According to this report,
Virginia middle school students and their teachers and staff reported that
their schools are safe and supportive places for learning. Students
consistently described supportive relationships with their teachers and
positive feelings toward their school. Both students and teachers reported that
they feel physically safe at school, but many students reported problems with
bullying, teasing, and other forms of peer aggression. Students endorsed
bullying as a greater problem than teachers and staff; however, this may be due
in part to the reluctance of students to tell adults about incidents of
bullying. Teachers and staff reported that their students generally treated
them with respect, but more than half had experienced a student who said
mean or insulting things to them at least once during the school year and a
smaller percentage reported being threatened or physically attacked. One area
of concern is that teachers have mixed views of the consistency and
effectiveness of school discipline. Another concern is that many teachers
reported not knowing about the student threat assessment process in their
school. The individual school survey reports prepared for each school can
provide a springboard for examination and discussion of these issues as part of
the school improvement process.
Cornell, D., Huang, F.,
Konold, T., Jia, Y., Malone, M., Burnette, A. G., Datta, P., Meyer, P.,
Stohlman, S., & Maeng, J. (2017). Technical report of the Virginia
secondary school climate survey: 2017 results for 6th–8th grade students and
school staff. Charlottesville, VA: Curry School of Education, University of
Virginia. https://curry.virginia.edu/uploads/resourceLibrary/2017_Middle_School_Climate_Survey_Technical_Report_completed_6-26-17.pdf
