A Resource and Promising Practices Guide for School Administrators & Faculty
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SECTION II: CREATING AN INCLUSIVE SCHOOL COMMUNITY: SENSITIVITY TO THE EXPERIENCE OF SPECIFIC STUDENT POPULATIONS
Every student deserves to learn in a safe and supportive school. Unfortunately, experience and research has shown that some groups of students are more vulnerable to discrimination and harassment, including bullying behavior, than others. Therefore, it is vital that school staff be especially attentive regarding their welfare and safety.
Children with Special Needs
A growing body of research has demonstrated that children with special needs are at an increased risk of being bullied. Bullying Among Children and Youth with Disabilities and Special Needs, a fact sheet from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (www.stopbullying.gov
) provides the following insights into the vulnerability of these children:
- Available information indicates that children with learning disabilities are at greater risk of being teased and physically bullied (Martlew & Hodson, 1991; Mishna, 2003; Nabuzoka & Smith, 1993; Thompson, Whitney, & Smith, 1994).
- Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are more likely than other children to be bullied. They also are somewhat more likely than others to bully their peers (Unnever & Cornell, 2003).
- Children with medical conditions that affect their appearance (e.g., cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, and spina bifida) are more likely to be victimized by peers. Frequently, these children report being called names related to their disability (Dawkins, 1996).
Walk A Mile In Their Shoes: Bullying and the Child with Special Needs, a report and guide compiled by www.AbilityPath.org, addresses the issue of children with special needs being targets of harassing behavior: The report and guide includes the following research findings:
- Researchers have discovered that students with disabilities were more worried about school safety and being injured or harassed by peers, compared to students without a disability (Saylor & Leach, 2009).
- According to researchers Wall, Wheaton and Zuver (2009) only 10 studies have been conducted in the United States on bullying and developmental disabilities. All studies found that children with disabilities were two to three times more likely to be victims of bullying than their non-disabled peers. In addition, the researchers found that the bullying experienced by these children was more chronic in nature and was most often directly related to their disability.
Please see: www.abilitypath.org/areas-of-development/learning--schools/bullying/articles/walk-a-mile-in-their-shoes.pdf
"Disability harassment” is illegal under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. According to the U.S. Department of Education, disability harassment is “intimidation or abusive behavior toward a student based on disability that creates a hostile environment by interfering with or denying a student’s participation in or receipt of benefits, services, or opportunities in the institution’s program” (U.S. Department of Education, 2000).
Please see: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/disabharassltr.html
Refugee and Immigrant Children
A refugee is a person who has left his or her country of nationality and is unable or unwilling to return to that country due to persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution based upon race, religion, nationality, membership in a specific social group, or political group. New York State receives refugee children every year. While most come with some family, others come alone, and all leave behind everything they have ever known. Some refugee children have experienced the ravages of war and others have suffered trauma as a result of their experiences in refugee camps.
Children who come to the United States as refugees face the challenge of adapting to a new environment while coping with the loss of home, family members, friends, belongings, and community. Although immigrant children usually do not leave their homes under the same kinds of circumstances that compel refugees to flee their country of nationality, they share some of the same challenges faced by refugee children in adapting to a new environment, learning a new language and creating social support networks with peers and adults in a new school community.
Both refugee and immigrant children must deal with vast cultural change, and cultural misunderstandings can make them particularly vulnerable to harassment in the form of bullying. Factors such as a lack of understanding of cultural norms, different expectations for personal hygiene, peer pressure around appropriate clothing, different kinds of social boundaries, different culturally informed gestures, body language and use of personal space can make immigrant or refugee children the target of harassment.
A Brown University New England Equity Assistance Center (NEEAC) study in a medium-sized Massachusetts school district found that twice as many middle school English Language Learners (ELLs) reported worrying about being physically bullied as compared to their non-ELL peers and 49% of ELL students reported that students make fun of others with accents as compared to 21% of non-ELL students. www.cga.ct.gov/coc/PDFs/bullying/102107_bullying_immigrants.pdf |
To compound such issues, depending on the conditions in their home country, immigrant children and refugee children may be mistrustful of authority and, therefore, reluctant to report harassment or discrimination because they do not want to draw attention to themselves. Bridging Refugee Youth and Children’s Services (BRYCS) provides national technical assistance to organizations serving refugee and immigrants. Its website www.brycs.org includes multiple resources that can assist educators in providing support to immigrant and refugee children.
LGBTQ Children (2)
Students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ) are often reluctant to report harassment or discrimination. Negative attitudes that some people have toward LGBT individuals in general put such youth at increased risk for experiences with violence, compared with other students (Coker, Austin, Schuster, Annual Review of Public Health 2010.) Such behaviors can include bullying, teasing, harassment, and physical assault. The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s (GLSEN) 2009 National School Climate Survey examined the responses of 7,261 middle and high school students.
