't want to be alive anymore, and I never felt that way
again, which is good. I went from eighth grade into high school
and I joined my school's gay-straight alliance, and what she
said about gay-straight alliances is 100 percent true. What
gay-straight alliances can do in a school is so productive and
so amazing.
I use Twitter, as Senator Harkin said in my biography
before, to counteract the bullying through an anonymous Twitter
account called @linn_mar_love. And really, it was weird because
I could reach out to people because they didn't know who I was,
and they could reach out to me, and there was no more social
boundary there.
Anyway, earlier this year I had the opportunity to visit
Washington, DC to advocate for two important pieces of Safe
Schools legislation. I am grateful to GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian
and Straight Education Network, GLSEN, for giving me the
opportunity to learn about advocacy and to meet with my
Senators and Representative. For me, it was a truly life-
changing experience really, and I'm excited because GLSEN has
invited me to become a student Ambassador and to continue
telling my story as a way to make a positive change through
things like today.
While in Washington, I learned about the Safe Schools
Improvement Act, S. 506, and the Student Non-Discrimination
Act, S. 555. These two bills will ensure that every school
district has a comprehensive anti-bullying policy with
effective protections for all students. While Iowa and 14 other
States already have comprehensive anti-bullying laws, most
States have only generic anti-bullying laws that are unable to
provide protection for vulnerable students, as Senator Harkin
stated before.
Two of the lawmakers I have met with have been very
supportive. Senator Harkin is a co-sponsor of the Safe Schools
Improvement Act and the Student Non-Discrimination Act and has
been a leader in trying to make schools safer for all students,
as we know.
Representative Loebsack signed onto the bill after I met
with him and told him my story.
Last, no one should go through this, ever. There is a
paragraph here in my testimony I'm going to skip, but I just
want to say students are dying in their homes and in their
schools. That's not OK. We're here because something needs to
be done. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Shankles follows:]
Prepared Statement of Matt Shankles
Dear Chairman Harkin and members of the HELP Committee, thank you
for giving me the honor of testifying before you today. My name is Matt
Shankles, and I am a rising junior at Linn-Mar High School in Marion,
IA. I would like to speak about the terrible bullying and harassment I
faced in school because of my sexual orientation, how this treatment
affected me, and what we can do to help make schools safer for all
students.
My experience with bullying and harassment began in the eighth
grade when my classmates learned that I was gay. Although I had been
popular, after I came out, I lost many friends and others began to
bully me relentlessly with slurs, threats, and by spreading false
rumors about me. I couldn't even be free of the bullying when I left
school--students driving by would yell slurs at me as I walked home.
Several students even began to cyber-bully me through Twitter by
ridiculing me and spreading lies.
While all of this was happening, I became more and more depressed.
I couldn't escape the bullying, and I didn't feel there was anyone I
could turn to. I didn't report the bullying because I didn't think that
the school administration could do anything to help me.
At one point my best friend even suggested that I pretend to be
straight in order to stop the constant bullying. I was so hurt by this
suggestion; I did not feel different from everyone else--what was it
about me that I needed to hide just to be able to go to school every
day and be treated like a human being. Lost in despair, I began to hate
myself. One day, after enduring constant bullying, I simply lost hope.
I locked myself in my bathroom, planning to end my life with a knife. I
sat there in the dark for a long time. Fortunately, my stepfather
eventually found me and loudly slammed open the door, snapping me out
of my daze. I really believe he saved my life that day. But to this
day, I worry that he does not trust me.
After that day, things at school did gradually begin to improve.
Though I was still depressed, I confided in my school's guidance
counselor who offered me hope. I also became involved with my school's
Gay-Straight Alliance, which we call Spectrum. The support of other
students helped to restore my self-esteem and made the relentless
bullying more bearable. Eventually, I became co-president of the group.
Fortunately, I never again felt the way I did that day. Over time,
I saw the ordeal I had gone through as an opportunity to help others,
and I dedicated myself to fighting back against bullying and
harassment. I began to use Twitter to reassure other students facing
bullying by providing positive messages instead of ridicule. I also
began to help spread awareness of bullying and harassment by telling my
story to other students, to teachers, and even to lawmakers.
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to visit Washington, DC,
to advocate for two important pieces of safe schools legislation. I am
grateful to GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, for
giving me the opportunity to learn about advocacy and to meet with my
Senators and Representative. For me, it was a truly life changing
experience, and I am so excited that GLSEN has invited me to become a
Student Ambassador and continue telling my story as a way to make
positive change.
While in Washington, I learned about the Safe Schools Improvement
Act (S. 506) and the Student Non-Discrimination Act (S. 555). These two
bills will ensure that every school district has a comprehensive anti-
bullying policy with effective protections for ALL students. While Iowa
and 14 other States already have comprehensive anti-bullying laws, most
States have only generic anti-bullying laws that are unable to provide
protection for vulnerable students. Two of the lawmakers I met with
have been very supportive. Senator Harkin is a cosponsor of the Safe
Schools Improvement Act and the Student Non-Discrimination Act and has
been a leader in trying to make schools safer for all students.
Representative Loebsack signed on to the bill after I met with him and
told my story.
I was lucky. No student should have to fear going to school like I
did or become hopeless that things will ever change. Although I still
face bullying in school, I am fortunate to have family and friends who
care about me and a school that takes this issue seriously. My mother
has told me how proud she is to have a son who fights to help others
who are suffering. I hope that by telling my story and by helping
others realize that resources and support are available, we can make a
difference for students all across our country.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to testify today and tell
my story.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Matt. Thank you. Thank
you for your courage.
Now we go to Liz Sederquist. Liz Sederquist is a student at
Des Moines Area Community College and Gilbert High School. She
participates in rugby at Iowa State University and has been
active in softball, band, marching band, a member of Iowa Pride
Network's Leadership Team. Liz plans to major in anthropology,
with a double minor in archaeology and history.
I had a pleasant conversation with her beforehand.
I have your testimony and, Liz, thanks for being here.
Please proceed.
STATEMENT OF LIZ SEDERQUIST, STUDENT, DES MOINES AREA COMMUNITY
COLLEGE, AMES, IA
Ms. Sederquist. Thank you for having me here. Like you said
before, my name is Liz Sederquist, and I am technically a
student at DMACC through their correspondence program, which a
high school has to proctor my tests, and I do homework I guess
you would call it, and I will get my diploma.
I'm still technically a student at Gilbert High School, but
I rarely ever attend. I have no classes there. I'm there long
enough to take my DMACC test.
The reason why I rarely step foot in Gilbert is because I
slowly dropped my classes in order to remove myself from a
school that was unsupportive and hostile to me because I myself
identify as lesbian.
At the beginning of the year I had long hair and had tried
to act straight because I knew it was a conservative school,
and I did this to protect myself. I was living a double life.
Early in the year I met a guy, and he wanted to help me
with my algebra class because I was having problems with it and
I was struggling. He had a crush on me and constantly was
asking me to go on dates and wanted to actually be with me. I
made it clear I just wanted to be friends, and we decided to go
to Homecoming together as friends.
Afterwards he still continued to pursue me, and I continued
to make it clear that I just wanted to be friends. He got mad
at me, and there was one day that I had decided to confide in
him and tell him that I was gay, and later on that would be the
wrong move to do. He got angrier as I kept saying that I did
not want to be with him. He decided to out me at school, which
in the LGBT community you do not out somebody. It is wrong. You
don't know the reasons why somebody is in the closet.
I was scared about how people were going to react, but
nobody had believed me at first. Later on I had had window
paint on my car to support the rugby team at ISU, and someone
had taken their key and wrote the words ``bitch,'' ``cunt'' and
``fag'' into my windows, leaving scratches. My car was
vandalized, and I had also gotten a text from a friend saying
all these things that everybody else was saying about me,
including derogatory names and different slurs.
I had told the principal, and I had tried showing him
pictures of my car. I tried showing him text messages, but he
continued to say that he believed me and that I didn't need to
show him the evidence. And me being a teenager, I didn't want
to see that anymore. It was depressing me, so I did the wrong
thing and I deleted them.
Now that people knew that I was gay, I slowly started to be
me. In February I had attended an LGBT conference at Iowa State
University known as Mumble Talk or MBLGTACC, and afterwards I
decided to cut my hair and show the world who I really am and
how I feel and express myself in a way that I felt was
necessary.
People really started to harass me, and I went to the
principal numerous times. He would meet with me but just brush
off all of my concerns. I started to feel fear for my physical
safety and worried about people starting even more rumors. To
me, it felt like 600 people against 1. I felt very small, and
it was very overwhelming because so many people were up against
me. I had some allies, but they were so scared to actually
stand up for me that it didn't even help.
When you're worried about your safety, it's hard going to
school. It's difficult to concentrate. I'd get anti-gay texts
on my phone, I'd hear slurs, and I'd be called names, and the
person who had outted me to the school was kind of the
ringleader of everything.
This is not how I wanted to go to school. I wanted to feel
safe, so I decided to pursue and make a gay-straight alliance,
or a GSA. I wanted to educate my peers and faculty and stop the
homophobia and hate. I began working with Iowa Pride Network.
Unfortunately, the advisor that I wanted for the GSA kept
trying to talk me out of it. He kept saying I would get bullied
and harassed even more, and he told me that he was just
concerned for my safety and for my well-being. But I wanted the
support and I was tired of hearing anti-gay remarks, and I
wanted a change.
I kept being told that the gay-straight alliance was a bad
idea. At the time, I was dealing with teachers who wouldn't
call on me in class or even involve me. Some of my teachers
even felt it was OK to say ``that's gay'' when describing a
dislike, which is not right.
Female teachers didn't feel comfortable around me and
avoided me because I identified as lesbian, and most faculty
wanted nothing to do with me. I finally felt so discouraged I
gave up on the GSA and my school. I developed severe anxiety,
stomach issues, and depression. I didn't want to go to school,
and I didn't want to have to go to faculty that didn't pay
attention to me and no one handling the bullying problem.
My mom had called the superintendent, and the
superintendent said he would look into it, but nothing had ever
changed. My principal had called my mom and would yell at her
and say I was never in school, and my mom would simply explain
it was because the school wasn't handling the bullying
situation, or it was because I had such severe anxiety and
stomach problems that I couldn't attend school anyway.
And that's when I decided to enroll in DMACC to get away
from the harassment and bullying and to get my diploma, because
I wanted to find a way to get away from everything unless
something severe would happen and I would get into such a low
depression that I could end up like the other tragic students
and possibly commit suicide, and I didn't want that to happen.
I was currently a junior, and I had enough credits to
graduate this spring or this summer, and I wanted to go to
college in the fall, but now I can't because I can only
graduate once my class does next year in 2013. My life is now
put on hold, and because I'm being held back, so is my
financial aid for college because the adult diploma is a gray
area.
The one bright spot I was looking forward to this spring
was possibly going to prom with my girlfriend. I wanted to go
to prom because this was technically my senior year now, and I
wanted to have that high school and senior year experience. I
was told I wasn't allowed because I was missing too much school
and I was only attending DMACC classes and I wasn't a full-time
student. But at that time, I still had some Gilbert classes.
There was another student at my school who had missed
school and was also attending classes mostly at Iowa State, but
he was allowed to go. It was a double standard, and the
principal said not only could I not go to prom, I would not be
allowed to bring my girlfriend, but yet everybody else can
bring their own date.
My experience at Gilbert High School has been tough. It's
very hellish at times, and I hope that through this testimony
schools will realize that not providing a safe and supportive
environment does affect students and their ability to learn.
Students should not have to worry about being judged for who
they are and judge them on their actions, not on how they
present their gender or sexual orientation, like myself. You
should be able to go to school and know that there is going to
be teachers that support you, or at least put their opinions
aside and treat you like a normal human being.
School faculty needs ongoing training, not just training
once a year but actual ongoing training. People who want to
become teachers also need classes as well to help them
understand how to deal with bullying, not just with sexual
orientation or gender identity but also with disabilities and
anything in-between.
Schools also need gay-straight alliances. As Matt and Ms.
Reilly had said, they do help. Even if it is not just a gay
person starting it, it's a great way to have a support group
for that person who is getting bullied, whether they're gay,
straight, or have a gender identity or not, and they can go
there and have the support, almost like a family, and they can
go and tell people what is going on and what is happening at
school, or even what's going on at home, because some families
don't always accept their child when they have a different
gender identity than what they are or their sexual orientation,
or anything really. And a GSA does help.
I know in my school, a GSA would make a big difference, and
I am still trying to fight to have a GSA at that school even
though I am not a part of that school, but I am still willing
to help, because no kid should have to go through what I did.
No one should have to live a double life, and no one should
have to worry about being judged. And yes, people are going to
judge you no matter what, but people need to understand that
we're human and we come in all different shapes, sizes, colors,
different mental states, different everything. And it's
important that we embrace who we are, and we should not have to
be afraid to embrace who we are.
A GSA would also help the anti-gay remarks stop. They may
not stop completely, but when you hear faculty saying ``that's
so gay,'' or you even hear students calling another one a
faggot or gay in general, it's hurtful. Even if they themselves
are not gay, to force that on someone is hurtful, and it can
really damage someone.
Senator Harkin, thank you for allowing me to speak today,
and I hope that my story and some of my ideas help bring issues
to light.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Sederquist follows:]
Prepared Statement of Liz Sederquist
Hello my name is Liz Sederquist and I am a student at Des Moines
Area Community College pursuing my adult diploma. I am also,
technically. still a student at Gilbert High School although I rarely
attend.
The reason I rarely step foot in Gilbert High School is because I
slowly dropped classes in order to remove myself from a school that was
unsupportive and hostile to me because I identify as a lesbian.
At the beginning of the year I had long hair and tried to ``act''
straight because I knew it was a conservative school. I did this to
protect myself.
Early in the year, I met a guy in algebra who tried helping me
better understand the subject. He had a crush on me and wanted to go
out. I made clear I just wanted to be friends. As friends, we decided
to go to the homecoming dance together. Afterwards, he continued to
pursue me and I continued to make clear that I just wanted to be
friends. He got mad and I confided to him that I am gay. I thought he
would understand.
Instead, he got angrier and outted me to the school. He told many
people. I was scared about how people were going to react, but nobody
believed it at first. Then someone wrote ``BITCH'', ``CUNT'' and
``FAG'' on my car. I had also received a text from a friend telling me
people were also saying these awful things at school.
I told the principal. I tried to show him my car, but he didn't
want to see the graffiti or scratches--instead he told me that he
believed me and that he was going to talk to the students responsible.
But he never did.
Now that people knew, I slowly started being me.
I went to an LGBT conference at Iowa State University and
afterwards decided to cut my hair. That's when people really started
harassing me.
