Iowa Department of Education data looks at where, how bullying occurs

DES MOINES - School hallways and cafeterias remain the most threatening places for bullied Iowa school students, and a snide comment or a hard shove is more common than a nasty tweet.

That's according to a new set of data released last week by the Iowa Department of Education representing the most comprehensive look yet at how, why and where bullying occurs in the state's schools.

The report are not without its problems: There are outliers at both the high end and the low end of the spectrum, and 46 school districts reported no incidents of bullying at all. Another 37 didn't certify their data.

Also, state officials say the data shouldn't be compared to previous years because the difference in collection and reporting methods could lead to skewed analysis. Instead, they look at the first report as “Year 1” of an ongoing effort.

“Just because they're not comparable doesn't mean they're not extraordinarily useful,” said Meredith MacQuigg, a data consultant at the Iowa Department of Education. “The way that this laid out, I, as a district person can see that I have really high numbers of kids that are being bullied for their physical characteristics and need sensitive training there. Or I can look at how my numbers are on the bus, which we didn't even have numbers for the bus last year.”

Overall, the report shows school districts reported 5,224 alleged bullying or harassment incidents during the 2012-13 school year, about half of which - 48.87 percent - were violations of the state's anti-bullying law. Others, while not meeting the criteria defined by state bullying laws, violated district policies.

Previous reports allowed school officials to choose from one of four categories on why bullying occurred. The new report expanded into 17 named categories to include items such as religion, socioeconomic status and political beliefs. Still, the most common reason for bullying reports - 1,551 incidents - in Iowa was for someone's physical attributes, which could include weight, height or other physical characteristics.

Also, despite the rising and real concern over students being cyberbullied, the Department of Education report shows students are more likely to report bullying in the classroom (1,942 incidents) or the hallway (1,561 incidents) than any other location. It's important to note “home” or “outside of school” are not given as options, but a catch-all category of “other” (737 incidents) is.

Anti-bullying advocates hope the new reporting method will give rise to a better anti-bullying legislative proposal next year.

“This is a step in the right direction,” said Nate Monson, executive director with Iowa Safe Schools. “When you see where it's happening, in the halls, in the classrooms, it shows that we need to be training the staff to better patrol these areas and identify it so it can be stopped.”

Not perfect

The 2012-2013 school year marked the first time the state revamped the bullying data collection and reporting process since the state's anti-bullying law took effect in 2007. It also comes at a time when bullying has emerged as a divisive topic in statehouses across the country.

In Iowa, Gov. Terry Branstad hosted a pair of anti-bullying summits in 2012 and last week and introduced legislation last March aimed at addressing cyberbullying, but it failed to get called for a vote in the Iowa House of Representatives.

Amy Williamson, bureau chief for school improvement at the Iowa Department of Education, the new system rollout was done in-house without any additional money from the state. Department of Education officials hosted webinars for district officials to train on the new collection system and additional help was provided through the state's Area Education Agency network.

The key difference, she said, is that instead of an end-of-year tally of reported bullying incidents, each reported incident can get loaded into a computer system at real-time. This helps school officials better determine not only the where, how and why, but also the when.

“We went to an individual-level data collection, and the way that helped us is even though we have variations in the data now, and it's not perfect, we know exactly how it's not perfect, so we can go back to individual reports and see where things should or should have not been submitted to the system,” she said.

Table: Bullying incidents in Iowa high schools, 2012-2013