Key findings include:
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See: www.glsen.org/binary-data/GLSEN_ATTACHMENTS/file/000/001/1675-2.pdf
"Playgrounds and Prejudice: Elementary School Climate in the United States," a study published by GLSEN in January 2012 further revealed the following statistics:
- The most common forms of biased language in elementary schools, heard regularly (i.e., sometimes, often or all the time) by both students and teachers, are the use of the word "gay" in a negative way, such as "that's so gay," (students: 45%, teachers: 49%) and comments like "spaz" or "retard" (51% of students, 45% of teachers). Many also report regularly hearing students make homophobic remarks, such as "fag" or "lesbo" (students: 26%, teachers: 26%) and negative comments about race/ethnicity (students: 26%, teachers: 21%).
- Three-fourths of students (75%) report that students at their school are called names, made fun of or bullied with at least some regularity. Most commonly this is because of students' looks or body size (67%), followed by not being good at sports (37%), how well they do at schoolwork (26%), not conforming to traditional gender norms/roles (23%) or because other people think they're gay (21%).
www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/library/record/2832.html?state=research&type=research
Additional research published in 2011 by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force revealed that students “…who expressed a transgender identity or gender non-conformity while in grades K-12 reported alarming rates of harassment (78%), physical assault (35%) and sexual violence (12%); harassment was so severe that it led almost one-sixth (15%) to leave a school in K-12 settings or in higher education.” The research also found that individuals “…who have been harassed and abused by teachers in K-12 settings showed dramatically worse health and other outcomes than those who did not experience such abuse. Peer harassment and abuse also had highly damaging effects.”
http://transequality.org/PDFs/NTDS_Report.pdf
According to GLSEN’s Harsh Realities report “Nearly nine in ten transgender students have been verbally harassed in the last year due to their gender expression (87 percent) and more than half have also been physically assaulted (53 percent).” In addition, the report states “nearly half of transgender students report regularly skipping school because of safety concerns, clearly impacting their ability to receive an education, and nearly one in six (15 percent) of transgender and gender nonconforming students face harassment so severe that they are forced to leave school.”
Finally, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that a survey of more than 7,000 seventh and eighth grade students from a large midwestern county examined the effects of school climate and homophobic bullying on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning (LGBQ) youth and found that:
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Children in Foster Care and Children with Incarcerated Parents
While bullying can be a common problem for all students, children in foster care and children with incarcerated parents face additional stigmas that make them more susceptible to being victims or bullies at school. These children frequently miss school, which can lead to education and social problems, making them easy targets. Furthermore, they may feel humiliated for having lost contact with their parents and may worry about how their parents are doing or when they might see or talk to them again. These worries can lead to anxiety, making the child stressed and emotionally overwhelmed.
Source: www.osborneny.org/NYCIP/ACalltoActionNYCIP.Osborne2011.pdf |
Additionally, children in foster care and children with incarcerated parents may become withdrawn and experience low self-esteem. Children may be afraid of the stigmas and stereotypes that come with being a child in foster care or a child with an incarcerated parent. For example, when it is known that a child has an incarcerated parent, s/he may be blamed if another student’s personal belongings go missing based on the beliefs that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” and criminality is in the child’s genes. Consequently, students may shy away from revealing their situation to school staff or their peers and may inevitably cope with their struggles alone.
Children in foster care and children with incarcerated parents are also more likely to become bullies. As a result of their situation, they may turn to anger, aggression, drugs and/or alcohol as an outlet. Being unable to control their emotions, they may take out their anger and frustration on fellow peers at school. According to the CDC, drug and alcohol use, high emotional distress, and high level of family disruption are risks that may lead to youth violence.
Home life can also be extremely difficult for these students. Placement in kinship foster homes, while done in order to minimize change or disruption in their families, has the possibility of making the living situation even more complicated. According to the 2011 Osborne Report, the Child Welfare League of America defines kinship caregivers as “relatives, members of a tribe or clan, godparents, step-parents, or other adults who have a kinship bond with a child.” Therefore, whatever emotions the child is experiencing the kinship caregiver is probably feeling something very similar. While a kinship caregiver may also have a better understanding of what the child is going through, it may be difficult for the caregiver to separate his/her emotions from his/her interaction with the child.
In addressing the special needs of these populations, some model programs have been developed. For example, in Virginia, public schools have implemented the Milk and Cookies Children’s Program, a support-based group that allows children with incarcerated parents to meet with peers in the same situation and talk amongst themselves with a trained adult. The program is designed to help the children understand their situation in order to understand how to react appropriately.
The federal McKinney-Vento Act provides specific protections to ensure educational stability for students who are homeless or in temporary housing. Both McKinney-Vento and the Dignity Act have raised awareness and sensitivity about particular issues that may impact students’ education and the need to increase the educational outcomes for children that attend public schools. McKinney-Vento has had a positive effect on the educational opportunities, attendance and outcomes for students in temporary housing.
For more information on the McKinney-Vento Act, please see: http://nysteachs.org www.p12.nysed.gov/nclb/programs/homeless or call 800-388-2014.
