How much do you think bullying in schools affects school attendance rates? Bullying for various reasons -- from ethnicity, religion or you name it -- is responsible for many children not wanting to go to school anymore.
In California there is an estimated 10.4% absentee rate in secondary school from 2011-2013 due to students reporting they do not feeling safe there and didn't go to school for at least one day in the past month. In 2007-2008, the sverage daily attendance (ADA) as percent of enrollment was 10.6% in California, and 8.9% for all secondary schools in the USA.
What is the "right" number of students not going to school because they don't like being mistreated by others, like bullies? Is 10% too high? What about 5%? What about 1%? What number is tolerable?
For the public education system, the attendance rate is used to determine funding for schools. This isn't about the statist school system, or public vs. private schools, or either of them compared to homeschooling. Bullying can happen anywhere. Imagine a voluntary community funded schooling system if that makes it easier. We would fund a school based on the students who go there. The attendance rate does something similar. I'm not saying it's the best measurement to use student presence instead of enrollment.
Bullying then turns into quite a social issue when we consider the schools being affected in the money they have to fund activities or upkeep. It's not only the 10% or so of students that avoid school, socialization and other social development who are affected, but the other 90% as well both in terms of the school funding possibilities and the overall negative environment within the schools where mistreatment of others occurs.
The economics of bullying and the affect on the school system was recently researched by the University of Texas at Austin. They estimated a yearly $276 million loss of funding to schools in California alone as a result of children not going to school because they don't want to be mistreated by others and feel unsafe being there. I totally understand that position. Why be somewhere that you are being mistreated? A good move is to get out of that situation.
How much do you think each student is "worth" in terms of state funding for their education? According to the analyses in the research, each student that attends daily gets about $50 USD in funding for their school. Again, this is for California alone.
45% of the students reporting absenteeism from feeling unsafe also said it was for biased reasons of either race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability or sexual orientation. Dividing the $276,000,000 into those categories results in the following estimates for bullying:
- race/ethnicity: $78,000,000
- religious bias: $54,000,000
- gender bias: $54,000,000
- sexual orientation: $62,000,000
- disability bias: $49,000,000
Many children are affected in multiple categories. I added the total to $297 million, so that must be why it doesn't add up without taking that into consideration. And this doesn't factor in being bullied for other reasons like socio-economic bias, or someone just not liking another, or just wanting to prey on those that appear weaker and more vulnerable as many bullies do. The research also estimates about 19% of bullied students don't miss any school, but that doesn't mean they don't suffer from being mistreated by others, or don't develop depression or anxiety, or get affected to the point of poorer academic performance.
Many people are aware of how public schools struggle for funds. Bullying affects attendance and their ability to get adequate funding in many cases. Even if this was a voluntary service a community engaged in, bullying would be a public social community concern despite not using attendance rates as a reason to cut funding to the school. There is an issue going on that is making the lives of individuals intolerable where they don't even want to be around others. Bullying is not something to be tolerated, ever.
It's a touchy subject, and something that many of us have been affected by. If you want to share you're experiences, please go ahead; if not, no worries :)