Bullying and cyber-bullying are offenses that must be taken seriously by all schools, both private and government-owned. Failure to do so can stultify academic success for even the brightest students.

A great example of a school policy addressing bullying and cyber-bullying is Liberty Common High School in Fort Collins, Colorado. The school lays out clear policies; and if they’re not enforced, parents can pull their kids thereby voting with their feet.

Schools that successfully curb bullying have common characteristics worthy of attention by school leaders and policymakers. These schools, by example, offer models worth emulating:

1. Offer a rich, ambitious, well-ordered and engaging curriculum that challenges all students.

2. Behavioral expectations should be clear, concise and plainly stated.

3. Students should be fully occupied with schoolwork, homework and edifying extracurricular activities.

4. From the earliest ages, students should be exposed to the timeless lessons of great literature, especially works accentuating morality, virtue and character development.

5. School instructors should be competent and skilled in pushing all students to higher levels of academic achievement.

6. Parents should be active and engaged in the school.

7. Most importantly, parents who find these standards are not being maintained by their child’s school should be free to move their kids to schools that do.

It is foolish for the Obama bureaucracy to believe it can have an appreciable positive impact on local school-management and leadership issues such as bullying. Such a federal effort will surely lead to a one-size-fits-all strategy inferior to state and local initiatives.

Instead, the federal bureaucracy and the Congress should scale up efforts to promote school choice. Empowering families to apply marketplace pressures on schools that fail to offer safe, focused learning environments is the fastest, surest way to improve them – or shut them down if they refuse to improve.

It is right for policymakers and school leaders to consider the profound negative impacts of school bullying and cyber-bullying. These hazardous activities, and others like them, have become emblematic of unionized, bureaucratized, government-owned, monopoly schools.

Reforming public education in the sensible direction of school choice, parental empowerment and truly professional (non-union) educators is an imperative first step toward relieving the dreadful affliction of bullying. By stingily maintaining its monopoly status (always done at the expense of parental empowerment) government bureaucrats and their political allies are themselves the true bullies.

And, like all scoundrels, these bullies deserve the firmest resistance from Americans who still value freedom.

When I began my work as Education Commissioner in Rhode Island, I pledged that every decision I would make would be in the best interest of students. To make sure we are working in the best interest of students, it is essential to meet with students and to hear their voices and their concerns, so I have made it a practice to meet regularly with groups of student leaders. During each of the past two years, I have held school visits and community forums in every district in Rhode Island, and during these visits I have met with student groups. This commitment to engage students in transforming education has led to some very important and moving discussions about the issue of bullying, which has helped us to form policy and has encouraged students to speak out on their own behalf. This spring, for example, in an address on bullying, President Obama praised Brandon Greene, a middle-school student in Rhode Island whose class project led him to create a schoolwide organization that tracks bullying rates and works to prevent bullying at school.

In addition the information we get directly from students, we also need statistical data and information to help us prevent bullying. One of the goals in our strategic plan, Transforming Education In Rhode Island, is to ensure that Rhode Island will have a data-driven culture of education and decision-making. Obviously, a lot of our data comes from our state assessments and other measures of student achievement. We’re proud, however, that over many years (since 1998) Rhode Island has collected data on school climate, and that information has been very useful as we develop and implement policies on bullying, harassment, and school safety.

Every year, we survey all students, parents, teachers, and school leaders in the state. We believe that data on how students feel about their school experience will help teachers and school leaders better understand how they can remove obstacles to learning. We collect and publish this survey information through an initiative called SurveyWorks. Our most recent SurveyWorks (2010) includes a number of questions on bullying. The data tell us that about 14 percent of our high-school students report being victims of cyber-bullying, about 21 percent report that they have been “threatened with harm,” and about 44 percent report that they “have been made fun of, insulted, or called names at school.” This information is very alarming, and we have taken a number of steps to try to alleviate bullying in our schools and to keep all of our students safe.

Last November, in the wake of news reports from around the nation about bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity, we partnered with one of our local TV stations (NBC 10) to hold an anti-bullying conference to further raise awareness. The event, which NBC 10 broadcast live, included a panel with student representatives who gave harrowing first-hand reports about their experiences with bullying and about how their schools and school leaders helped – or failed to help. We also used our SurveyWorks data and data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey to report at that conference on how bullying affects lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, or questioning/queer (LGBTQ) students. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the data revealed that 78 percent of students who identify themselves as LGBTQ experienced some type of bullying in school – compared with 59 percent of “straight” students. LGBTQ students were two-and-a-half times more likely than other students to report having been threatened with harm.

