Dive Brief:

• The reported prevalence of bullying among students aged 12-18 dropped to 22% in 2013, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. 
• The department has been collecting data on school bullying since 2005, and for almost a decade, the reported prevalence has hovered between 28% and 32% — indicating that federal, state and local anti-bullying efforts could be making a difference. 
• Bullying has been important for President Barack Obama's education agenda. In 2011, he and First Lady Michelle Obama hosted the White House's first conference focused on bullying prevention. 

Dive Insight:

While it's exciting to see declining numbers, it's also important to keep the news in perspective as the data deals with "reported" bullying. Worth consideration is the issue of bullied students not always wanting to come forward, as well as schools and states not reporting all instances. New York, for example, has been criticized in the past for failing to report bullying. This winter, questions arose when a staggering 25% of Western New York schools reported zero incidents of bullying during the 2013-14 school year. The lack of bullying in those 109 schools signaled issues about the validity of the data.

Once bullying is in fact acknowledged, educators and administrators also sometimes struggle to figure out proper protocol for dealing with it. Evelyn Rowe-Cosentino, a licensed social worker and school counselor at New York City's York Prep School, recently shared some tips for addressing these issues with Education Dive. 

Recommended Reading

U.S. Department of Education : New Data Show a Decline in School-based Bullying