Rates of School Crime: How Safe Are U.S. Schools?

U. S. schools are mostly safe places, but sometimes kids get hurt or scared by bullying or other crimes during the day.

Think of a school like a playground. If 10 kids out of 100 get bullied in one year, that’s a rate, it tells us how many kids are affected compared to all the kids there.

Sometimes schools have higher rates than others, just like some playgrounds might be noisier or more crowded.

Imagine you're eating your favorite candy every day. If one day, someone takes a piece from you, that’s school crime. Now imagine this happens to many kids in the same school, that’s a high rate of school crime.

Over time, these rates can go up or down, like how your candy stash might get smaller if too many people take pieces, but gets bigger again when you get more candy from your mom.

Some schools have fewer problems now than they did before, just like a playground that used to be messy but is now tidy.