I went to the principal numerous times. He would meet with me but
brush off my concerns. I feared for my physical safety and worried
about someone starting more rumors. It felt like 600 people against
one. It's a numbers game which becomes a mental game. When you feel
like that many people are against you, it's overwhelming. I had some
allies, but they were too scared to stand up with me or for me.
When you are worried about your safety it sucks going to school.
It's hard to concentrate.
I would get anti-gay texts on my phone. I'd walk down the hall and
I'd be called names. The guy that outted me was the ring leader.
This is not how I wanted to go to school. I wanted to feel safe so
I decided to start a gay-straight alliance to help educate my peers and
faculty and stop the homophobia and hate. I began working with Iowa
Pride Network.
Unfortunately, the potential advisor of the gay-straight alliance
tried talking me out of it. The advisor said I would be bullied or
harassed even more. But 1 wanted that support and I was tired of
hearing anti-gay remarks. I wanted a change.
I kept being told a gay-straight alliance was a bad idea. At the
same time I was dealing with teachers who wouldn't call on me in class
or involve me. One teacher even felt it was OK to say ``that's gay''
when describing dislike. Female teachers didn't feel comfortable around
me and avoided me because I identify as a lesbian.
Faculty wanted nothing to do with me.
I finally felt so discouraged I gave up on the gay-straight
alliance and my school. I developed anxiety, stomach issues, and
depression. I just didn't want to go to school. I didn't want to go to
have faculty not pay attention to me, and no one handling the bullying
problem.
My mom called the superintendent. He said he would look into it.
But nothing changed.
My principal would call my mom to say that I was never in school,
and my mom would explain it was because the school wasn't handling the
bullying situation.
That's when I decided to enroll in Des Moines Area Community
College (DMACC) to get away from the harassment and bullying and get my
diploma through DMACC. I am currently a junior and have enough credits
to have graduated this spring and I wanted to go to college in the
fall, but now I can't because I can only ``graduate'' once my class
does next year. My life is put on bold, and because I'm being held
back, so is my financial aid for college.
One bright spot I was looking forward to was going to my high
school prom with my girlfriend. I wanted to go to prom and have that
high school experience. I was told I wasn't allowed because of me
missing school and attending DMACC for classes. But another student in
my grade who had missed school and was attending classes at Iowa State
University was allowed to go. It was a double standard. The principal
said not only could I not go to prom; I wouldn't be allowed to bring my
girlfriend.
My experience at Gilbert High School has been tough.
I hope through this testimony that schools will realize that not
providing a safe and supportive environment does affect students and
their ability to learn. Students shouldn't have to worry about being
judged for who they are. Judge them on their actions not on how they
present their gender or sexual orientation. You should be able to go to
school and know that there are going to be teachers that support you.
School faculty needs on-going training. People who want to become
teachers need classes that help them understand how to deal with
bullying.
Schools here in Iowa need to follow and understand Iowa's Safe
Schools Law as well as Federal laws that protect students. People must
be held accountable for their actions.
Schools need gay-straight alliances. I know in my school, a GSA
would help make students understand that anti-gay remarks do hurt
people and that hate toward any group of people makes our school an
unsafe place.
Senator Harkin, thank you for allowing me to speak here today.
The Chairman. Liz, thank you very much.
I appreciate all your testimonies, but I've got to say,
these three students, weren't they remarkable? Let's hear it
for them. I mean, they're great. Wow.
[Applause.]
This is the future leadership of our country right here, I
can tell you right now. Very eloquent statements by all of you,
and I thank you for being here.
Let me just say thank you for sharing your stories, for
being so courageous to do that. It takes a lot of courage.
We all have different stories. You've heard all this other
stuff here. I believe you are an inspiration to other students.
But--and maybe this is not a fair question, but I'll try it
anyway. If you had just one bit of advice to give to a student
who is being bullied today in school, what would that advice
be?
I'm going to ask you, and you, and you.
Emily.
What would you say to someone you know who was getting
bullied? What would you say to them as a friend?
Ms. Domayer. Don't be afraid to find a responsible adult
who you know cares. Unfortunately, for students with autism,
that's not always easy because they're not able sometimes to
verbalize what is going on. I'd say that parents need to take
an extra look and look at their schools and make sure that
everybody is on the same page as far as bullying.
The Chairman. Matt.
Mr. Shankles. Well, it's hard to say. I don't know if I can
really answer it because every situation is different. But I
guess they should just know that, no matter what, even if it
seems like you're the most alone person in the world, there is
always someone there, always something, someone there for you,
someone who cares.
The Chairman. That's good advice.
Liz.
Ms. Sederquist. If I were to give advice to someone, I
think the first thing I would tell them is don't give up. Think
about who you are inside and out, and I'm not going to say to
forget about that person or the group of people who are
bullying you because that is a hard thing to do. You have to
think about the things that you want to do, your dreams, your
aspirations, everything, and you have to focus on that, and you
have to tell yourself that every day. If somebody is calling
you ugly, you need to sit there and you need to say, you know
what, I'm beautiful. I am who I am, and I am proud of who I am.
As Matt had said, there's always someone there. There's
always a light at the end of the tunnel, and you should not
give up. If you get pushed down, come back up and fight back
and be strong. Do not sit there and be silent, because silence
is the worst thing ever. If people don't know what is
happening, then how can anybody help?
Open your mouth, raise your voice, yell and scream if you
have to, but do something about it. Have people who are going
to be there for you and help you with it, and be proud.
The Chairman. Wow. All three of you, you're wise beyond
your years, very wise, and it's very profound what you just
said. What I think I got out of that was, if you were giving
advice, you'd say, first, be proud of yourself, take pride in
who you are. Don't think that you're a second-class citizen.
You have the same rights as everybody else.
Second, find someone that you can trust and that you can
rely on. Find someone that you can confide in who will help you
and support you. And I think also, wouldn't you say, try to
build those coalitions within your school where students feel
like you do. I mean, don't feel like you've got to do it by
yourself. There are other students who feel like you do. Maybe
they're not getting bullied, but they're sensitive to this.
You've got to reach out and start forming these coalitions of
students.
Maybe I'm wrong, but in my experience just through working
in this area, it's not the gay or the lesbian or the Asperger's
syndrome or the kid that's slight of structure or someone who
dresses different. They're not the ones who are really alone.
The bullies are the ones who are really alone. They've just got
to be isolated, because if you all work together, the bullies
will find out that they don't represent, I think, the mass of
any student body out there.
Don't let the bullies think that they control everything,
that somehow they have the support of all the other students.
But this sort of leads to my other point, and that is, Dr.
Gausman, what you said, and I think all three of you, and
especially, Ellen, you talked about prevention. Here we have a
State where we have anti-bullying laws and anti-bullying
policies in our schools. Yet, it's still going on. What is
being done? What sort of training is there for principals and
teachers? What sort of information are they getting from State
organizations such as ISEA, the Iowa State Education
Association, the School Administrators of Iowa, the Elementary
and Secondary School Principals Association? What kind of
information and ongoing training do they get through these
associations that they belong to?
Ms. Reilly. First, I would just speak to the fact that,
yes, we have policy, and yes, we have procedures. However, in a
day and age of No Child Left Behind, when academic scores are
what defines how we spend our time on professional development
within our schools, it is very difficult to find any additional
time to train people on the impact of bullying, on the myths
and facts of bullying, and on their responsibility as an
educator and what they need to do.
As educators, we should not be chained to math and reading
scores. We should be chained to creating whole people and
looking at the whole individual and the whole issue. Again, the
academics are important. That's what we are; we're educators.
But, kids, you've heard it. They can't learn if they are
afraid, and we have to listen to kids when they say they're
afraid. We can't tell them just ignore it, walk away. It's
abuse, and it needs to be dealt with as abuse.
The Chairman. Dr. Gausman.
Mr. Gausman. Yes, if I could. Just a couple of thoughts
related, that we do have conversations about this regularly,
and this is something that does need to be ongoing, as has been
suggested. It's important for us through our training. We
participated in a national documentary related to bullying, and
that's all about taking a look at bullying through the lens of
those who are bullied. It's a compelling story.
We need to understand the bullies to really make a
difference. It's about insecurity. It's about power. It's about
control. And we must, of course, look for those who are being
bullied and do what we can to mitigate those circumstances for
them. But if we're truly going to prevent, we're going to have
to understand.
I mean, everyone in this room, it doesn't matter who they
are, they've been a victim of bullying either as a bully
themselves, as a person who was bullied, or as a bystander, or
in most cases some combination of those. It's not new, but for
us to make a difference, our organizations do help us. The Safe
and Supportive Schools grant is really very helpful. Our
organizations, some that you mentioned today, are very helpful
to us, but we really have to engage the community.
Part of the reason we participated at the level that we
did, knowing that we might not be reflected upon as the most
positive, was because our goal was to stir things up just a
little bit to see if we could get our community talking about
the challenge of bullying in schools.
As I sat at the White House a couple of months ago I
thought, well, we accomplished that task, stirring things up
just a little bit. Now, what's really important is that we
understand that you can't find an administrator who isn't
addressing the bullying problem and fix that administrator and
have the problem go away. There is no one person. I mean, if
there's a villain in the film, if you will, or if there's a
villain in the challenge, I don't think we can look out the
window and find that villain. I think we have to look in the
mirror.
The Chairman. I think you made the point elsewhere in your
testimony that it's not just the school. It's the community.
Mr. Gausman. Sure it is.
The Chairman. It's the families.
Mr. Gausman. I don't want to make it sound as though we're
not holding ourselves accountable. We should be held
accountable. We deserve to be held accountable, as well, but we
can't do it alone.
The Chairman. Penny, my question was the training for
principals, information for teachers. I mean, we have all these
organizations, and they have meetings. As Ellen said, a lot of
this is so focused just on academics and scores, test scores,
but there's not much time for this other training. I just
wanted to get any observations on that.
Ms. Bisignano. I think when I hear the students here
talking about being proud, be who you are, that we really have
an obligation as adults to protect our students, and we need to
step up. A part of that is the misinformation, the misdirection
that's out there around bullying and bullying prevention. So we
need to really get clear about what works and what doesn't. We
need to really know what's evidence-based and what is not. We
need to survey, which means we ask questions so Emily has an
opportunity to tell us what's been going on. We shouldn't wait
for her to be in agony and do a report. We want to know what's
going on in all of our schools.
But we have to start with the adults. We just have to do
that. I think a policy is not going to get us there. We really
have to look at this as a system, and that's why I again, what
Paul would say, and Emily and Ellen, that we have that Safe and
Supportive grant, which I think is helping us a lot in Iowa to
really look at the climate, the conditions for learning, the
safety conditions, the engagement, being engaged, thinking
about your experience at Gilbert, to be engaged in school to
know I'm valued here, they want me here, it's important that
I'm here, and an environment that's that way for all of our
students, and it means each, not all as a total group, but each
and every student.
So we're very excited about that work because we really
feel this could really be a model for what we look at in the
country to change those norms, the social norms in a school, so
that everyone there feels valued, they feel that they belong
and it's important that they're there.
The Chairman. Let me ask you another question. I just made
a note on this. It just occurred to me. I asked about the
structure as it exists now with teachers, principals, that type
of thing. How about backing up? How about our schools of
education? When they get out and they do their practicums or
whatever they call it, their practice teaching, is there
anything there? I have to find this out. I don't know the
answer to that question. As part of their instructional
material in how they learn to teach, is part of that learning
how to recognize bullying and what they should do in their own
classroom?
Ms. Bisignano. In some. The folks here could speak to that.
But again, we have a lack of consistency about what this really
is and what it's about, and I think that a Federal definition
and some encouragement about really helping people to know what
does make a difference in bullying and harassment so we don't
have the--as you say, I've been contacted by every company in
the country. Everyone wants to come and do an assembly.
Another kind of program is now an anti-bullying program. I
saw this with the students at risk. When students at risk was
first identified as an area that we needed to focus on a number
of years ago, every publisher changed their materials to state
these are student-at-risk materials.
We really need to make sure that we are all on the same
page, that this is treated seriously. I see it almost as civil
rights. If we look at the movement of civil rights and we look
at what's happening with bullying, I think that's probably a
good model for us, that we need to have some common
understanding and appreciation of how we're going to protect
our kids.
The Chairman. Liz, your story is obviously very
compelling--I'm going to go back to you, Liz--and your decision
to drop out of school and to come to DMACC. As I read your
testimony and listened to you, it occurred to me that this is a
rather small school. I don't know how big Gilbert is. What is
it student-wise?
Ms. Sederquist. About 500 to 600 kids.
The Chairman. Five hundred, something like that. But what
kind of comes through in there is that the faculty there and
the principal and others, they seem to have lacked any training
at all in how to deal with this.
Ms. Sederquist. Well, there was training about 10 years ago
at Gilbert.
The Chairman. Pardon?
Ms. Sederquist. There was training at Gilbert about 10
years ago. But when you have faculty turnover, and you have a
new principal, I mean, that training goes out the window, and
that was a one-time thing.
The Chairman. I see.
Ms. Sederquist. So that's when I said we need training 24/
7, sort of like a corporation, how managers and even workers go
through training all the time, right? Schools should do that,
because there is a turnover of students every 2 years, there is
a turnover of faculty God knows how many years, and it would be
better if we had training going on all the time, because then
it can be refreshers. And, yes, it may get annoying, but it's
annoying for a reason. It's to be put in your brain for a
reason.
And, if the training was happening all the time, then new
people that come in--I mean, there's new students every day.
There's new people every day. There's faculty that comes in and
there's visitors that come in. If the training happened all the
time, that might cut down on some things. But the fact that
there is faculty that ignores students and excludes students,
and a principal, or even a superintendent that just shoves the
things aside, it's just wrong.
The Chairman. So ongoing training, not just a one-shot type
of deal but an ongoing, supportive type of training process
that goes on.
Ms. Sederquist. Exactly.
The Chairman. Matt.
Mr. Shankles. On top of the ongoing training, I completely
agree, I think the training should include materials or
statistics from the school, from the students, how can we
handle this because this is what is actually happening. I know
in the past I've participated in teacher trainings at Linn-Mar
where I came in on a teacher workday and gave a seminar, told
my story. I kind of explained a little bit about Iowa's Safe
Schools legislation and said here's what I think you can do,
and I really felt that through my story I definitely helped
some teachers there. Some reached out to me and said that it
actually did help.
The Chairman. Go ahead, go ahead. Just chime in there, Liz.
And then Emily. Did you have something?
Ms. Domayer. Yes.
The Chairman. Go ahead, Liz.
Ms. Sederquist. As Matt said with teachers and training and
everything, I believe that with ongoing training, that would
help a lot. It would make a difference. But, not just centering
around LGBTQ. It can be around disabilities, as well. You know
how GSAs have materials, and they teach things and history and
stuff. California is putting LGBTQ in the textbooks. I'm not
saying we have to put them in the textbooks, but to have
teachers learn about that and learn through the struggles about
anybody, and have seminars and workshops, it could possibly
help so then they would know a little background information.
