Violence & Education: Key data

Violence at School: Statistics from the Status of Girls in Illinois report, by Michelle VanNatta

Girls encounter significant violence in their school environments, and this is worse for girls in Chicago than for those in other parts of Illinois or the U.S.  More than one in nine Chicago high school girls reported in a 2007 survey that someone had threatened or injured them using a gun, knife, club or other weapon while on school property at least once in the previous year (YRBS, 2007).  The overall number for the U.S. was 5.4%.  At the same time, 12.5% of Chicago high school girls stated that they themselves had carried a gun, knife, club, or other such weapon at some point in the month before the survey, while 5% of girls in the rest of Illinois had carried a weapon and 5.4% was the national average (ibid).

A number of young women reported that they were involved in a physical fight on school property.  Overall 8.5% of high school girls in the U.S. said that they had been in a physical fight at school.  Girls of color in Illinois and Chicago were much more likely to report fighting at school than their white peers.

Based on all of these statistics, it is not surprising that a significant proportion of Chicago high school girls (10.7%) report that they did not go to school because of safety concerns.

How often do you feel (girl’s name) is safe at school? Would you say never, sometimes, usually, or always?

A great deal of school harassment is based on bias about actual or perceived sexual identity.  The Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) reports that 74% of students in Illinois had heard homophobic slurs at school, such as the words “faggot” or “dyke.”[5] Even more Illinois students, 83%, had heard other students say things like “that’s so gay” or “you’re so gay” (ibid).  GLSEN learned from students that often teachers and school staff did not intervene when hearing these comments, and, worse, almost one fifth of students (19%) said they had heard school staff make sexist comments, 12% had heard staff make racist comments, and 11% had heard staff make homophobic comments.  Less than one quarter of students said that their schools had Gay/Straight Alliances (GSAs) or groups dedicated to LGBT student issues, and less than half of students said that their schools had an anti-harassment policy with specific language protecting LGBTQI students.