Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice (2016) / Chapter Skim
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6 Law and Policy
6 Law and Policy
Pages 253-288
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From page 253... ...
Bullying implicates a breadth of federal and state laws and policies. In this chapter, the committee provides an overview of relevant laws and policies that relate to bullying at the federal and state level and discusses selected litigation efforts aimed at addressing bullying.
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254 PREVENTING BULLYING THROUGH SCIENCE, POLICY, AND PRACTICE TABLE 6-1 Ten Great Public Health Achievements and Selected Supportive Laws and Legal Tools, United States, 1900-1999 Public Health Achievement Local State Federal Control of Sanitary codes Authority to Public Health Service Infectious and drinking conduct disease Act of 1944; Safe Diseases water standards; surveillance, require Drinking Water Act quarantine and disease reports, of 1974; National isolation authority; and investigate Environmental zoning ordinances outbreaks; Protection Act of 1976 and building codes; regulation of mosquito- and drinking water, rodent-control waste disposal, programs; and food supplies; inspection of food licensure of health establishments professionals Motor Vehicle Speed limits; Seatbelt, child- Performance and crash Safety limitation on safety-seat, and standards for motor liquor store hours; motorcycle-helmet vehicles; standards penalties for laws; vehicle for road and highway serving inebriated inspections; drive construction; safety bar patrons licensing and belt use in some graduated driver's commercial vehicles; license systems; financial assistance authorization to to states to promote conduct sobriety and enforce highway checkpoints; zero safety initiatives; tolerance for airbag warning labels; alcohol among creation of state offices drivers under of highway safety; age 21 years; federal court ruling prohibition on upholding motorcycle alcohol sales to helmet use minors; 0.08% blood alcohol content per se laws; speed limits Fluoridation of Ordinances Legislation Federal court rulings Drinking Water authorizing authorizing upholding fluoridation fluoridation; fluoridation; court of public drinking referenda and ruling upholding water supplies; initiatives fluoridation Environmental authoring Protection Agency fluoridation caps on fluoride levels
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LAW AND POLICY 255 TABLE 6-1 Continued Public Health Achievement Local State Federal Recognition of Excise taxes; Excise taxes; Excise tax mandated Tobacco Use restrictions on restrictions on warning labels; as a Health retail sale to retail sale practices; prohibition of Hazard minors; clean clean indoor air advertising on radio indoor air laws laws; funding for and television; penalties public antismoking on states not outlawing education; lawsuits sale of tobacco leading to the products to persons Master Settlement under 18 years of age; Agreement of 1998 financial assistance to state and local tobacco control programs; Department of Justice lawsuit to recover health care costs Vaccination School board Court rulings Court rulings enforcement supporting supporting mandatory of school entry mandatory vaccination; vaccination vaccination; school licensure of vaccines; requirements entry admission financial aid to state laws vaccination programs Decline in Education and Tobacco control Food-labeling Deaths from information laws; education laws; Department Coronary Heart programs and information of Transportation Disease and programs funding for bikeways Stroke and walking paths; National High Blood Pressure Education Program Safer and Standards for Mandated niacin Pure Food and Drug Healthier Foods and inspection enrichment of Act of 1906 and later of retail food bread and flour; enactments to regulate establishments standards for foods and prescription and inspection drugs; mandated folic of foods at the acid fortification of producer level; cereal grain products; limits on chemical limits on chemical contamination of contamination of crops crops; food stamps; Women, Infants, and Children Program; school meals continued
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Except for one study1 and a brief committee overview on zero tolerance policies, the committee does not include local and school policy for several reasons. First, few systematic evaluations of local or schoolspecific policies exist.
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Thus, we view local or school policies largely as measures taken to implement federal or state law and policy. Additionally, the committee recognizes that various laws use different terms to address bullying.
