AnitBully school bullying map · United States

National coverage (all 50 states and DC)

School-level counts for every state come from the federal Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) 2023-24, with 2021-22 as a comparison year. Schools are placed using NCES EDGE geocodes. Nevada's state Report Card and the California proxy remain as extra layers for those states. Each state's schools and district outlines load only when you zoom in to that state.

State overview. The state shading and ranked list offer four metrics, each with its own color scale. (1) Reported incidents on the map (the default) counts approved incidents per state, using the date and category filters. An optional per-capita mode divides by total CRDC 2023-24 enrollment (per 1 million students). (2) CRDC allegations per 1,000 students, or the raw count. CRDC counts only harassment or bullying based on sex, race, color, national origin, disability, sexual orientation or religion, not all bullying, and reporting practices vary a lot by state. States without data are grey and are never shown as zero.

Higher numbers can reflect better reporting or more media coverage, not more bullying. Live incident coverage is uneven between states while the national news sweep ramps up. Many states have no published incidents yet, which does not mean no incidents happened.

Sexual assault/abuse category, content warnings and victim privacy

Incidents may carry a primary category plus secondary tags (for example staff misconduct plus sexual assault/abuse). An incident appears if any of its tags matches the filters, and it is counted only once. Sexual assault/abuse covers both student-on-student and staff-on-student cases. Events involving suicide or self-harm, sexual abuse, death or violence are hidden behind a "Content warning" button that you must tap to reveal the summary. Suicide-related events always show the 988 Lifeline box, and sexual assault/abuse events always show RAINN and Childhelp contacts.

Victim privacy: we never publish names or identifying details of minors or alleged victims. Sexual assault/abuse incidents are pinned at the school, never at a more precise location. Linked sources are labelled only with the publisher and date. We tag a category only when the source data or a clear statement in the summary supports it.

Methodology

Two separate layers

Official yearly counts (baseline) are per-school totals that schools or districts reported to a government agency for a full school year. They are drawn as circles at the school's NCES EDGE location. They are not individual incidents.

Reported incidents are individual events reported by news media or official bodies. An AnitBully reviewer checks each one and approves it before it appears. Each shows its date, school, type, status, a neutral summary we wrote ourselves, and links to the sources.

Baseline sources (pick one at a time)

Utah and Arizona

For Utah and Arizona the map shows only the federal CRDC 2023-24 (protected-class harassment allegations). Utah's State Board of Education publishes bullying counts statewide only (2,910 reported incidents in SY 2025, which it says are likely under-reported), with no public school-level file. Arizona publishes no separate school-level bullying count; its report cards re-display CRDC. We have not added estimates for either state.

District rankings

The district rankings add up school figures to each official NCES district ID, separately for each source and state. Sources are never combined. The rate uses the enrollment of the schools that reported. A district is flagged partial when fewer than 80% of its schools reported. In rate view, districts under 500 students are listed but not ranked, and districts with no reported data are grouped separately, never shown as zero. Approved public incidents and staff-misconduct cases appear in separate columns and do not affect the order.

Rates, colors and missing data

Rate = count ÷ enrollment × 1,000. Enrollment comes from the CRDC 2023-24 total for CRDC and Nevada, and from CDE cumulative enrollment for the California proxy. Each source has its own color scale with 5 quantile classes, computed once from that source's values across all its states (so colors don't shift while you pan). Colors cannot be compared across sources. Grey means missing, suppressed, not reported, or no enrollment figure for a rate. It is never shown as zero. A real reported zero gets the lightest color.

Schools that are virtual or charter schools may be plotted at an office address.

Staff misconduct cases

Incidents in the staff misconduct category (purple hexagon, "A") are reports or allegations that an adult school employee abused or mistreated a student, for example through arrests, charges, lawsuits or district statements. They are not student-on-student bullying, and they are kept separate: you can show or hide them with the category filter, and the rankings page counts them in their own column. Their status badges (alleged, charged, lawsuit filed, official finding) never imply guilt. We do not name the employee unless an official record names them, and we never identify the student. Source links show only the publisher and date, never a headline. Links whose web address contains a child's age or other sensitive detail are withheld.

School district borders

District outlines come from the NCES EDGE School District Boundaries, school year 2024-25 (TIGER/Line 2025), covering unified, elementary and secondary districts in all 50 states and DC, loaded one state at a time when you zoom in. Some states (for example Nevada) have only unified districts. In others (for example parts of California), elementary and secondary (high school) districts overlap, so the secondary layer is a separate option. For fast loading, the boundaries are heavily simplified and approximate: about 4% of vertices are kept and coordinates are rounded to about 11 m. They should not be used to decide which district an address belongs to. Colors only tell neighboring districts apart. The district shown in an incident popup comes from the source record, plus a lookup of the school's location against the full-resolution boundaries.1

Incident date filter

The incidents date filter uses each event's incident date when the exact day is known. Otherwise it uses the date the event was first reported, for example when only the month is known or no date is given. The popup says which date applies. Dates are compared as calendar days in Pacific time (America/Los_Angeles). "Last N days" means today plus the previous N−1 days, and "This year" runs from January 1. Events with neither date appear only under "All time". You can share a filtered view by link (?range=30d or ?from=YYYY-MM-DD&to=YYYY-MM-DD).

Incident review

Every incident is reviewed by a person before it is published. We publish no names, photos, initials, or identifying details of minors, even when other outlets have. We name adults only when they are public officials acting in their role, or named parties in official records. We place incidents at the school, district, or city, never at a home address.

1 Source: U.S. Department of Education, NCES, EDGE School District Boundaries SY 2024-25, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/edge/Geographic/DistrictBoundaries (public domain). Simplified with mapshaper. Boundaries are approximate.