The Chairman. Emily.
Ms. Domayer. When I was first diagnosed, the teachers did
not understand how--I had an individualized education plan, an
IEP, but I was still in all regular education classes. It was
like my parents had to actually teach these teachers about
autism and Asperger's syndrome because they didn't understand
any of it. I do think that we have come a long way in the last
few years with regard to autism awareness, and I think that's
really great. But I also think that if we do ongoing training,
that there needs to be very specific stuff about people with
disabilities, kind of saying these are the stereotypes and
here's a real person with this disability, this is what this
looks like, this is what this person has gone through.
I think that also, engaging parents using social media is
another important aspect, having a school disability awareness
Facebook page or using a Twitter account to stay in contact
with parents and just let them know, OK, I'm the teacher, but I
still want you to know that I'm here for you, and that if you
have any questions about anything, how your child is doing, so
that way the social media will help students and teachers and
communities all be on the same page so that there's no
confusion about, OK, my child was bullied, what do I do?
I definitely think that, along with what everyone else has
said, that there needs to be a group effort and that it has to
be a community effort, that people should work together on it.
The Chairman. I think you're giving me an interesting idea
here. That's why I asked my staff. As social media is being
used to bully, you're saying social media could also be used
the other way around.
Ms. Domayer. Yes. I am a member of a couple of different
autism groups on Facebook, a women's autism group. Yes, these
social media things like Twitter and Facebook can be used for
negative things, but fortunately also for some positive benefit
as well.
The Chairman. That's what Matt did.
How do we extend this out, Ellen?
Ms. Reilly. I want to say that with our Be Bully Smart
campaign, we have a Facebook page, and it's a resource to our
community, and it's spread across Iowa, and hopefully it could
even go nationwide, because it doesn't say anything about
Davenport. It says, ``Be Bully Smart. See it. Stop it. Report
it.'' I've had parents use the Facebook page to send private
messages to me and ask me how do I handle this bullying
situation. Have I gone too far? Is there more I need to do?
What can you do to help?
So again, just as it can be used to harm, it is also a very
helpful tool to use to get information across to people.
And I do want to say something else quickly about training.
Central High School in Davenport has the IS3 grant, and one of
the most powerful things that has come out of this is the youth
voice. They have surveyed these kids, and one of the things
that came out was they've been trained in Olweus, but the
students don't think that the teachers take it seriously
enough, and they've requested that the school be re-trained and
that the students, the leadership team be re-trained with the
teachers so that the teachers know the students know what
they're supposed to be doing, which I think was just a--you
know, Olweus is really designed to train the teachers. But at
the high school level, these kids are advocates and they want
something done.
The Chairman. Dr. Gausman, you get one of those grants.
You've gotten those.
Mr. Gausman. Yes, at two of our high schools we have those.
With the Safe and Supportive Schools grant, I have two points
that I'd like to make related to that.
We know things we wouldn't know otherwise because of the
surveys that go on. Something very important for us is--you're
so right that these students are wise beyond their years. We've
got to connect this information with our community. We simply
cannot just train the staff and have bullying go away. We're
going to have to--I mean, like it or not, the school is a
reflection of the community, and we must realize that if we
learn things about our school through this comprehensive
survey, we need to get that data into the community so that the
community understands what's there. It's not something we
should hide from them. It's something we should engage them
with.
So the second piece is that as we train our staff members
in Second Step, and then as those staff members begin to
facilitate groups with the students--that's the curriculum that
we use, it's titled Second Step for kindergarten through eighth
grade--we had community members step forward this year and
begin developing pieces that would go home so that the parents,
the guardians of the students would know what they were
learning in school as it related to bully prevention activities
and they could reinforce that at home.
It's that step beyond the schools that I really think is
missing and where we can do a better job. So that's where we're
really focusing a lot of our energy.
The Chairman. To sum up, you can use these grants, these S3
grants----
Mr. Gausman. Safe and Supportive Schools.
The Chairman. Safe and Supportive Schools grants, you can
use those to build that kind of a Twitter, Facebook, social
media environment, right?
Mr. Gausman. Sure.
The Chairman. I'll have to find out how much of that is
being done with all these grants around the country now. I just
made a note on that because I don't know. It's through my
committee, and I don't even know that.
Michael, we're going to find out about that, right?
[Laughter.]
I never thought about it. I guess I'd been brain-locked
into thinking that social media was just used to harm, but it
can be used the other way around like you've done. You learn
something new every day.
I've just received a note that says my time has just about
run out. I will first ask if any of you have anything that you
haven't said or that you wanted to bring up or point out that
hasn't been done, or you're saying, ``gosh, I wish he'd asked
this question,'' and I didn't ask it.
Liz, one last thing?
Ms. Sederquist. One thing I wanted to add about surveys is
when you make the kids and school take surveys in, say, a
computer lab or anything, when they're all together, I honestly
believe that's a bad idea, because you have students looking at
each other's screens or papers or whatever, and that can make a
student be, like, ``oh well, if I say this, what are they going
to think?'' I believe if we did surveys in a separate room,
everybody went in one at a time, then maybe they would be more
truthful, and maybe we would find out what's really going on in
school, because then they don't have anybody around to judge
them. I mean, the walls aren't going to judge them, so they can
be honest and be open.
The Chairman. A good suggestion. I don't know.
Matt.
Mr. Shankles. I just got to thinking about the Olweus class
meetings, and I don't know if they go into high school because
we don't have them at Linn-Mar High School, class meetings, but
I remember that we had to take surveys in middle school, and it
was basically all of us sitting in a room and everyone went,
``What are you going to put here?'' ``I'm just going to say no
on everything.''
So I always felt, looking back, trying to talk to some
people within the learning research center at Linn-Mar, how can
we get more accurate results from surveys, like she said, and
that is something that had not occurred to me, to put people in
a separate room. Yes, kind of like voting.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. What I'd like to do now, as I said, I do have
some time, so I'd like to open it up to the audience. Laura
Sands on my staff has a roving mic. I'd just ask if you have a
question or a comment, a statement, to be as brief as you can.
The court reporter, due to our rules here, they have to have
your name. So just state your name.
And maybe nobody has any. But if you do, just hold your
hand up and Laura will give you a mic.
Ms. Taha. My name is Sherrie Taha. It's S-h-e-r-r-i-e, last
name Taha, T-a-h-a.
Senator, thank you so much for having this here. I was 21
when I came out, and that was a few decades ago, and there was
definitely some bliss in ignorance. And through the decades, as
our society has come to be more open, one of my concerns has
been for the kids who start to realize at younger and younger
ages who they actually are. And more importantly, the people
around them start to notice who they are and peg them for a
victim.
I appreciate that while our society becomes more open, it
also becomes more dangerous. Thank you for doing this, and the
community is a very critical piece to include in this. So I
particularly appreciate you having this at the time when
Capital City Pride will be having our celebration this weekend,
and that's a very important community aspect of it.
I lived out of Iowa for 30 years and saw Pride change over
the decades from just a handful of people participating to
being throngs of people. In the 10 years that I've been back in
Iowa, I've seen Pride grow from just a handful of people to
hundreds participating. And while I'm not an organizer of that
event, and while I don't know what your schedule is, I'm sure
that your participation in the parade on Sunday would be
greatly appreciated and be a notable aspect of the importance
of the community being involved, the political community in
addition to individual efforts.
I'm going to be there in the crowd, and I hope and would
guess that the organizers would find a place for you in the
parade. So I'd just like to plug that.
The Chairman. OK. Thank you.
Ms. Taha. One last thing that is very important that I
heard, in addition to the community piece, is the power and
control with regard to the bullies, and this is an important
piece that has been talked about with domestic violence and
oppression of any sort, whether it has to do with women being
oppressed in their homes or racialist aspects, or disability or
LGBT, whatever the community is. The importance of that power
differential is a key piece in the community, too. And I've
overstated, but thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very, very much.
There's somebody over here, Laura, a couple of people here
who had their hands up. I can't see who they are right now.
Ms. Parker. Hi. I'm Wendy Parker. I'm the educational
services director at Newton Schools. I came with my son,
Andrew, who graduated in 2006. He was a Matthew Shepherd
Scholarship winner.
The Chairman. Well, congratulations.
Ms. Parker. We've been doing a study group at Newton for
the last 6 months, actually started about a year ago when Penny
came out, and we were looking at what are we going to do, sort
of the reaction thing, and then we sort of realized we don't
really know where we are. I can sit here and think--my other
son is gay also, graduated from Newton, had no problems. So I
can say we don't have any problems at Newton, clearly. Look at
my experience.
Not true. So we are spending 3 days in June. Two days ago,
we spent a whole day. We are interviewing kids, interviewing
teachers, really talking about where are we in Newton. In fact,
we have a very active GSA. We're very proud of it. We won an
award this year.
But in talking to those GSA kids--we went to the conference
on bullying. I went with them. The most important thing----
The Chairman. At what school?
Ms. Parker. Newton.
The Chairman. Newton. OK.
Ms. Parker. The most important thing to them is that they
have classrooms that are safe and teachers that respond to
things, as well as a peer group which goes along with the GSA.
On the training, I think about what any of us who work for
schools know, back to school is blood-borne pathogens.
Everybody does it. You do it, and if you don't do it, I don't
know what happens to you, but it's so horrible that we all do
it, right?
Could this training be like blood-borne pathogens, so
important that if you don't do it, that something horrible
happens to you? But along with training--because I just think
it should be required. You shouldn't have to get a grant. You
shouldn't have to do this. It should be required. It should be
a class for new teachers. I know Human Relations touches on it,
but I'm a teacher that teaches those classes, and sometimes it
happens, sometimes it doesn't.
So how does it happen? And then the followup coaching and
are we really doing it, and surveys that really reflect if it's
having an impact, because just training doesn't do it. We were
going to go in a direction of Safe and Supportive Schools, and
with that we also get--they come in four times a year and
actually do coaching and followup.
I think it's so brave for Sioux City to be here, so
wonderful. You have helped us so much by sharing your story,
you know? Because, I'll tell you, if you went in our school and
you followed every single person under a microscope, somebody
would say the wrong thing, and that can be so traumatic to a
kid. When one teacher says, ``Hey, if you two don't stop
messing around, I'm going to think you're boyfriend and
boyfriend.'' You know what, that just killed somebody in that
room emotionally.
So we just can't do that, and we have to have that followup
and say that's what we're talking about, that's what we were
talking about with that training.
That's my message, blood-borne pathogens.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. All right. Thank you. I've never heard it
expressed that way.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Book. Hi. I'm Gerry Book. I'm dressed in my farmer's
hat right now, but I do have a Master's in Counseling and I am
certified for just about everything in Special Ed.
When we were in school, I'd done a lot of group work in the
past, and so I thought, well, let's organize a support group
here, and Liz is the only one I remember saying support group,
and I think that's the most important term that you need in a
school. Every kid needs a support group. He needs one at home,
and he needs one at school. He also needs at least one adult in
both places that cares about him, or her.
[Laughter.]
But we were kind of going along by trial and error, and
finally the way we organized our support group was the kids
would come up with an issue and we finally located a place
where we could meet privately. The rules were you didn't talk
about it. It was confidential in your support group. We also
explained that if suicide and that sort of thing came up, we
had to talk about it to somebody. But most of the time it was
private.
We had many kids bring issues. There were issues about
home, parents, issues about other kids, issues with teachers,
and they discussed it and talked about it and worked with each
other. They helped each other.
I noticed that there were some freshmen who had some
difficulty. An older kid got tuned into it, and there's nothing
more powerful than the older kid coming along asking the
freshman how he's doing that day. I've had freshmen come and
tell me, ``gee whiz, he asked me how I was doing.''
We also did mediations, and mediation like I learned in
farm prices back in the 1980s, when Fatty Judge was my
coordinator. Anyway, we called them ``sat downs'' rather than
mediations. I remember one in particular was a kid, a freshman
who was so upset about something, he threatened to bring his
shotgun to school and shoot the other kid. Well, we let it set
for a couple of days, and then I asked them if he'd like to do
mediation. We invited in a couple of kids that hadn't heard
about it yet. We did the mediation.
It finally became apparent that the freshman needed to
apologize. He did, after some real encouragement from the other
kids. But the freshman one day came and told me, he said this
older kid that I hated so bad came by and saw my artwork and he
told me how good I was doing. The freshman was just totally
enthralled with this kid. They became friends.
They didn't have to beat each other up to do it. We did a
mediation, and I think mediation in schools could be used very
effectively if we just would. So I guess my frustration now is
that I have all this experience and knowledge and I don't have
any place to use it. I'd like to find a school or something
that needed some instruction and do some of these kinds of
things.
The Chairman. We'll get your name and address and phone
number. I'm always being asked for things like that.
I've got time for one more question. Oh, boy, we've got two
more.
Ms. Bradle. I'm Tracy Bradle, T-r-a-c-y, B-r-a-d-l-e.
I want to say, first of all, I'm lucky enough to be Matt's
mom.
The Chairman. Hey.
Ms. Bradle. We're a matched set.
Second of all, I think there's one thing--and, Senator
Harkin, you and I briefly talked about this earlier--that
doesn't get pointed out is that the parents are part of this.
We are supposed to be the grownups, and Paul talked about his
colleague who ended up being shown in a bad light in the
bullying movie and is now being bullied herself. We can't fix
it if we continue to perpetuate it, and I think that's
something that we need to make sure that we bring home, is that
it's not just the school's responsibility.
My No. 1 priority is to raise decent human beings. That's
my No. 1 job.
The Chairman. You've done pretty well.
Ms. Bradle. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. From what I can see, you've done pretty darn
well.
Ms. Bradle. I have another one, so we'll see how he turns
out.
[Laughter.]
But that's my No. 1 job, and we are supposed to be the
grownups, and we have to act like it.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Now, somebody over here has been trying to get--we'll try
to get one more in here.
Mr. Sheebout. Thank you. Senator Harkin, my name is Francis
Sheebout, and I'd like to comment from this whole program today
a little different angle and get your response. I've got a
question and then a side comment I want to make in regard to
that.
From your point of view, with your experience and taking an
interest in natural medications and agents and things like
that, how big a player is body chemistry in the scheme of
things, like serotonin, dopamine, and that type of thing?
My side comment is I've got a packet of information I'd
like to leave you after the meeting which has got some old
scientific information dating back to 1995 with your name in it
and talking about serotonin. Things have evolved since then
greatly, and there are now urinalysis tests where we can test
young adults and kids, and science tells us that low levels of
serotonin, people are suicidal.
So there are some great things in the works. People don't
like to talk about a lot of this stuff, and it's taboo, and in
a lot of instances the medical profession can be running 10
years behind the times. But there is some good news out there,
and I'd like to get your opinion on it. And like I said, after
the meeting I've got some information I can leave you, and if
you've got any comments in regard to that now, that would be
fine.