Federal Civil Rights Statues Related to Schools and Harassment
Schools that receive federal funding are required by federal law to address discrimination. The statutes the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) enforces include:
- Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin;
- Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, including sexual harassment and stereotyping;
- Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504); and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (Title II). Section 504 and Title II prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability.
School districts may violate these civil rights statutes and related regulations when peer harassment based on race, color, national origin, sex, or disability is sufficiently serious that it creates a hostile environment and such harassment is encouraged, tolerated, not adequately addressed, or ignored by school employees.
US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights “Dear Colleague” Letter on Harassment and Bullying
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights periodically issues “Dear Colleague” letters to school districts and to schools on pertinent issues related to K-12 and higher education. The October 2010 “Dear Colleague” letter from U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Russlynn Ali addressed harassment and bullying and is particularly pertinent to implementing the Dignity Act within the larger context of federal civil rights laws.
The following are excerpts from the Office of Civil Rights’ letter: (www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201010.pdf)
Harassing conduct may take many forms, including verbal acts and name calling, graphic and written statements, which may include use of cell phones or the Internet; or other conduct that may be physically threatening, harmful, or humiliating. Harassment does not have to include intention to harm, or 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. When such harassment is based on race, color, national origin, sex, or disability, it violates the civil rights laws that U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights enforces.
(Some conduct alleged to be harassment may implicate the First Amendment rights to free speech or expression. For more information on the First Amendment’s application to harassment, see the discussions in OCR’s Dear Colleague Letter: First Amendment (July 28, 2003), available at www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/firstamend.html)
As noted in the October 2010 U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights letter, a school is responsible for addressing harassment incidents about which it knows or reasonably should have known. A school has notice of harassment if a responsible employee knew, or in the exercise of reasonable care should have known, about the harassment. In some situations, harassment may be in plain sight, widespread, or well-known to students and staff, such as harassment occurring in hallways, during academic or physical education classes, during extracurricular activities, at recess, on a school bus, or through graffiti in public areas. In these cases, the obvious signs of the harassment are sufficient to put the school on notice. In other situations, the school may become aware of misconduct, triggering an investigation that could lead to the discovery of additional incidents that, taken together, may constitute a hostile environment. |
The following is an excerpt from the October 2010 letter from U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Russlynn Ali, available at: www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201010.pdf.
In all cases, schools should have well-publicized policies prohibiting harassment and procedures for reporting and resolving complaints that will alert the school to incidents of harassment. When responding to harassment, a school must take immediate and appropriate action to investigate or otherwise determine what occurred. The specific steps in a school’s investigation will vary depending upon the nature of the allegations, the source of the complaint, the age of the student or students, involved, the size and administrative structure of the school, and other factors. In all cases, however, the inquiry should be prompt, thorough, and impartial. If an investigation reveals that discriminatory harassment has occurred, a school must take prompt and appropriate steps reasonably calculated to end the harassment, eliminate any hostile environment and its effects, and prevent the harassment from recurring. These duties are a school’s responsibility even if the misconduct is also covered by an anti-bullying policy, regardless of whether a student has complained, asked the school to take action, or identified the harassment as a form of discrimination. Appropriate steps to end harassment may include separating the accused harasser and the target, providing counseling for the target and/or harasser, or taking disciplinary action against the harasser. These steps should not penalize the student who was harassed. For example, any separation of the target from an alleged harasser should be designed to minimize the burden on the target’s educational program (e.g., not requiring the target to change his or her class schedule). In addition, depending on the extent of the harassment, the school may need to provide training or other interventions not only for the perpetrators, but also for the larger school community, to ensure that all students, their families, and school staff can recognize harassment if it recurs and know how to respond. A school also may be required to provide additional services to the student who was harassed in order to address the effects of the harassment, particularly if the school initially delays in responding or responds inappropriately or inadequately to information about harassment. An effective response also may need to include the issuance of new policies against harassment and new procedures by which students, parents, and employees may report allegations of harassment (or wide dissemination of existing policies and procedures), as well as wide distribution of the contact information for the district’s Title IX and Section 504/Title II coordinators. Finally, a school should take steps to stop further harassment and prevent any retaliation against the person who made the complaint (or was the subject of the harassment) or against those who provided information as witnesses. At a minimum, the school’s responsibilities include making sure that the harassed students and their families know how to report any subsequent problems, conducting follow-up inquiries to see if there have been any new incidents or any instances of retaliation, and responding promptly and appropriately to address continuing or new problems. When responding to incidents of misconduct, schools should keep in mind the following:
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Resources in addressing the needs of diversity in student population are identified in Appendix C (http://www.p12.nysed.gov/dignityact/appendixc) of this guide.
(2) It is recognized that there are a number of commonly used variants of this acronym. For the purposes of consistency in this guidance document, the acronym LGBTQ will be officially used to refer to individuals who self-identify as either lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning. Variations of this acronym are taken from the original source material.