Many Kids Don't Feel Safe at School
Excerpt by Janice Billingsley, HealthDay

Nearly 20 percent of urban students and more than 10 percent of suburban school students report feeling unsafe in their schools, and almost a third of children say their schools are disorderly, reports a New York University study.

Researchers surveyed more than 10,000 children between 10 and 18 years old and their parents to determine how safe the children felt. They were surprised to discover that it was at school rather than outside of school where the children felt most unsafe: 15 percent of children overall reported feeling unsafe in school, while 8 percent felt that way outside of school.

One of the questions in the study was to agree or disagree with the question, "Yesterday, I felt safe everywhere I was," says study co-author Beth Weitzman, an associate professor of health and public policy at NYU.

"We were surprised when we found that kids who were in school on the day before had 40 percent higher odds of feeling unsafe than the kids who weren't in school on that day," she says. "It is significant that school seems to be connected to a sense of un-safety rather than to a sense of well-being."

"When we were working on the study, we kept imagining that figure applied to adults going to their workplaces," she adds. "It would be considered a crisis."

The study results appear in the September issue of the Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine.

The study, one of a number funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of its Urban Health Initiative to improve the health and safety of children and youths in economically distressed cities, conducted telephone interviews with children and parents in five cities and their surrounding suburbs: Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia, Oakland, Calif., and Richmond, Va.

In their non-school environments, 10 percent of children who lived in cities reported feeling unsafe the day before, compared to 6 percent of suburban children.

But when it came to feeling safe in school, nearly double that number, 18 percent, of urban students reported feeling unsafe in their schools, as did 11 percent of those attending suburban schools. Sixteen percent of those in public schools felt unsafe, compared to 4 percent of those in private schools.

The strongest risk factor for feeling unsafe in school, says Weitzman, was if children reported that schoolmates "could get away with anything in school," which the authors described as school disorder. Thirty-one percent of the children in the study agreed with this statement, which increased their odds of feeling unsafe in school by 55 percent. School disorder was twice as prevalent in public schools as private schools, Weitzman says, 33 percent versus 18 percent.

The effects of these unsafe feelings can be significant, says study co-author Tod Mijanovich, a research scientist at the Center for Health and Public Service Research at NYU.

"The interactions are complex, but students don't learn as well and are more likely to engage in risky behavior," he says.

Also a concern, Weitzman says, is that there is a trend toward extending the school day and increasing the number of days children are in school.

"This study raises the question, 'Do you need to make kids feel better at school before you demand that they spend more time at school?'" she says.

Jessica Gillooly, a psychology professor at Glendale Community College in California, says she's not surprised by the study's findings.

"Their numbers are right on the money," she says, citing her own work in urban Los Angeles high schools as well as feedback from her students, many of whom come from these schools.

"Both boys and girls feel frightened and bullied in school. If you feel that the teachers aren't paying close attention, then they won't protect you and you feel unsafe," she says.

To improve a student's sense of safety, Weitzman and Mijanovich suggest improving teacher-student communication and setting up and enforcing fair rules.

"Reducing school size, perhaps creating a school within a school so that students are less unknown is one idea, and clarity and fairness of rules is important," they write.

More information

Learn about anxiety in children from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Bob Chase, former president of the National Education Association, discusses bullying and harassment in schools.

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