The Chairman. I don't know that I have any comments on that
right now. I mean, as a general observation, it's been my
experience on this committee--because we deal with health also,
and we deal with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
and the National Institutes of Health. It's been I think my
information, and my belief now based upon that information,
that a lot of kids are overdosed or over-diagnosed with
illnesses, and a lot of our kids I think are on drugs that have
long-term detrimental effects, and we're not dealing with the
emotional underpinnings of some of those physical ailments.
I don't mean to sound like gobbledy-gook. What I'm saying
is that a lot of physical ailments that people have, and
especially kids, while they're real, while there are real
physical manifestations, the underlying cause is not a
physiological cause. It is a psychological cause. It's an
emotional disturbance, and the way that it is played out is
through some physiological manifestation.
I think that what happens is that many times, especially
with kids who have emotional trauma, perhaps they're having a
hard time discovering who they are and realizing their
orientation or who they are, they get mixed up, and so there's
a physiological reaction. So the doctor prescribes drugs, and
they get on this, and that does not really reach to the
underlying cause of why they tend to be ill or why they tend to
have a lot of manifestations of gastrointestinal problems or
asthma or a number of other things. There's a lot of body of
evidence now out there to show that.
I don't know if that gets to your point or not, but that's
been--we've had a lot of hearings on this in the past, too, to
point that out. But that's another issue that I didn't want to
bring up today.
Listen, I'm sort of overdue, but there was someone back
there who had their hand up right at the beginning and I never
called on them.
[No response.]
OK. Now there's two, and then I've got to cut it off.
Ms. Whetstone. I'm sorry. I was handed the mic.
My name is Gano Whetstone. It's G-a-n-o, W-h-e-t-s-t-o-n-e.
And I was a former teacher and administrator at school, and I
myself was a monitor reporter in situations. I feel like we
need to do more to do monitor reporting in the school. I
reported a lot of it to the mental health center and to the
doctors, and I think we need to have an understanding of the
health issues involved, too, like you said, the mental and
emotional problems.
But I think there needs to be a lot of mandatory reporting
and told where to go and who to report things to also. Thank
you.
The Chairman. One of the things that I have been trying to
do for years, both in my capacity as the chair of this
committee and the Appropriations Committee, is to focus on
elementary school counseling. Most people think of high school
counseling, and they think about it in terms of counseling only
in terms of college work, counseling in that regard. I wanted
to focus on elementary school counseling to get qualified
people, qualified individuals who had degrees in child
development to be in our elementary schools to recognize early
on the problems that some of these kids have and to help them
get through counseling.
Some kids come from pretty tough backgrounds and they have
a tough life, and they have tough home lives. And to the extent
that we can help with counselors to work with them and work
with their families, I think we get much healthier kids later
on. If these kids aren't helped when they're in elementary
school and that digs inside of them and they bury it inside
them, it comes out later on in middle school and high school.
And I just think that we sweep a lot of this under the carpet
when they're in elementary school.
Yes, one more time back here, and then we're going to have
to call it off.
Ms. Claypol. Hi. My name is Alicia Claypol, A-l-i-c-i-a, C-
l-a-y-p-o-l. And I want to thank you, Senator Harkin, for
holding this hearing today here in Iowa. I think it's very
important, and I think it's been very helpful for everyone who
has been here.
I wanted to make several comments. One is that I was glad
to hear the comments made about dealing with bullying is not a
civil right. In other words, being gay is a civil right, and
that we need to address that in our civil rights laws.
Obviously, Iowa has made that progress already, but it goes
back to enforcement.
I just want educators to know and families to know that
there is a school portion in the Iowa civil rights law, and
bullying, you can file complaints with the Iowa Civil Rights
department. So don't forget that that is a tool available in
your quiver of tools to address bullying in your communities. I
used to be on the Civil Rights Commission, so that's how I know
that. I chaired the Commission for 5 years, and we were one of
the partners in this room, among many people, who helped to
lead the effort to pass the anti-bullying law, as well as the
civil rights law in 2007, adding sexual orientation and gender
identity as protected classes in Iowa law.
Second, I wanted to make a comment about the woman from the
GAO reference that, well, maybe we should just talk about all
kids should be protected from bullying. And while, yes, that's
true, all kids do need to be protected, I don't want to let any
elected official get away with not feeling that we need to
enumerate all of these protected classes, because as we've
learned in civil rights law, if you don't name it, it doesn't
get protected.
We need to make sure that we do itemize, that we do address
those demographics. We cannot just say all kids will be
protected because in Gilbert, that won't happen. I'm so sorry
to hear about the story from Gilbert, because what got me
interested in dealing with bullying in the first place was
because of a kid named Gerry in Gilbert 10 years ago. I mean,
the circle has come full circle, and it's very distressing to
know that in spite of the progress we've made in Iowa, we
haven't made enough progress because Liz has not been
protected, and that is extremely unfortunate.
That leads me to my final comment, which is about
accountability. There needs to be accountability at all levels
of the system. That means we've worked on policies. Those can
be strengthened in Iowa. I don't know that we need any more
laws, but we certainly need better policies and procedures.
There needs to be accountability for the educators, every
person in the school, not just the teacher but the bus driver,
the school cook, the counselor, everybody. There needs to be
accountability on the part of adults. School board members need
to be included in that, parents as well as students, and the
systems. There were several comments made about the systems.
This is a cultural problem. We can no longer, as other people
have said, dismiss this as, well, kids will be kids, it's a
rite of passage, blah blah blah. That's not true.
We need to change our culture, and therefore we have to
address accountability in all the systems, and that's why we
need to also reach out to the community, as others have said
too, to make sure that we can change the culture. So it's the
schools, it's the students, it's the parents and the community
at large.
Thank you very much for being here and for all the great
comments that were made today. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Alicia Claypol, who has been a
great leader in our civil rights community for many, many
years. I thank you for that.
I want to thank each of our witnesses for their excellent
testimony, for sharing your stories, for the important work you
do every day. This topic has a very special importance to me.
I'm grateful for this productive discussion we've had today.
The committee will leave the record open for 10 days until
June 18.
I want to thank everyone here for getting involved in the
campaign against bullying through your attendance here today. I
think we've learned a lot of important things. I will take
these insights and comments back to Washington with me. I hope
you'll take them back to your communities and your schools. I
just thought it was a very productive hearing.
This is, again, something that--this whole issue of
bullying we've got to address on a broad basis, not just in
schools or communities, as you said so eloquently. And again,
we're always looking for what is the role of the Federal
Government in our policies in this, and that's sort of what
we're searching for, what is our proper role and what can we be
doing to be supportive in a way that, again, I feel very
strongly about, and that's prevention. How do we get it out
there so that we prevent this from happening in the first
place?
Again, I thank you all very much, and the committee will
stand adjourned.
I'm supposed to bang the gavel. There you go. We're done.
[Applause.]
[Additional material follows.]
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Prepared Statement of Chad Griffin, President, Human Rights Campaign
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Chad Griffin,
and I am the president of the Human Rights Campaign, America's largest
civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender (LGBT) equality. By inspiring and engaging all Americans,
HRC strives to end discrimination against LGBT citizens and realize a
nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all. On
behalf of our over 1 million members and supporters nationwide, I am
honored to submit this statement into the record for this important
field hearing on ``Bullying-Free Schools: How Local, State and Federal
Efforts Can Help.''
LGBT youth are subject to widespread and pervasive discrimination
at school, including harassment, bullying, intimidation and violence.
They are deprived of equal educational opportunities in schools in
every part of our Nation when teachers and administrators do not
intervene to stop bullying behavior. We have been saying for decades
that growing up gay or transgender is not easy. On June 7, HRC released
a new report--``Growing up LGBT in America''--that provides a stark
snapshot of what it is like to grow up gay or transgender. Included in
the report is new data on the bullying faced by LGBT youth in schools.
The report is based on a survey by HRC of more than 10,000 LGBT
teens (ages 13-17) across the country on what life is like for them in
America today. This is the largest known survey of LGBT youth ever
conducted. It includes LGBT youth from every region of the country,
from urban, suburban and rural communities, and from a wide variety of
social, ethnic and racial backgrounds.
According to our survey, LGBT youth often experience rejection from
their families, employers, places of worship and elected
representatives. This makes them profoundly disconnected from their
communities. While schools should serve as a respite from this
rejection, LGBT youth say they most often hear negative messages about
being LGBT when they are at school.
The survey tells us that LGBT youth experience bullying at school
more frequently than their non-LGBT peers. In fact, LGBT youth are
twice as likely to experience verbal harassment, exclusion and physical
attack at school as their non-LGBT peers. Among LGBT youth, 51 percent
have been verbally harassed at school, compared to 25 percent among
non-LGBT students; 48 percent say they are often excluded by their
peers because they are different, compared to 26 percent among non-LGBT
students; and 17 percent report they have been physically attacked at
school, compared to 10 percent among non-LGBT students.
The survey also shows that LGBT youth identify bullying as a
primary problem in their lives. They identified family rejection (26
percent), school/bullying problems (21 percent) and fear of being out
or open (18 percent) as the top three problems they face. In
comparison, non-LGBT youth identified classes/exams/grades (25
percent), college/career (14 percent) and financial pressures (11
percent) as the top three problems they face. Clearly, LGBT youth spend
time worrying about bullying and rejection, while their non-LGBT peers
are able to focus on grades, career choices and the future.
Bullying behavior is problematic because it has severe consequences
on students--some of which have been found to last into adulthood.
Students who experience bullying and harassment suffer from higher
levels of depression and anxiety and have lower self-esteem. Bullied
students receive grade point averages almost half a grade lower than
students less often harassed at school and are less likely to pursue
any post-secondary education. LGBT students are three times more likely
to have missed classes and four times more likely to have missed at
least 1 day of school in the past month because they felt unsafe or
uncomfortable at school, as compared to the general population of
secondary school students. Tragically, students who are bullied at
school are also more than twice as likely to report a suicide attempt
as students who are not bullied.
Unfortunately, only 16 States and the District of Columbia
(effective Jan. 2013) have laws that explicitly address bullying of
students based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Additionally,
23 States prohibit bullying in schools but list no categories of
protection. Iowa is one of the States that proudly enacted a law in
2007 that requires school districts to adopt anti-bullying policies
that include sexual orientation and gender identity. Regrettably, some
anti-equality legislators in Iowa have been working to have this
enumeration rescinded.
It is our experience--and the experience of those that have studied
bullying laws and policies--that LGBT students are more likely to
report bullying and teachers are more likely to intervene when sexual
orientation and gender identity are enumerated in an anti-bullying
statute or policy. We must have enumerated anti-bullying statutes and
policies. Unenumerated language is not enough.
There is no statutory prohibition on schools discriminating against
students based on sexual orientation or gender identity at the Federal
level, but protections do exist on the basis of race, color, national
origin, sex and disability. In addition, there is no Federal
requirement that schools enact enumerated anti-bullying policies. Based
on this patchwork of State laws and the nonexistence of Federal laws on
bullying, LGBT youth experience varying degrees of protection from
bullying based on the State they live in and the school district in
which they attend school.
The Human Rights Campaign urges Congress to pass the Student Non-
Discrimination Act (SNDA, S. 555; H.R. 998) and the Safe Schools
Improvement Act (SSIA, S. 506; H.R. 1648) to address bullying of LGBT
youth. These complimentary pieces of legislation address the issue in
distinct ways. SNDA would prohibit public schools from discriminating
against any student on the basis of actual or perceived sexual
orientation or gender identity. SSIA would require school districts
that receive Federal funds to adopt anti-bullying policies that
enumerate protections for students on the basis of race, color,
national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity
and religion. Together, the SNDA and SSIA prohibit schools from
overlooking bullying of LGBT youth and require schools to enact anti-
bullying policies that include LGBT youth.
These bills are supported by numerous education, legal, health and
civil rights organizations. Among the supportive national school-
focused groups are the National Education Association, the American
School Counselor Association, the National Association of School
Psychologist, the National Association of Secondary School Principals,
and the School Social Work Association of America. In addition, 79
percent of Americans support passing laws prohibiting the bullying of
LGBT youth according to a 2011 HRC poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan
Rosner Research.
Passing legislation is important, but not enough, if we want to
drastically decrease the bullying experienced by LGBT youth. We must
also involve administrators, teacher, parents, students and communities
in conversations about bullying and efforts to combat bias in schools.
We must ensure that in elementary school, children learn to respect all
kinds of differences, including diversity in family structure, race,
religion, gender and national origin. HRC's Welcoming Schools does just
that. It is an innovated and field-tested program that offers tools,
lessons and resources on embracing family diversity, avoiding gender
stereotyping and ending bullying and name-calling in elementary
schools. The program leads to learning environments in which all
students and families are welcomed and respected. Welcoming Schools has
trainers and consultants located throughout the country that are
skilled in working with schools, communities and parents to bring about
institutional-change that make our schools better and children safer.
It's a safe bet that somewhere in America tonight, an LGBT young
person will close the door to his or her bedroom, turn off the lights,
and will, for countless hours, stare at the ceiling worrying about
being gay or transgender and being bullied at school next Monday. On
behalf of all of them, I urge you to pass the Student Non-
Discrimination Act and Safe Schools Improvement Act. I also urge you to
encourage schools districts in your State to implement initiatives,
like Welcoming Schools, that teach tolerance and combat bias-based
behaviors at an early age.
Over the past half-century, our Nation has worked to make it easier
for all Americans to access education free of discrimination and bias.
Congress and the President have recognized that schools cannot tolerate
discrimination in schools based on race, color, national origin, sex
and disability. These civil rights laws have improved access to
education for millions of Americans, creating empowered students and
future leaders. Congress must act to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender students have the same chance to receive a
discrimination-free education and become future leaders of our country.
Prepared Statement of the Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League is one of the Nation's premier civil
rights/human relations organizations, founded in 1913 ``to secure
justice and fair treatment for all and to put an end to unjust and
unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of
citizens.'' ADL is the Nation's leader in the development of effective
programs to confront anti-Semitism, bigotry, and prejudice. The
League's strength is its ability to craft innovative national
programming and policy initiatives and then to refine and implement
them through staff in our network of 28 Regional Offices. The national
headquarters in New York houses extensive research archives as well as
staff members with professional expertise in legal affairs and
education. Complementing these professionals are ADL lawyers,
educators, and human relations professionals in Regional Offices
throughout the country.
addressing bullying and cyberbullying--the adl approach
Over the past 30 years, the Anti-Defamation League has emerged as a
principal national resource for education and advocacy tools to address
prejudice and bigotry. And over the past decade, the League has built
on these award-winning anti-bias education and training initiatives to
craft innovative programming and advocacy to address bullying and the
pernicious new form of harassment affecting children and students known
as cyberbullying.