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That education must be provided in the least restrictive environment and in conformity with an individualized education program.9 Therefore, if bullying interferes with a covered child's access to an appropriate public education, a claim can be brought against the school for failing to secure such an environment. Unlike remedies under the civil rights laws cited above, an IDEA claim typically does not lead to compensatory damages.
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As state laws expand schools' authority beyond school grounds, particularly in the context of cyberbullying (see discussion on scope of schools' authority in "State and Local Law and Policy" below) , the parameters of schools' authority and students' constitutional rights will be revisited in future cases.
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Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, 2010b) , and DOE's suggested list of key components for state and local laws and policies, which was distributed to governors and chief state school officers as part of the Dear Colleague Letter of December 16, 2010.
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in their anti-bullying statutes.12 Many state laws require school districts or schools to implement policies but allow school districts or schools to determine specific policy content (Hinduja and Patchin, 2011)
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, zero tolerance policies may also lead to underreporting of bullying incidents because the consequence of suspension is perceived as too harsh or punitive. Furthermore, there is limited evidence that the policies are effective in curbing aggressive or bullying behavior (American Psychological Association Zero Toler ance Task Force, 2008; Boccanfuso and Kuhfeld, 2011)
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to (v) , inclusive, of the definition of bullying.18 The specific mention of electronic forms of bullying, or cyberbullying, in these state laws does not create separate policies for cyberbullying but rather adds cyberbullying as a type of bullying covered by the particular anti-bullying law or policy of that state.
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For example, Massachusetts' law provides that certain students may be more vulnerable based on "actual or perceived differentiating characteristics, including race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, socioeconomic status, homelessness, academic status, gender identity or expression, physical appearance, pregnant or parenting status, sexual orientation, mental, physical, developmental or sensory disability or by association with a person who has or is perceived to have 1 or more of these characteristics."19 Vermont's anti-bullying law explicitly recognizes vulnerability based on a "student's or a student's family member's actual or perceived race, creed, color, national origin, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability."20 In contrast, a number of states -- for example, Arizona, Ohio, and Texas -- do not enumerate protected classes in their anti-bullying laws.21,22,23,24 There is some debate over whether it is better to enumerate protected classes or to have nonspecific language that does not enumerate specific groups. In general, the enumeration of protected classes in a law can be used in two ways: either to explicitly limit a statute's coverage or to highlight the need to address particular individuals or situations.
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. In Massachusetts, for example, school districts' plans must include "professional development to build the skills of all staff members, including, but not limited to, educators, administrators, school nurses, cafeteria workers, custodians, bus drivers, athletic coaches, advisors to extracurricular activities and paraprofessionals, to prevent, identify and respond to bullying."27 Such plans must also include "provisions for informing parents and guardians about the bullying prevention curriculum of the school district." In terms of reporting incidents of bullying, many state laws require school districts to establish reporting procedures -- in some cases, making school personnel mandatory reporters -- and mandate protections against retaliation for reporting bullying.28 Finally, most laws that address bullying establish an unfunded mandate (Sacco et al., 2012)
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. However, no assessment has been conducted of state civil rights laws to identify available protections against bullying and procedures for filing complaints under those state laws (U.S.
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Plaintiffs were a member of a protected class in 84 percent of the cases, with the most frequent protected traits being gender, disability, perceived sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity. School districts and school employees were named as defendants in the majority of cases, with defendants more likely to be institutions than individuals (Holben and Zirkel, 2014)
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These limitations highlight the importance of ensuring that anti-bullying laws and policies produce robust prevention programs. 29 Quoted passage is from the decision in Harlow v.
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. In a 2003 review of the literature on anti-bullying laws and policies, Limber and Small noted that "the question of whether state laws can provide a useful vehicle for reducing bullying behavior among children remains unanswered" (p.
