The Relationship of School Characteristics and Bullying Between Career Academy and Comprehensive High School Students

Violence-including issues of bullying-in urban schools across the United States is a persistent phenomenon, and continues to be of utmost concern for school administrators, community leaders, students, and their families. Using propensity score matching, we examined the relationship between school type-a magnet career academy and a traditional, comprehensive school-and students' experiences with bullying-observing and being a victim. We found that academy students-compared to comprehensive school students-both experienced and observed significantly lower levels of bullying. We believe it is likely that students at the magnet career academy benefited from a combination of factors, including their abilities to choose to participate in the academy, having peers with similar career interests, and the small size of the academy.