Working to create safe, inclusive schools and communities is a top
priority for ADL. The League takes a broad, holistic approach to
addressing bullying and cyberbullying, tracking the nature and
magnitude of the problem, developing education and training programs,
and advocating--at the State and Federal level--for policies and
programs that can make a difference.
The Federal Government, in partnership with State and local public
agencies, non-profit, community organizations, and colleges and
universities, can play a critical role in ensuring that our schools and
communities are safe places for all students. Federal leadership on
these important issues helps nurture a climate and a culture in which
the vast majority of members of the community are willing to condemn
bigotry, bullying, cyberbullying, and harassment.
We believe that while laws and appropriate, inclusive school-based
policies can be a focal point for addressing bullying, education
strategies, training programs, and community involvement are necessary
complements to any effective response.
the nature and magnitude of the problem
Bullying and harassment in elementary, secondary, and university
educational settings are continuing problems for administrators,
educators, parents, and students across the Nation. The large body of
credible research on effective responses to bullying supports the
conclusion that schools and other educational institutions can best
address these behaviors through ongoing, comprehensive plans that
include both intervention and prevention strategies. As demonstrated by
the most important recent studies on this national problem (included at
the end of this statement), professional development is a key component
that provides opportunities for educators to share their thoughts and
experiences about bullying at their schools, assess existing practices,
adopt effective policies and procedures, and reinforce and strengthen
effective response strategies.
bias-motivated bullying and cyberbullying
According to the authoritative 2011 report, Indicators of
School Crime and Safety, 10 percent of students ages 12-18 reported
that someone at school had used hate-related words against them, and
more than one-third (35 percent) reported seeing hate-related graffiti
at school in 2007. [U.S. Dept. of Education, National Center for
Education Statistics and U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice
Statistics (2011).]
Research shows that bullying is often related to ingrained
biases and prejudices. For instance, according to the 2009 National
School Climate Survey (GLSEN, 2010), 84.6 percent of LGBT youth
reported being verbally harassed because of their sexual orientation,
and 39.9 percent reported that it happened often or frequently. Nearly
64 percent had been verbally harassed because of their gender
expression, and 25.6 percent reported that it happened often or
frequently. Additionally, these same LGBT youth also reported bullying
based on other aspects of their identity--48.1 percent were verbally
harassed because of their gender, 40 percent because of their religion,
32.9 percent because of their race or ethnicity, and 17.1 percent
because of their disability.
A January 2004 study focused on the severe impact of bias-
related harassment and bullying for students. In that survey 27.4
percent of students said they had experienced some type of bias-related
harassment. Low grades, truancy, depression, suicide, substance abuse,
victimization, and other risk behaviors were all associated with bias-
related harassment. Consequences of Harassment Based on Actual or
Perceived Sexual Orientation and Gender Non-Conformity and Steps for
Making Schools Safer. California Safe Schools Coalition and 4-H Center
for Youth Development, University of California, Davis, 2004).
bias-motivated juvenile hate crime
There is currently very little hard data about youthful hate crime
perpetrators and victims. Congress has helped address this problem in
two ways in recent years.
First, to increase awareness of hate violence on college campuses,
Congress enacted in 1998, an amendment to the Higher Education Act
(HEA) requiring all colleges and universities to collect and report
hate crime statistics to the Office of Post-Secondary Education (OPE)
of the Department of Education. The Department's hate crime statistics
have reflected very substantial underreporting http://ope.ed.gov/
security/Search.asp). But even worse, for many years, that limited data
was inconsistent with campus hate crime information collected by the
FBI under the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 (HCSA)--because the
Department of Education's hate crime categories did not conform to the
crime categories collected by the FBI. In 2008, Congress acted to
require the Department to collect the same campus hate crime categories
as the FBI. The new standards should give parents and students a
broader and more accurate picture of the campus climate. In addition,
consistent statistics will increase public awareness of the problem,
and may serve to provoke improvements in campus safety measures and the
criminal justice system.
In addition, importantly, the recently enacted Matthew Shepard and
James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, [Public Law 111-84,
Division E] mandates additional reporting requirements for the FBI
under their existing HCSA requirement--hate crimes directed at
individuals on the basis of their gender or gender identity and for
crimes committed by and against juveniles. In addition, nine States
currently require collection of juvenile hate crime statistics (Idaho,
Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, New York,
Tennessee, and Virginia).
The existing HCSA data provides some troubling insights:
An October 2001 report by the Justice Department's Bureau
of Justice Statistics provided disturbing information about the too-
frequent involvement of juveniles in hate crime incidents. This report,
Hate Crimes Reported in NIBRS, 1997-99, which carefully analyzed nearly
3,000 of the 24,000 hate crimes to the FBI from 1997 to 1999, revealed
that a disproportionately high percentage of both the victims and the
perpetrators of hate violence were young people under 18 years of age:
33 percent of all known hate crime offenders were
under 18; 31 percent of all violent crime offenders and 46
percent of the property offenders.
Another 29 percent of all hate crime offenders were
18-24.
30 percent of all victims of bias-motivated
aggravated assaults and 34 percent of the victims of simple
assault were under 18.
34 percent of all persons arrested for hate crimes
were under 18; 28 percent of the violent hate crimes and 56
percent of the bias-motivated property crimes.
Another 27 percent of those arrested for hate crimes
were 18-24.
According to the FBI, the third most common location
nationwide for a hate crime to occur is on a school or college campus.
The FBI 2010 annual Hate Crime Statistics Act report states that 10.9
percent of hate crimes occur at schools or colleges, and 18.6 percent
were targeted because of their perceived sexual orientation [U.S.
Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2010].
the response of the obama administration to bullying, cyberbullying,
and harassment
The Obama administration has demonstrated extraordinary commitment
to addressing bullying and cyberbullying in a comprehensive and
inclusive manner. The October 26, 2010 Department of Education, Office
of Civil Rights Bullying and Harassment Dear Colleague guidance, the
significant work of the Department's Office of Safe and Drug Free
Schools on the topic, the new and expanded Federal partners anti-
bullying Web site, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention LGBT
anti-bullying violence prevention Web site, and the video messages the
President and members of his Cabinet made to elevate the issue and
empower targets all demonstrate a clear recognition that leaders can
make a difference addressing this issue.
In addition, we are pleased that the Administration has been active
in helping to resolve and clarify rights for all Americans. For
example, Justice Department intervention helped to settle a case, J.L.
v. Mohawk Central School District, a lawsuit filed by the New York
Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a student, J.L., who was the alleged
victim of severe and pervasive student-on-student harassment based on
sex. According to the Justice Department's filings, J.L. had failed to
conform to gender stereotypes in both behavior and appearance. He
exhibited feminine mannerisms, dyed his hair, wore makeup and nail
polish, and maintained predominantly female friendships. The Department
alleged that the harassment against J.L. escalated from derogatory
name-calling to physical threats and violence--and that the Mohawk
Central School District had knowledge of the harassment, but was
deliberately indifferent in its failure to take timely, corrective
action, thereby restricting J.L.'s ability to fully enjoy the
educational opportunities and benefits of his school. The Department
alleged violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, both of
which prohibit discrimination based on sex, including discrimination
based on gender stereotypes. The school district denied these
allegations.
On March 29, 2010 a settlement was approved by the U.S. District
Court in the northern district of New York which required the Mohawk
Central School District to, among other things: (1) retain an expert
consultant in the area of harassment and discrimination based on sex,
gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation to review
the District's policies and procedures; (2) develop and implement a
comprehensive plan for disseminating the District's harassment and
discrimination policies and procedures; (3) retain an expert consultant
to conduct annual training for faculty and staff, and students as
deemed appropriate by the expert, on discrimination and harassment
based on sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual
orientation; (4) maintain records of investigations and responses to
allegations of harassment for 5 years; and (5) provide annual
compliance reports to the United States and private plaintiffs. As part
of the settlement, $50,000 was to be paid to J.L. and $25,000 in
attorneys' fees was to be paid to the New York Civil Liberties
Foundation.
We were also pleased with the Administration's active involvement
in helping to resolve Doe and United States v. Anoka-Hennepin School
District, in which multiple students alleged harassment by other
students because they did not dress or act in ways that conform to
gender stereotypes. The Department of Justice and the Department of
Education conducted an extensive investigation into sex-based
harassment in the district's middle and high schools, finding that many
students reported that the unsafe and unwelcoming school climate
inhibited their ability to learn. The United States, at the behest of
the Federal District Court for the District of Minnesota, joined in the
mediation of the students' case against the Anoka-Hennepin School
District. Together, the three parties entered a Consent Decree, and
jointly filed a motion to approve the decree and a memorandum in
support of that motion--and the District Court entered the decree,
resolving the case between the parties.
The Consent Decree, entered on March 6, 2012, requires the Anoka-
Hennepin School District to: (1) retain an expert consultant in the
area of sex-based harassment to review the district's policies and
procedures concerning harassment; (2) develop and implement a
comprehensive plan for preventing and addressing student-on-student
sex-based harassment at the middle and high schools; (3) enhance and
improve its training of faculty, staff and students on sex-based
harassment; (4) hire or appoint a title IX coordinator to ensure proper
implementation of the district's sex-based harassment policies and
procedures and district compliance with title IX; (5) retain an expert
consultant in the area of mental health to address the needs of
students who are victims of harassment; (6) provide for other
opportunities for student involvement and input into the district's
ongoing anti-harassment efforts; (7) improve its system for maintaining
records of investigations and responding to allegations of harassment;
(8) conduct ongoing monitoring and evaluation of its anti-harassment
efforts; (9) and submit annual compliance reports to the departments
during the 5-year life of the Consent Decree.
Justice Department involvement also helped resolve another
important complaint involving race, color and/or national origin-based
harassment of Asian students at South Philadelphia High School, and
allegations that the school district was deliberately indifferent to
the severe and pervasive harassment. The complaint filed by the Asian-
American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) in U.S. District
Court for the eastern district of Pennsylvania, alleged persistent
harassment, including an incident in December 2009 in which
approximately 30 Asian students were attacked and approximately 13 were
sent to the emergency room.
The settlement agreement in December 2010 will help ensure that the
district: (1) retains an expert consultant in the area of harassment
and discrimination based on race, color and/or national origin to
review the district's policies and procedures concerning harassment;
(2) develops and implements a comprehensive plan for preventing and
addressing student-on-student harassment at the high school; (3)
conducts training of faculty, staff and students on discrimination and
harassment based on race, color and/or national origin and to increase
multi-cultural awareness; (4) maintains records of investigations and
responses to allegations of harassment; and (5) provides annual
compliance reports to the department.
department of education office for civil rights (ocr) guidance on
bullying, cyberbullying, and harassment: background and significance
The Anti-Defamation League strongly welcomed the October 26, 2010
Dear Colleague guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Education's
Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to address bullying in schools.
The OCR Dear Colleague letter accomplished three things of major
importance for ADL:
1. Provided an unprecedented, inclusive description of the breadth
of existing Federal anti-discrimination laws and their application to
both K-12 schools and colleges and universities. In addition, the Dear
Colleague letter set out explicitly a school's duty to address
incidents of discriminatory harassment under specific Federal civil
rights laws and described the responsibilities schools have for
appropriate responses, including timely investigation, counseling,
discipline, education and training.
``Harassment does not have to include intent to harm, be
directed at a specific target, or involve repeated incidents.
Harassment creates a hostile environment when the conduct is
sufficiently severe, pervasive, or persistent so as to
interfere with or limit a student's ability to participate in
or benefit from the services, activities, or opportunities
offered by a school.''
In clarifying the breadth of Federal anti-discrimination law
coverage, the Dear Colleague letter included helpful examples of
incidents of harassment and described appropriate school responses.
Importantly, the guidance stressed that when responding to an incident
of discriminatory harassment where a hostile environment is formed, it
is not enough for the institution to punish the student who is
responsible. Instead, the administration must address the environment
and the effect of the incident and take steps to ensure that harassment
does not recur.
2. Made clear that anti-Semitic harassment on campus can be
prohibited by Federal civil rights law. ADL had called for
clarification of this issue in a March 2010 letter that the League
helped coordinate with 12 other Jewish organizations. That letter
called on the Department to interpret title VI to protect Jewish
students from anti-Semitic harassment, intimidation and
discrimination--including anti-Israel and anti-Zionist sentiment that
crosses the line into anti-Semitism.
In addition, this OCR guidance was buttressed by the conclusions of
the United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR), after the
Commission held a briefing on campus anti-Semitism in November 2005.
Finding that campus anti-Semitism is a ``serious problem which warrants
further attention,'' it recommended that ``OCR should protect college
students from anti-Semitic and other discriminatory harassment by
vigorously enforcing title VI.''
Specifically, the OCR guidance makes clear that Title VI of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964--which bars schools receiving Federal dollars
from discriminating based on ``race, color or national origin''--
protects Jewish students from anti-Semitism on campuses ``on the basis
of actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.'' The
OCR guidance defines title VI coverage as follows:
``While title VI does not cover discrimination based solely
on religion, groups that face discrimination on the basis of
actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics
may not be denied protection under title VI on the ground that
they also share a common faith. These principles apply not just
to Jewish students, but also to students from any discrete
religious group that shares, or is perceived to share, ancestry
or ethnic characteristics (e.g., Muslims or Sikhs).''
This clarification is particularly welcome in conjunction with
ADL's continuing work to combat anti-Semitic bullying, harassment and
bigotry on campus--including anti-Semitic intimidation of pro-Israel
activists. According to the guidance, this includes harassment that is
``sufficiently serious that it creates a hostile environment and . . .
is encouraged, tolerated, not adequately addressed or ignored by school
employees.''
While a complete examination of the parameters of the title VI
coverage of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, or anti-Zionist activities on
campus is beyond the scope of this statement, it is critically
important to distinguish between anti-Semitic activities on campus and
anti-Israel activities. We certainly do not believe that every anti-
Israel action is a manifestation of anti-Semitism. But the League is,
obviously, concerned about organized anti-Israel activity which can
create an atmosphere in which Jewish students feel isolated and
intimidated.
Natan Sharansky, human rights activist and now Chairman of the
Jewish Agency Executive, created a concise and useful three-part litmus
test to help identify when legitimate criticism of Israel can cross the
line to anti-Semitism. In what he calls the ``3D Test'': demonization,
double standards, and delegitimization, Sharansky posited questions to
help distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism:
Is the Jewish State being demonized for its action? Are
the problems of the world or the Middle East being blamed on Israel?
Is there a double standard when criticizing Israel in
relation to other countries? Are Israeli faults exaggerated and far
worse human rights violations in other places ignored?
Is there an attempt to delegitimize the Jewish State? Are
the Jewish people alone in not having the right of sovereignty?
In addition, importantly, in recent years, both the U.S. Commission
on Civil Rights and the State Department have tailored their own
responses to the spread of this new stream of anti-Semitism that
manifests itself as vilification of Israel. Both use definitions
similar to the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism.