We used the personal narratives that some of our brave students were willing to share and the hard data on bullying and safety in our schools to help focus statewide attention on the issue of bullying and, ultimately, to strengthen our existing anti-bullying policies and regulations in Rhode Island. For example, last December our Board of Regents approved a new policy statement on discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression. During the 2010-11 session, the Rhode Island General Assembly passed the Safe School Act, which recognizes that “[b]ullying undermines the safe learning environment that students need to achieve their full potential.” The Act amended an earlier anti-bullying statute that was one of the first in the country. The original law took effect long before the widespread use of the Internet and social media. The revised act contains new provisions about the prevention of cyber-bullying, which were inspired in part by our new data on the prevalence of cyber-bullying in our high schools.

As part of our on-going efforts to eradicate bullying, we convened a statewide meeting on building state capacity for school safety and we continue to post on our Web site and distribute to all districts useful information on anti-bullying, such as the “Safe Space Kit” that we will send to all educators before the start of school. We were really proud that this year the U.S. Department of Education Safe and Supportive Schools News singled out Rhode Island for being “on the cutting edge of anti-bullying efforts.”

Like educators around the country, we in Rhode Island are committed to the fundamental principle that all schools must be safe places, and we will continue to take action to ensure that all Rhode Island schools are great places for teaching and learning. As we work with our school leaders, teachers, and the students themselves to eradicate bullying, it is helpful to have good data on hand to guide our thinking and to listen to the voices of our students, reminding us of what our work is truly all about.

I agree with the National School Boards Association recommendation that education leaders and students should meet regularly to talk face to face about bullying and other vital issues. For all kids and teachers, the eradication of bullying should be the minimum accomplishment, not our ultimate goal. What we really need to establish are supportive, nurturing learning environments in which students and teachers celebrate and learn from diverse lives and experiences, cultures, and points of view. Engaging students in that work is key.

We will continue to work with all educators to make sure that the student voice plays a key role in shaping policy in Rhode Island – especially policy that affects the daily lives and the well-being of the students themselves.

The NSBA initiative sounds fantastic. This is something that we at the National Education Policy Center have identified as an urgent need and have been focusing on more and more in recent years (see http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/safe-at-school).

In response to the last specific question above, quantifiable measures could include the obvious – the reporting and analysis of bullying incidents of different types. But it could also include such things as the presence of anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies, the development of clear and effective policies to cover cyber-bullying, and the level of participation in Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs).

Thinking in particular about the NSBA initiative, one thing the students can speak about is what percentage of teachers at their schools are people who they truly feel would help them in they were bullied. Another element to focus on, at the high school level in particular, is the culture in athletic programs, which tends to be extremely important in terms of overall school culture. Both of these issues (teachers seen as genuinely available and helpful and coaches and sports culture being healthy) can be the subject of useful professional development.

Students should also be asked to speak about not just whether their schools have anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies, but whether those policies are known and enforced.

The above item regarding GSA participation raises perhaps the most controversial element of anti-bullying policies. Groups such as Colorado’s “Focus on the Family” push back against anti-bullying efforts that they see as a way to promote what they call the “gay agenda." But the truth is that LGBTQ students have an extremely heightened risk of severe bullying, and even “normal” bullying often involves anti-gay slurs.

This does not mean that other bullying behaviors are unimportant or any less pernicious; bullying around body image issues for middle school girls is an obvious addition to the list. But any attempt to seriously address bullying must confront anti-gay harassment as a primary element.

In practice, this means that all of the items mentioned above (e.g., a healthy school and athletic culture, as well as welcoming teachers), should specifically address issues of gay and gender non-conforming students. It also means including curricular elements that help create a welcoming, safe environment for LGBTQ students and others. In short, it means a sustained, deliberate effort to move away from the “boys will be boys” (and “girls will be girls”) acceptance of bullying behavior and toward an environment where students, teachers and others in our schools understand and embrace differences.