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In one study, investigators examined how bullying rates were associated with 25 state anti-bullying laws. Specifically, data on reports of being the target of bullying or cyberbullying in the past 12 months came from students in grades 9-12 who were participating in the 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System study (n = 63,635)
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Third, the state law included requirements for districts to develop and implement local policies, requirements that dictated the components that must be included in local policies and that may set a timeline in which the local policy must be developed. These three components, noted by Hatzenbuehler and colleagues (2015)
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coded school district Websites and student handbooks across 197 school districts in Oregon to determine whether the districts had any anti-bullying policies (harassment and antidiscrimination policies were not included in this category) and, if so, whether these policies contained sexual orientation as a protected class (referred to in the literature as an "enumerated group")
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were not associated with lower suicide attempts among lesbian and gay youth. These results suggest that policies had to include sexual orientation in the list of protected classes in order to be effective in protecting lesbian and gay youths from attempting suicide.
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Research on mediating mechanisms is needed to uncover why antibullying laws or policies are effective in reducing bullying. There are multiple ways in which anti-bullying policies could reduce bullying behaviors, ranging from changing social norms in the school to improving opportunities for reporting bullying.
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provides a framework for evaluating the impact of anti-bullying policies on adolescents with multiple marginalized statuses. Existing studies have focused on anti-bullying laws as a primary prevention strategy for preventing bullying behavior.
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, and (3) in-depth qualitative interviews that seek to understand institutional forces that hinder or support policy implementation (e.g., EMT Associates Inc., 2013)
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Although administrators in general reported being successful in developing an anti-bullying policy for their school as mandated by state law, the implementation of the policy presented certain challenges. Specifically, in qualitative interviews, administrators reported difficulties in interpreting the legal definitions of bullying, which created challenges both in confirming bullying cases as well as in disciplining bullying behaviors (Ramirez et al., 2014)
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. In the second multistate study, the GAO sampled six school districts across eight states (Arkansas, California, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Virginia, and Vermont)
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Only one of these studies used a probability design (Cross et al., 2011) ; the others relied on purposive sampling to obtain states, and school districts within states, that varied on dimensions hypothesized to affect implementation (e.g., rurality, socioeconomic characteristics)
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Future Directions The circumstances that shape both institutional commitment to the implementation of anti-bullying policies and the characteristics of that implementation require future research. Specifically, practitioners, school administrators, and other stakeholders would benefit from an understanding of the process of anti-bullying policy implementation and the complex social processes involved in the transformation of institutional climate that occurs as a result of anti-bullying policies.
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posit that anti-bullying laws can exert a salubrious influence on youth by preventing bullying behaviors before they occur (thereby serving as a primary prevention strategy) , and by reducing the adverse sequelae -- such as depression, anxiety, suicidality, and social isolation -- among those who are already bullied (thereby serving as a tertiary prevention strategy)
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laws is currently muted -- because some state anti-bullying laws and policies appear to be less effective than others in reducing bullying and its adverse consequences (e.g., Hatzenbuehler et al., 2015) , because some institutional and social factors prevent these laws and policies from being fully implemented (e.g., EMT Associates Inc., 2013; Ramirez et al., 2014)
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. Finding 6.5: There are limited evaluations of the effectiveness of bully ing laws in preventing bullying behaviors and in reducing the deleteri ous consequences of bullying among those who are targets of bullying.
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Finding 6.10: Zero tolerance policies have not had an impact in keeping schools safer and could have adverse consequences. Conclusions Conclusion 6.1: Law and policy have the potential to strengthen state and local efforts to prevent, identify, and respond to bullying.
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Conclusion 6.6: Evidence-based research on the consequences of bul lying can help inform litigation efforts at several stages, including case discovery and planning, pleadings, and trial. Conclusion 6.7: There is emerging research that some widely used ap proaches such as zero tolerance policies are not effective at reducing bullying and thus should be discontinued, with the resources redirected to evidence-based policies and programs.
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. State laws and policies to address bullying in schools.
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. Alternatives to Zero Tolerance Policies Affecting Students of Color: A Systematic Review.
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U.S. Government Accountability Office.
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