In its short April 2006 Finding and Recommendations of the United
States Commission on Civil Rights Regarding Campus Anti-Semitism the
Commission stated:
On many campuses, anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist propaganda has
been disseminated that includes traditional anti-Semitic
elements, including age-old anti-Jewish stereotypes and
defamation. This has included, for example, anti-Israel
literature that perpetuates the medieval anti-Semitic blood
libel of Jews slaughtering children for ritual purpose, as well
as anti-Zionist propaganda that exploits ancient stereotypes of
Jews as greedy, aggressive, overly powerful, or conspiratorial.
Such propaganda should be distinguished from legitimate
discourse regarding foreign policy. Anti-Semitic bigotry is no
less morally deplorable when camouflaged as anti-Israelism or
anti-Zionism.
3. Underscored that harassment based on sexual orientation and
gender identity in schools and on campus is prohibited by Federal civil
rights law. The Department of Education also announced that it would
use Title IX of the Civil Rights Act--which prohibits discrimination on
the basis of gender--to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
students. According to the OCR guidance, ``title IX does protect all
students, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)
students, from sex discrimination'' and
``it can be sex discrimination if students are harassed
either for exhibiting what is perceived as a stereotypical
characteristic for their sex, or for failing to conform to
stereotypical notions of masculinity and femininity.''
This is a very welcome development.
We believe the OCR Dear Colleague helps make clear that bullying--
and particularly bullying based on race, religion, ethnicity,
disability, sexual orientation and gender identity--is an issue that
must be taken seriously. The guidelines represent a significant step
forward in protecting children from bigotry and harassment.
Federal leadership on this important issue is critical to ensure
that schools are safe places for all students, and that they help
foster a culture in which bias and bullying are not tolerated. The
guidelines will help community members work together to promote a civil
and respectful environment for children, online as well as offline.
As the Department released the new guidance, it announced its plan
to hold workshops and training sessions around the country to help
educators better understand their obligations and the resources
available. And on December 16, 2010, the Department of Education issued
a Key Policy Letter providing assistance for States and local
jurisdiction in crafting effective anti-bullying laws and policies. The
Department included a summary of legislative initiatives some States
had enacted to prevent and reduce bullying. ADL has compiled a chart
which includes links to each of the 50 State anti-bullying law in the
country (49 States and the District of Columbia), highlighting key
provisions of these laws. A copy of this chart is included separately
as part of our statement.
adl advocacy on bullying and cyberbullying prevention initiatives
ADL has been at the forefront of responding to bias, bullying, and
cyberbullying through a combination of education and legislative
advocacy, including drafting a model State bullying prevention policy
which requires schools and communities to approach the issue of
bullying with proactive, responsive and responsible measures. Several
States, including Florida and Massachusetts, have recently adopted
policies based on ADL's model.
ADL advocates for anti-bullying policies on the Federal level, on
the State level, and in schools. The League promotes policies that are
inclusive and comprehensive--balancing a school's duty to maintain a
safe learning environment with students' constitutional rights.
Three years ago, ADL developed a model bullying prevention law for
States, which provides schools the resources they need to combat and
respond to bullying, and the unique issue of cyberbullying. The model
law, among other things, provides a strong constitutional definition of
bullying that includes electronic bullying. It also addresses bias-
motivated bullying, requires clear procedures for reporting and
investigating bullying incidents, provides counseling for targets and
perpetrators, and mandates training for faculty and students.
For years, ADL has been advocating on the State level for strong
comprehensive bullying laws. In States that had no laws, ADL advocated
for their passage. In a State with a weak anti-bullying law, ADL
advocated for strengthening it. The League played leading roles in the
advocacy efforts in Massachusetts, Florida, New Jersey, New York, and
Georgia.
In Massachusetts, ADL organized and led the coalition of
community groups advocating for the law's passage from the ground up.
The law is based in large part on ADL's model policy and, at the bill
signing ceremony, Governor Patrick specifically commended ADL for our
work in seeing the law passed. Now, ADL is working with the State on
the most important part of any new law--its implementation.
In New York, where ADL was a leading organization in the
push to pass the Dignity for All Students Act, the League now sits on
the Task Force established by the New York State Education Department
which will work on implementing this new bullying prevention law.
Likewise, ADL worked with Garden State Equality to get the
New Jersey anti-bullying bill passed and we are now working in
partnership on implementation efforts.
There is an educational component to ADL's advocacy strategy as
well. It is critical that the community is informed and engaged on this
topic for any law or policy to have real meaning. ADL regularly
addresses administrators, faculty and community members on the issue of
bullying, the legal concerns surrounding community response to the
issue (particularly with responding to cyberbullying), and the League
provides guidance on what makes a strong school bullying prevention
policy.
In addition to our advocacy to State lawmakers and local school
officials, ADL has advocated for policy and programming recommendations
for Federal action.
In January 2010, ADL submitted comments on the Justice
Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's
(OJJDP) Proposed Program Plan for fiscal year 2010. The comments
applauded OJJDP on their effort to address bullying and cyberbullying
and provided background on ADL's related education programs and model
legislation.
As previously mentioned, in March 2010, the League joined
with 12 other Jewish organizations in calling for the Department of
Education Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to interpret title VI to
protect Jewish students from anti-Semitic harassment, intimidation and
discrimination.
In August 2010, the League submitted recommendations to
Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Health and Human Services Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius, and to U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. in
advance of a first-ever Federal Bullying Prevention Summit.
In March 2011, the League wrote a letter to President
Obama commending the Administration for convening the first White House
Bullying Prevention Conference and for demonstrating a strong
commitment to address bullying and cyberbullying in a comprehensive and
inclusive manner. We submitted recommendations on how the U.S.
Government can more effectively address the issue of bullying and
cyberbullying.
Finally, advocating for a Federal response for bullying
was one of the three priority items on which our National Leadership
Conference participants lobbied their Representatives when they visited
Capitol Hill for an advocacy day as part of ADL's annual conference in
early May 2012.
As Congress continues efforts to rewrite and update
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), ADL is
urging Members to support inclusive anti-bullying and
cyberbullying initiatives, including the Safe Schools
Improvement Act (SSIA), H.R. 1648, introduced by Rep. Linda
Sanchez (D-CA) and S. 506, introduced by Sen. Casey (D-PA).
This bill would help schools to develop and implement bullying
prevention policies and programs. It also requires States to
gather and report information on bullying and harassment.
In addition, after the Tyler Clementi case focused
national attention on the dangers of bullying and
cyberbullying, Rep Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg
(D-NJ) introduced the Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-
Harassment Act (H.R. 1048/S. 540) to require colleges and
universities to recognize cyberbullying as a form of harassment
and fund institutions with anti-harassment programs. ADL
supports this legislation, which calls for establishing and
publicizing policies to ``prohibit[s] harassment of students
based on their actual or perceived race, color, national
origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity,
or religion.''
ADL also seeks to build collaboration with other national
organizations on this issue.
In advance of the August 2010 Federal Bullying Prevention
Summit, ADL coordinated a letter from 71 national civil rights,
religious, professional, and education groups with a series of anti-
bullying policy and program recommendations for Federal agencies and
Congress.
ADL resources are being used as part of the unique Jewish
youth group collaboration against bullying Stand UP for Each Other, a
campaign for respect and inclusion involving United Synagogue Youth
(USY), North American Federation of Temple Youth (NFTY), Young Judaea,
National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY), and BBYO.
And the League also helped lead a recent effort to promote
the adoption of a thoughtful and inclusive new American Bar Association
(ABA) Resolution on Bullying. The Resolution and accompanying
comprehensive Report approved in February 2011 put the ABA on record,
for the first time, in support of Federal and State policies and laws
designed to prevent and respond to bullying and cyberbullying. The ABA
also urged Internet service providers and social networking platforms
to adopt terms of service that define and prohibit cyberbullying and
cyberhate. The League is now working with State bar associations to
promote the adoption of policies and replicate the research at the
State and local level.
adl policy and program recommendations: confronting bullying
and cyberbullying
In advance of the first White House Bullying Prevention Conference
in March 2011, the League's best lawyers and educators prepared policy
and programmatic recommendations for the President and the
Administration. We praised the President and his Administration for
their ``extraordinary commitment to address bullying and cyberbullying
in a comprehensive and inclusive manner.''
The complete listing of proactive strategies to confront bullying
and cyberbullying recommended by the League is included below.
1. Programs and Training Initiatives
The Federal Government should require the adoption of an
anti-bullying policy for school personnel and students in every State.
We welcomed the December 16 Key Policy Letter from the Education
Secretary and the Office of Civil Rights Deputy Secretary which
highlighted components of effective anti-bullying laws, using examples
from existing State laws. That letter stated:
``Though laws are only a part of the cure for bullying, the
adoption, publication, and enforcement of a clear and effective
anti-bullying policy sends a message that all incidents of
bullying must be addressed immediately and effectively, and
that such behavior will not be tolerated.''
As previously mentioned, the League has been at the forefront of
responding to bias, bullying, and cyberbullying through a combination
of education and legislative advocacy, including drafting a model State
bullying prevention policy that requires schools and communities to
approach the issue of bullying with proactive, responsive, and
responsible measures. The ADL model anti-bullying law is inclusive,
comprehensive, and sufficiently protective of the First Amendment.
ADL believes a strong and comprehensive anti-bullying statute
should:
include a strong definition of bullying, which
includes cyberbullying;
address bullying motivated by race, religion,
national origin, gender, gender identity, disability, sexual
orientation and other personal characteristics;
include notice requirements for students and parents;
set out clear reporting procedures;
require regular training for teachers and for
students about how to recognize and respond to bullying and
cyberbullying.
The Department of Education, working with the Department
of Justice and other Federal agencies, should institutionalize and
coordinate anti-bullying/cyberbullying prevention and response programs
within their safe schools/healthy schools and school-related violence
prevention initiatives.
We welcome the extraordinary compilation of anti-bullying resources
available at the new stopbullying.gov, Web site, coordinated by several
Federal agencies, and the Bullying Prevention Campaign maintained by
the Health Resources and Services Administration of HHS.
We welcome the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC)
recently launched Web page devoted to the issue. We believe CDC anti-
bullying resources for schools and parents are an excellent complement
to its essential, ongoing violence prevention work.
The Department of Education should provide training and
technical assistance to teachers, principals, and school administrators
on its excellent October 26 Department of Education Guidance on
Bullying and Harassment.
The Anti-Defamation League strongly welcomed the Department of
Education Office of Civil Rights (OCR) October 26 Dear Colleague Letter
to thousands of school districts and colleges across the country
clarifying their responsibilities with respect to student bullying and
harassment. The guidance demonstrates that the Department of Education
takes bullying--and particularly bullying based on race, religion,
ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity--very
seriously. We believe the new guidelines represent a significant step
forward in protecting children from bigotry and harassment. We
especially appreciated the fact that the OCR rightly interpreted the
Federal civil rights law to protect students from anti-Semitic
harassment.
As Congress works toward enactment of a reauthorization of
the Elementary and Secondary Schools (ESEA), the Administration should
promote the inclusion of comprehensive and inclusive anti-bullying and
cyberbullying initiatives as one of its ESEA priorities.
The League supports H.R. 1648/S. 506, the Safe Schools Improvement
Act, which would help schools to develop and implement bullying
prevention policies and programs--and require States to gather and
report information on bullying and harassment. ADL also supports H.R.
1048/S. 540, the Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act
which would require colleges and universities to recognize
cyberbullying as a form of harassment and fund institutions with anti-
harassment programs. The legislation also calls for establishing and
publicizing policies to ``prohibit[s] harassment of students based on
their actual or perceived race, color, national origin, sex,
disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or religion.''
Federal agencies should provide resources, fund, develop,
and promote programming and training initiatives--including Webinars--
for teachers, administrators, parents, students, State Attorneys
General, law enforcement officials (school resource officers in
particular) and others in the community on how to recognize and respond
to bullying, harassment, and cyberbullying.
Most school systems lack adequate funding for personnel to design,
implement, and staff these prevention and response programs. Anti-
bullying programs and initiatives must address this significant
barrier. Successful policies and programs are both proactive and
responsive, and engage the community to action.
Using its expanded anti-bullying Web sites, and
newsletters from the Department of Education and its Office of Safe and
Drug Free Schools and the Justice Department and its Office of Juvenile
Justice Delinquency Prevention, the Federal Government should make
information available regarding effective bullying, cyberbullying and
hate crime prevention programs and resources--and promote awareness of
successful training initiatives and best practices.
The Administration also should commend and highlight State and
local efforts to carry out effective anti-bias education programs.
2. Research, Reports, and Data Collection Initiatives
In conjunction with academic institutions, the Department
of Education and the Department of Justice should fund research into
the nature and magnitude of the bullying/cyberbullying problem in the
United States, specifically its impact on both the social and emotional
health of students and the impact on academic achievement.
Bullying can have a devastating effect on the lives of teenagers:
According to an Associated Press 2009 survey, 60 percent
of young people who have been bullied report destructive behavior such
as smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, using illegal drugs or
shoplifting (compared to 48 percent of those not bullied).
The same study indicated that the targets of digital abuse
are twice as likely to report having received treatment from a mental
health professional (13 percent vs. 6 percent of others), and nearly
three times more likely to have considered dropping out of school (11
percent vs. 4 percent of others).
A 2009 study from the Cyberbullying Research center found
that bullied students are three times more likely to drop out of school
and one-and-a-half to two times more likely to have attempted suicide.
The Department of Education's National Center on Education
Statistics, the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics,
and the Department of Health and Human Services--including the CDC--
should update and coordinate reporting requirements and data collection
efforts on bullying and cyberbullying. Possible reforms include:
The School Survey on Crime and Safety questionnaire
should include more questions regarding teacher and
administrator perceptions of occurrences of bullying and
cyberbullying.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime
Victimization Survey's School Crime Supplement (NCVS-SCS)
should ask questions designed to draw connections between
bullying and personal characteristics of students and whether
students were harassed because of these characteristics.
The School Crime Supplement should also collect
information on student technology use and the connection to
increased occurrences of cyberbullying.
The Indicators of School Crime and Safety annual
report should expand its three-page section on bullying and
cyberbullying.
The influential Youth Risk Behavior Survey's section
on bullying and cyberbullying should be expanded.
The Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights and
the National Association of Attorneys General should update their
excellent 1999 report, Protecting Students from Harassment and Hate
Crime.
This detailed guide promoted a comprehensive approach to protecting
students from harassment and hate-motivated violence and included
sample policies and procedures from across the Nation. An updated
report should integrate resources to address cyberbullying.
3. Media Literacy and Public Awareness Initiatives
The Federal Government should provide resources for
parents and adult family members to inform them regarding the
prevalence of bullying on social networking sites and through cell
phone use.
