1 in 8 elementary students face school violence, as half of witnesses stay silent

“School violence among elementary school students has more than doubled in the past two years, raising alarm over the growing vulnerability of the country's youngest students. According to a survey released Tuesday by the Blue Tree Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to school violence prevention, the proportion of elementary school students who reported being victims of school violence jumped from 4.9 percent in 2023 to 12.5 percent last year. The survey polled 8,476 elementary, middle and high school students nationwide between November and December last year. Middle and high school students reported lower rates, at 3.4 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively, highlighting the outsized impact on younger students. The foundation linked the rise to elementary school students' struggle to differentiate violence from play, noting that children at that age often cannot draw a clear line between roughhousing and actual harm. Verbal abuse was the most common form of school violence, accounting for 23.8 percent of cases, followed by physical violence at 17.9 percent and cyberbullying at 14.5 percen

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