In a big, new COVID-19-era survey, more than half of all educators and school personnel reported being victimized at work.

Transcript

A MARTINEZ, HOST:

Over the last two years, we've seen clips on social media showing harassment and even violence directed at people at their workplaces, including schools, and new research shows just how bad it's been. Just over half of those working in education reported either physical violence or serious verbal aggression and threats on the job during the last school year - that's teachers, principals, counselors, even bus drivers. NPR's education correspondent Anya Kamenetz got an early look at the data released from the American Psychological Association. That's ahead of a briefing this afternoon with members of Congress. Anya, tell us more about this survey.

ANYA KAMENETZ, BYLINE: Sure. So, first of all, it was really big. There were almost 15,000 respondents all across the country, and, of course, most disturbing here are the reports of physical violence. And, most commonly, it came from students who were acting out, and 22% of the non-teacher staff members as well as 18% of school psychologists and social workers experienced violence on the job. So did 14% of teachers. And, notably, this was all happening during COVID, when many schools were remote or hybrid, with less in-person contact than usual. So these numbers may even be on the low side - that's what the task force told me.

MARTINEZ: Low side, OK. So does that match up with what you've been hearing?

KAMENETZ: You know, A, if you spend time in schools, you know that violence does happen. It can be kind of swept under the rug. Tonya Shonkwiler is a special education teacher in Montana, and she's going to speak this afternoon about the time when a 15-year-old student hit her in the face.

TONYA SHONKWILER: Clobbered in the nose and - nose was bleeding.

KAMENETZ: And Shonkwiler told me her main concern is not just for her own safety, but that many of the folks in her school and in many schools, especially in rural areas, don't have the training to support each other when something like this happens - or even better, to prevent it from happening in the first place.

MARTINEZ: And it's not just physical violence.

KAMENETZ: That's right. The APA looked at verbal abuse, and this is something that can happen online or face-to-face, and it includes really serious things - direct threats, slurs, obscene gestures, bullying, sexual harassment. And administrators were the most likely to report this - 42% said they experienced this kind of behavior from parents, 37% said they got it from students - and one-third of teachers also reported verbal aggression coming from students as well.

MARTINEZ: And is this something that's changed or maybe grown during the pandemic?

KAMENETZ: You know, there's a lot of belief that it has, and I certainly saw it last fall with my reporting on the harassment of school board members. This APA task force says not all their data is comparable, but they do report that teachers, in particular, are almost twice as likely to say their job is stressful compared to before COVID. So this is Sara Foppiano. She's a high school teacher in Washington state, and she put in her official resignation in January of this year.

SARA FOPPIANO: I don't get paid enough to put up with this verbal abuse.

KAMENETZ: She said that the level of hostility and anger from parents is like nothing she's ever experienced before in a decade of teaching, and it can be over things like wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt, over her support for masking, or even when she called home to check on a student who was falling behind. The parent berated her for 20 minutes.

MARTINEZ: Wow. So what is the task force recommending here?

KAMENETZ: So the task force wants funding for school-based mental health and support, resources for educators. There's a few pieces of legislation currently before Congress, including the Comprehensive Mental Health in Schools Pilot Program Act, and I spoke to several members of the task force who underlined that this kind of violence doesn't come out of nowhere. It takes a systemic solution.

MARTINEZ: That's NPR education correspondent, Anya Kamenetz. Thanks a lot.

KAMENETZ: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.