Despite the prevalence and impact of cyberbullying, many adults are
unaware of the problem due to a lack of fluency in new technologies,
limited involvement in and oversight of youth online activity and
strong social norms among youth against disclosure of online behavior.
Therefore, it is critical to develop programming for teachers, parents
and other critical partners on how to recognize and respond to
cyberbullying. There is considerable misunderstanding about harassment,
students' free speech rights on the Internet, and when ``kids will be
kids'' goes too far. Current research indicates that less than one-
third of parents are aware of available tools, such as parental
controls, that can help them protect their children from online
threats.
Working with youth-oriented private corporations--such as
Cartoon Network, MTV, Nickelodeon, YouTube and Facebook--the Federal
Government should promote programs and awareness of the nature and
magnitude of the bullying/cyberbullying problem.
Facebook alone reaches 500 million registered users worldwide each
month. Public awareness and Ad Council campaigns and programming
partnerships with corporations such as Facebook, MTV, Cartoon Network,
and Nickelodeon can leverage their standing with youth to encourage
young people to speak out against harassment and bullying and promote
responsible online behavior.
For example, the Anti-Defamation League serves on the Advisory
Board for MTV's A Thin Line campaign, developed to empower youth to
identify, respond to and stop the spread of digital abuse in their
lives. In addition, since 2010, ADL has partnered with Cartoon Network
on its STOP BULLYING: SPEAK UP campaign, aimed at empowering youth to
take action to reduce bullying. The campaign has its own Web site,
which features a variety of tools and links, including ADL educational
resources.
The Department of Justice and the Department of Education
should encourage State and local Bar Associations and lawyers and
judges to involve themselves in assessing the nature of the bullying
and cyberbullying problem at the State and local levels and crafting
appropriate, constitutional responses.
We welcome the recent action by the American Bar Association to
adopt a thoughtful and inclusive anti-bullying and cyberbullying
Resolution. The Resolution puts the ABA on record in support of:
Adopting inclusive Federal and State policies and laws
designed to prevent and respond to bullying and cyberbullying;
Developing Federal and State programs to identify
targets and enhance appropriate interventions;
Funding programs, research, and evaluations that
address prevention and responses to bullying and cyberbullying;
Training, data collection, and appropriate notice of
bullying incidents to the families of those involved;
Internet service providers and social networking
platforms to adopt terms of service that define and prohibit
cyberbullying and cyberhate; and
School districts to implement the October 2010 U.S.
Department of Education Office of Civil Rights ``Dear Colleague''
letter on bullying and harassment.
Consistent with the First Amendment, the Federal
Government should encourage Internet providers to clearly define
prohibited hate speech and prohibit the use of hate in any Terms of
Service agreement.
No provider of Internet services, social networking, or user-
submitted content sites should ignore the fact that these sites can
become vehicles for promoting harassment and hate. Web sites should
establish clear, user-friendly reporting mechanisms for reporting
hateful content and act quickly to remove or sequester hateful content
once it is reported.
The Federal Government should promote Internet media
literacy--specifically programs to help develop students' critical
thinking skills for Internet, viral, and wireless communications.
For most teenagers, Internet use is a part of daily life. We should
promote civil discourse on the Internet and should teach young people
how to identify risks and engage in critical thinking for Web-based
research and communications. Students should be trained on how to use
electronic communications in a responsible manner, how to develop
empathy for others and how to intervene safely and not be a bystander
when confronted with bullying and harassment.
4. Public Advocacy Supporting Anti-Bullying and Hate Crime Prevention
Initiatives
The Justice Department and the FBI should work
collaboratively with civil rights and community-based groups and law
enforcement organizations to ensure comprehensive and effective
implementation of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes
Prevention Act (HCPA), with particular attention to the new requirement
that the FBI collect hate crime statistics committed by and against
juveniles, beginning in January 2013.
The HCPA provides new tools to promote partnerships between
Federal, State and local officials to confront hate violence. The
passage of the HCPA provides a teachable moment for the country on the
impact of hate violence and bullying--and effective responses. ADL
resources on the hate crimes and the HCPA can be found here.
The White House should complement its Bullying Prevention
Conference with a National Youth Bullying/Cyberbullying Summit.
The Federal Government should make every effort to engage young
people in an advocacy role on these issues. A ``National Youth Bullying
Summit'' could help organize student leaders to promote discussions
surrounding effective ways students can combat harassment and bigotry
in their own school and to bring awareness to successful efforts
nationwide.
Government leaders and public officials should use their
bully pulpit to condemn bullying/cyberbullying, bigotry and bias-
motivated violence whenever and wherever it arises.
We applaud the significant contributions the Administration has
made as part of the ``It Gets Better'' anti-bullying video campaign.
The fact that President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Tom Perez all made videos
is extraordinary--and demonstrates their very welcome willingness to
use their bully pulpit to address this issue and empower targets of
bullying.
Strong leadership from Federal officials can help create a climate
and a culture in which other members of the community are willing to
condemn bigotry and combat bullying, hate, and harassment. Efforts to
advocate for strong hate crimes laws, comprehensive hate crime data
collection, and better understanding between different communities are
a vital part of these efforts.
conclusion
Left unchecked, bullying can contribute to environments in which
youth feel that it is acceptable to express and act on feelings of
prejudice. In an online setting, social cruelty may be a precursor to
more destructive behavior, including participation in gaming sites that
promote hate messages, involvement in hate groups and bias-related
violence. Name-calling and bullying, like other bias-motivated
behaviors, have the potential to escalate into more serious incidents
of violence if they are unchecked. Too frequently, educators, parents,
and students are unsure how to respond.
The bottom line is that whether or not bullying is related to bias
and prejudice, it impacts young people's sense of safety in their
school community and beyond. For this reason, educators,
administrators, families and youth service providers are reaching out
to organizations like ADL to help them navigate the growing problem of
bullying as well as cyberbullying and social cruelty in electronic
forums. This provides ADL with an important opportunity to not only
address the problems of bullying and cyberbullying, but to deepen
understanding about the connections among bullying, bias-motivated
behavior, and online hate activities. It also opens the door to ongoing
anti-bias work and ultimately the chance to promote a culture of
acceptance and kindness in schools and the broader community.
We applaud the committee for holding this field hearing on
bullying. We stand ready to assist the committee as you examine
initiatives and promote proactive strategies to confront bullying,
cyberbullying, and harassment in schools and in the community.
______
ADL Selected Resources on Bullying, Cyberbullying, and Harassment
educational strategies to respond to bullying and cyberbullying
ADL Curriculum Connection: Using Children's Literature to Address
Bullying.
ADL Tools for Responding to Cyberbullying: http://www.adl.org/
combat
bullying/.
ADL has created several different half-day or full-day training
programs for middle and high school educators, administrators, and
youth service providers: http://www.adl.org/education/cyberbullying/
workshops.asp; http://www.adl.org/educa-tion/cyberbullying/program-
cyberbullying-flyer.pdf.
ADL CyberALLYTM: a half or full-day interactive training
for middle and high school students: http://www.adl.org/education/
cyberbullying/cyberally-student-flyer.pdf.
Workshops and Trainings to Address Name-Calling and Bullying:
Becoming an Ally: Responding to Name-Calling and Bullying
Becoming an Ally: Responding to Name-Calling and Bullying (Educator
Version)
Becoming an Ally: Responding to Name-Calling and Bullying (Youth
Version)
Step Up! Assembly Program
Names Can Really Hurt Us Assembly Program
Responding to Cyberbullying:
Trickery, Trolling and Threats: Understanding and Addressing
Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying: Focus on the Legal Issues
CyberALLYTM
Youth and Cyberbullying: What Families Don't Know Will Hurt Them
Tips on How to Respond to Cyberbullying: http://www.adl.org/
education/cyberbullying/tips.asp.
What Can Be Done About Name-Calling: http://www.adl.org/
combatbullying/pdf/what-can-be-done-bullying-handout.pdf.
Take a Stand: A Student's Guide to Stopping Name-Calling and
Bullying: http://www.adl.org/combatbullying/pdf/taking-a-stand-
bullying-guide.pdf.
Advice on Cyberbullying and Teens (ADL interview, Your Teen
Magazine): http://yourteenmag.com/2010/10/cyberbullying-and-teens/.
Internet Safety Strategies for Students: http://www.adl.org/
education/curriculum_connections/cyberbullying/
Internet%20Safety%20Strategies%20for%20
Students.pdf.
Confronting Hate Speech Online: http://www.adl.org/main_internet/
hatespeechonline2008.htm.
advocacy resources to prevent and respond to bullying and cyberbullying
ADL Bullying/Cyberbullying Advocacy Toolkit for State anti-bullying
laws: http://www.adl.org/civil_rights/Anti-
Bullying%20Law%20Toolkit_2009
.pdf.
ADL Bullying/Cyberbullying Model Statute (which has been a model
for a number of States): http://www.adl.org/main_internet/
Cyberbullying_
Prevention_Law.
Responding to Cyberhate: Toolkit for Action: http://www.adl.org/
internet/Binder_final.pdf.
In advance of the August 11-12 Federal Bullying Summit, ADL
submitted to a trio of Federal agencies (Health and Human Services,
Department of Education, Department of Justice) recommendations for
programs, training initiatives, and research proposals: http://
www.adl.org/Civil_Rights/letter_bullying_cyberbully
ing_2010.asp.
Seventy-one national civil rights, education, religious, and
professional organizations submitted complementary consensus
recommendations to the lead Federal agencies in advance of the August
Federal Bullying Summit: http://www.civilrights.org/advocacy/letters/
2010/coalition-letter-to-sec-duncan-on-bully
ing-cyberbullying-and-harassment-recommendations.pdf.
Federal Anti-Bullying/Cyberbullying Initiatives
white house
March 26, 2012: The White House, the Department of Justice and the
Department of Education hosted an LGBT Conference on Safe Schools &
Communities at the University of Texas, Arlington. Over 400 students
and administrators attended to talk about safety and security for the
LGBT community.
June 1, 2011: The Administration launched an LGBT-specific web page
on the White House Web site to coincide with the first day of LGBT
Pride Month. The site includes ``It Gets Better'' videos made by the
President, Vice President, and other Administration officials.
March 10, 2011: The President and the First Lady host the White
House Conference on Bullying Prevention, attended by approximately 150
students, parents, teachers, youth-oriented media, advocates, and
policymakers. One outcome of the conference is the creation of a new
comprehensive Federal anti-bullying Web site, http://
www.stopbullying.gov/.
March 9, 2011: The President and First Lady create a video
addressing bullying for the stopbullying.gov Facebook page.
December 20, 2010: White House staff members make an anti-bullying
video for the ``It Gets Better'' video campaign.
November 23, 2010: John Berry, Director of the Office of Personnel
Management, creates an anti-bullying video for the ``It Gets Better''
video campaign.
November 18, 2010: Vice President Biden posts an anti-bullying
video in the ``It Gets Better'' video campaign.
October 21, 2010: President Obama records an anti-bullying video in
the ``It Gets Better'' video campaign.
department of education
April 20, 2012: Education Secretary Arne Duncan makes a statement
in support of the Student Non-Discrimination Act and the Safe Schools
Improvement Act.
April 2, 2012: The Department of Education released its final
strategic plan to improve the Nation's education system in order to
make all students, regardless of individual characteristics, feel safe
and secure, which impacts students' classroom success. This included
new commitments to LGBT students.
January 2012: U.S. Department of Education's Higher Education
Center publishes a Prevention Update. Bullying and Cyberbulling at
Colleges and Universities describes what bullying is, what statistics
say about the nature and magnitude of the problem, and lessons colleges
and universities have learned.
December 6, 2011: The U.S. Department of Education releases
Analysis of State Bullying Laws and Policies, a new report summarizing
current approaches in the 46 States with anti-bullying laws and the 41
States that have created anti-bullying policies as models for schools.
November 2, 2011: U.S. Department of Education publishes Student
Victimization in U.S. Schools. The report uses data from the 2009
School Crime Supplement to examine student criminal victimization and
the personal characteristics of crime victims.
September 21, 2011: The Department of Education, in partnership
with eight other Federal agencies hosted the second annual Federal
Partners in Bullying Prevention Summit, at which Secretary Duncan
spoke.
June 14, 2011: Secretary Arne Duncan issues a ``Dear Colleague''
Key Policy letter and accompanying legal guidelines that focus on
protecting LGBT students and the rights of students who want to
establish gay-straight alliances in schools.
June 6-7, 2011: The Department of Education held the first-ever
``Federal LGBT Youth Summit'' in Washington, DC. Secretary Duncan said
that his ``commitment to LGBT students is unequivocal.''
April 5, 2011: Secretary Arne Duncan addressed the Anti-Defamation
League's National Leadership Conference on the Administration's efforts
to prevent bullying and cyberbullying.
April 5, 2011: Kevin Jennings, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Safe
and Drug-Free Schools, addressed ADL's National Leadership Conference
and participated in a panel discussion about preventing bullying and
cyberbullying.
March 10, 2011: Secretary Duncan makes Enough is Enough speech at
the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention.
December 16, 2010: The Department of Education Office of Civil
Rights issues a ``Dear Colleague'' Key Policy Letter providing
technical assistance for States drafting their own anti-bullying and
cyberbullying laws.
October 26, 2010: The Department of Education Office of Civil
Rights issues a trailblazing 10-page ``Dear Colleague'' letter to
schools clarifying that some student harassment or bullying--including
harassment on the basis of religion, sexual orientation, and gender
identity--may trigger responsibilities under one or more of the Federal
anti-discrimination laws enforced by the Department of Education and
the Department of Justice.
August 11-12, 2010: Department of Education, with other Federal
partners led by the Department of Justice and the Department of Health
and Human Services, hosts the first Federal Bullying Summit. Federal
agencies joined together to establish an Interagency Working Group on
Youth Programs.
March 16, 2010: The Department of Education Office of Civil Rights
announces it will begin collecting data to measure whether all students
have equal educational opportunity, including data on bullying policies
in schools. This data will help with the department's enforcement of
Federal civil rights laws.
department of justice
April 3, 2012: At the 2012 Summit on Preventing Youth Violence,
young people lead discussions and recommended steps forward for their
city's youth violence prevention programs.
March 26, 2012: The Department of Justice cosponsored the White
House LGBT Conference on Safe Schools and Safe Communities in
partnership with the White House Office of Public Engagement, the
Department of Education and the University of Texas at Arlington. The
conference highlighted the law enforcement tools and programmatic
resources being used by the Justice Department in the education and
law-enforcement contexts to combat violence and harassment directed at
LGBT individuals.
March 5, 2012: Following an extensive investigation by the
Department of Justice and the Department of Education, parties enter
into a consent decree to address complaints involving student
harassment on the basis of gender stereotypes and an unsafe and
unwelcoming climate in Doe and United States v. Anoka-Hennepin School
District.
February 22, 2012: The Bureau of Justice Statistics publishes
Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2011, an annual report that
examines crime that occurs inside and outside schools from the
perspectives of students, teachers, and principals.
December 2011: The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention published a Juvenile Justice Bulletin, Bullying in Schools:
An Overview, which describes a study that examines the connections
between bullying in schools, school attendance and engagement, and
academic achievement.
June 3, 2011: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
(OJJDP) hosts a webinar on ``Bullying and Civil Rights: An Overview of
School Districts' Federal Obligation to Respond to Harassment.''
December 9, 2010: The Justice Department releases an anti-bullying
video, featuring Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Tom Perez
and other Justice Department staff. The video describes rights of
individuals and enforcement powers of the Department.
January 15, 2010: The Department intervenes in a lawsuit on behalf
of an openly gay high school student who was beaten up because of his
sexual orientation. The case is settled on March 29.
department of agriculture
November 24, 2010: Secretary Tom Vilsack posts an anti-bullying
message in the ``It Gets Better'' series.
department of health and human services
March 20, 2012: The CDC hosts a Twitter Live Chat. Veto Violence is
a forum to discuss bullying prevention.
September 21, 2011: The Department of Health and Human Services, in
partnership with eight other Federal agencies, hosted the second annual
Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention Summit, at which Secretary
Sebelius spoke.
Spring 2011: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
issues a new fact sheet that defines what bullying is, why it is a
public health problem, and which people are particularly at risk.
June 6, 2011: Secretary Kathleen Sebelius spoke at the first
``Federal LGBT Youth Summit,'' sponsored by the Department of
Education.
April 22, 2011: A new joint Massachusetts Department of Public
Health/CDC study of Massachusetts middle and high school students shows
family violence may also be associated with bullying.
April 1, 2011: Secretary Sebelius establishes a page on HHS
Recommended Actions to Improve the Health and Well-Being of Lesbian,
Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Communities, including anti-bullying
initiatives.
March 3, 2011: The CDC issues Measuring Bullying Victimization,
Perpetration, and Bystander Experiences: A Compendium of Assessment
Tools to aid researchers in creating a set of psychometrically sound
measures for assessing the incidence and prevalence of bullying.
January 25, 2011: CDC launches a new LGBT bullying prevention web
page, with resources for schools and parents.
October 28, 2010: HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issues a press
release announcing that she has taken part in the ``It Gets Better''
campaign by creating her own video.
July 1, 2010: CDC issues three new guides: Youth Violence:
Electronic Media and Youth Violence--A CDC Issue Brief for Educators
and Caregivers describes what is known about young people and
electronic aggression, offers strategies to address the issue, and
discusses the implications for school staff, education policymakers,
caregivers and parents. Youth Violence: Electronic Media and Youth
Violence--A CDC Research Brief for Researchers, describes current
research on electronic aggression, highlights gaps, and suggests future
directions; and a new tip sheet for parents Youth Violence: Technology
and Youth--Protecting Your Child from Electronic Aggression, which
provides an overview of electronic aggression, any type of harassment
or bullying that occurs through e-mail, a chat room, instant messaging,
a Web site, or text messaging.
department of labor
November 18, 2010: Secretary Hilda Solis posts an anti-bullying
video message in the ``It Gets Better'' series.
department of state
May 3, 2011: U.S. State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security
(DS) hosted ``Get Schooled, Kids and Cyber Security,'' an event to
raise awareness about cyber security and children.
October 19, 2010: Secretary Clinton offers a message of hope to
LGBT youth through a video as part of the ``It Gets Better'' series.
united states commission on civil rights (usccr)
September 27, 2011: The Commission released its bullying report,
Peer-to-Peer Violence and Bullying: Examining the Federal Response. The
report develops recommendations to further address the problem of
bullying and harassment based on sex, race, national origin,
disability, sexual orientation, and religion in public K-12 schools.
May 13, 2011: The Commission held an all-day briefing on Federal
Enforcement of Civil Rights Laws to Protect Students Against Bullying,
Violence and Harassment. Four panels of witnesses presented statements
through the day, which are also available to view through C-Span.
Studies on the Nature and Magnitude of the National Bullying and
Cyberbullying Problem
Here are highlights from some of the most important recent studies
on this national problem:
a. student attitudes toward teasing and bullying
In a survey commissioned by the Kaiser Family Foundation, more 8 to
15 year-olds picked teasing and bullying as ``big problems'' than those
who picked drugs or alcohol, racism, AIDS, or pressure to have sex.
More African-Americans saw bullying as a big problem for people their
age than those who identified racism as a big problem (Kaiser Family
Foundation, 2001).
A survey conducted by Widmeyer Communications for the Health,
Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services underscores the ``omnipresent fear of
physical violence and name-calling'' that students age 9-13 feel. The
report describes the prevailing view among students that schools
``don't get it'' when it comes to verbal and emotional bullying,
instead simply focusing on physical bullying (Widmeyer Communications,
2003).
Students who participated in the HRSA survey report that it is not
worth the effort to tell an adult about bullying because bullies are
rarely punished severely enough to deter them from future bullying.
Students describe ``unsympathetic and apathetic teachers and
principals'' who are ``difficult to motivate to take action'' and
``weak and ineffective penalties and punishments for bullies that
allows bullying to flourish'' (Widmeyer Communications, 2003).
Adolescents' opinions about their school staff 's attitudes about
bullying in rural and suburban public schools were investigated by
Harris (2004) and Harris, et al (2002). Approximately one-quarter of
students said that they did not believe that their teachers or
administrators were interested in trying to stop bullying, while
slightly less than a quarter believed that they were interested in
reducing bullying (the rest of the students indicated that they did not
know). Eighty percent of the students in Swearer and Cary's (2003)
study of Midwestern middle schoolers thought that the school staff did
not know that bullying occurred.
Oliver, et al., (1994) found that many students believed that
``teasing is playful'' and most (61 percent) felt that bullying can
``toughen'' a weak student.
Most Washington State adolescents (57 percent) would not take
action if they witnessed another student being bullied or teased
(Smyser & Reis, 2002). While between 36 percent (6th graders) to 46
percent (12th graders) of these students said that they would ``tell
that kid to stop,'' between one-third and one-fourth of 8th, 10th, and
12th graders said they would ``walk away'' or ``mind their own
business.'' A full 20 percent indicated that they would ``stay and
watch'' (Smyser & Reis, 2002).
Research has found that only between 4 and 13 percent of middle and
high school youth indicated that they would report an incident of
bullying to a teacher, administrator, or another school staff member
(Bulach, et al., 2000; Harris, 2004; Harris, et al., 2002; Shakeshaft,
et al., 1997).
b. associations between bullying and academic/social/emotional
adjustment
Targets of Bullying
Both victims and perpetrators of bullying are at a higher risk for
suicide than their peers. Children who are both victims and
perpetrators of bullying are at the highest risk (Kim & Leventhal,
2008; Hay & Meldrum, 2010; Kaminski & Fang, 2009). All three groups
(victims, perpetrators, and perpetrator/victims) are more likely to be
depressed than children who are not involved in bullying (Wang, Nansel,
et al., in press). One study found that victims of cyberbullying had
higher levels of depression than victims of face-to-face bullying
(Wang, Nansel, et al., 2010).
A 2001 study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development (NICHD) found that students who were bullied
demonstrated poorer social and emotional adjustment, reporting greater
difficulty making friends, poorer relationships with classmates, and
greater loneliness. In addition, the study found that fighting,
smoking, poorer academic achievement, poorer relationships with
classmates and increased loneliness were all positively associated with
being bullied (Nansel, Overpeck, Pilla, Ruan, Simons-Morton, & Scheidt,
2001).
A study of bullying, teasing, and sexual harassment in school by
the American Association of University Women demonstrates a direct link
between ``hostile hallways'' and diminished academic outcomes, self-
confidence, attachment to school, and participation in curricular and
extracurricular activities, especially among girls. Girls who
experienced harassment were twice as likely as boys to feel ``less
confident'' (16 percent to 32 percent) and more likely to change
behaviors in school and at home because of the experience, including
not talking as much in class (18 percent to 30 percent) and avoiding
the person who harassed them (24 percent to 56 percent) (American
Association of University Women, 2001).
A survey conducted by Widmeyer Communications for the Health,
Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services reports that students who regularly
experience verbal and non-verbal forms of bullying report hurt
feelings, low self-esteem, depression, living in fear and torment, poor
academic achievement, emotional turmoil, physical abuse, and suicide
(Widmeyer Communications, 2003).
A study that assessed Midwestern kindergartners at three schools
found that these children had greater difficulty adjusting to school
and became more school avoidant following their victimization by peers
(Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996). Reis and Saewyc (1999) similarly found
that harassed adolescents were more likely to report missing at least 1
day of school in the past month out of fear of their safety than their
non-harassed peers.
According to Dan Olweus, a trailblazing Norwegian researcher on
bullying, individuals formerly bullied were found to have higher levels
of depression and poorer self-esteem at the age of 23 years, despite
the fact that, as adults, they were no more harassed or socially
isolated than comparison adults (Olweus,1994).
The Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) conducts a
periodic School Climate Survey about the experiences of LGBT youth in
schools. Findings from their 2009 survey included the following:
61.1 percent of LGBT students felt unsafe at school
because of their sexual orientation; 39.9 percent felt unsafe because
of their gender expression.
Nearly a third missed class at least once in the last
month (29.1 percent) and missed at least 1 day of school (30.0
percent).
Students who experienced high levels of harassment and
assault had poorer educational outcomes.
Students who experienced high levels of harassment and
assault had lower psychological well-being.
Bystanders to Bullying
Both a 2001 study funded by the National Institute of Child Health
and Human Development (NICHD) and a survey conducted by Widmeyer
Communications for the Health, Resources and Services Administration
(HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that
bystanders to bullying suffer from feelings of helplessness and
powerlessness, and develop poor coping and problem-solving skills
(Nansel, Overpeck, Pilla, Ruan, Simons-Morton, & Scheidt, 2001;
Widmeyer Communications, 2003).
Perpetrators of Bullying
A 2001 study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development (NICHD) found that students who bully demonstrate
poor social and emotional adjustment, social isolation, lack of success
in school, and involvement in problem behaviors, such as fighting,
drinking alcohol, and smoking. Without intervention, note the
researchers, bullies often continue on a path of even more extreme
violence and abusive behavior and often become involved in crime
(Nansel, Overpeck, Pilla, Ruan, Simons-Morton, & Scheidt, 2001).
Olweus found former bullies to have a fourfold increase in criminal
behavior at the age of 24 years, with 60 percent of former bullies
having at least one conviction and 35 percent to 40 percent having
three or more convictions (Olweus, 1992).
Other Resources on the Nature and Magnitude of the National Bullying
and Cyberbullying Problem
Addington, Lynn A., Ruddy, Sally A., Miller, Amanda K., and DeVoe,
Jill F. Are America's Schools Safe? Students Speak Out: 1999 School
Crime Supplement. Education Statistics Quarterly, National Center for
Educational Statistics. Volt. 4, Issue 4 (November 2002).
American Association of University Women Educational Foundation and
Harris Interactive. Hostile Hallways: Bullying, Teasing, and Sexual
Harassment in School (2001).
Bosworth, et al. Factors Associated with Bullying Behavior in
Middle School Students. Journal of Early Adolescence. 19(3), 341-62
(1999).
Bulach, C.R., Fulbright, J.P., & Williams, R. Bullying Behavior at
the Middle School Level: Are There Gender Differences? American
Educational Research Association Conference. New Orleans, LA. (2000).
Coy, Doris Rhea. Bullying, ERIC Digest (2001).
Harris, S. Bullying at School Among Older Adolescents. The
Prevention Researcher, 11(3), 12-14 (2004).
Harris, et al. Bullying Among 9th Graders: An Exploratory Study.
NASSP Bulletin (March 2002).
Kaiser Family Foundation, & Children Now. Talking With Kids About
Tough Issues: A National Survey of Parents and Kids (2001).
Khosropour, Shirin C. & Walsh, James. That's Not Teasing--That's
Bullying: A Study of Fifth Graders' Conceptualization of Bullying and
Teasing. Paper Presented at the Annual Conference of the American
Educational Research Association, Seattle, WA (April 2001).
Kochenderfer, B.J. & Ladd, G.W. Peer Victimization: Cause or
Consequence of School Maladjustment? Child Development, 67(4), 1305-17
(1996).
Nansel, Tonja R., Overpeck, Mary, Pilla, Ramani S., Ruan, W. June,
Simons-Morton, Bruce, and Scheidt, Peter. Bullying Behaviors Among US
Youth: Prevalence and Association With Psychosocial Adjustment, JAMA,
285:2094-2100 (2001).
Oliver, R., Hoover, J.H., & Hazler, R. The Perceived Roles of
Bullying in Small-Town Midwestern Schools. Journal of Counseling and
Development, 72(4), 416-23 (1994).
Olweus, D. Bullying Among Schoolchildren: Intervention and
Prevention. In Peters, R.D., McMahon, R.J., and Quinsey, V.L., Eds.
Aggression and Violence Throughout the Life Span. London, England: Sage
Publications (1992).
Olweus, D. Bullying at School: Long-Term Outcomes for the Victims
and an Effective School-Based Intervention Program. In Huesmann, L.R.,
Ed. Aggressive Behavior: Current Perspectives. New York, NY: Plenum
Press (1994).
Olweus, D. Bully/Victim Problems Among School Children: Basic Facts
and Effects of a School Based Intervention Program. In Pepler, D.,
Rubin, K.H., Eds. The Development and Treatment of Childhood
Aggression. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. (1991).
Reis B. & Saewyc, E. Eighty-Three Thousand Youth: Selected Findings
from Population-Based Studies as they Pertain to the Safety and Well-
Being of Sexual Minority Students. Safe Schools Coalition of Washington
(1999).
Sharp, S., Smith, P.K. Bullying in UK Schools: The DES Sheffield
Bullying Project. Early Child Dev Care. 77:47-55 (1991).
Smith, P.K. Bullying in Schools: The UK Experience and the
Sheffield Anti-Bullying Project. Ir J Psychol. 18:191-201 (1997).
Smyser, M. & Reis, E. Bullying and Bias-Based Harassment in King
County Middle Schools. Public Health Data Watch, 5(2), 1-15 (2002).
Swearer, S.M. & Cary, P.T. Perceptions and Attitudes Toward Middle
School Youth: A Developmental Examination Across the Bully/Victim
Continuum. (Eds.) Bullying, Peer Harassment, and Victimization in the
Schools: The Next Generation of Prevention, p. 63-80 (2003).
Teachers College Reports. Examining School Violence (Winter 2001).
Widmeyer Communications for the Health, Resources and Services
Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
National Bullying Prevention Campaign Formative Research Report (2003).
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[Whereupon, at 3:44 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[all]