Beyond the Numbers: What LGBTQ+ Students Are Really Experiencing in Schools

In classrooms across the United States, LGBTQ+ students are navigating something far more complex than assignments and attendance. They are navigating safety, identity, belonging and, increasingly, a political climate that shapes all three.

The latest National School Climate Survey from GLSEN offers a sobering picture. Only one in three LGBTQ+ students report that they frequently or often look forward to school. Nearly two-thirds say they feel unsafe because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. For many students, that sense of unease is not occasional. It is built into their daily routines – influencing where they walk, who they talk to and how visible they allow themselves to be.

And yet, to reduce these students to statistics alone would miss something essential. “Research is about storytelling,” said Shweta Moorthy, GLSEN’s Director of Research and Best Practices, during a recent interview. “The way to tell meaningful stories is to ensure that both the quantitative and qualitative data are moving hand in hand.”

That idea – that data should reflect lived experience, not flatten it – is at the center of this year’s survey. For the first time since the project began in 1999, GLSEN incorporated qualitative research alongside its national dataset, conducting focus groups with students whose experiences are often underrepresented or entirely missing from large-scale studies.

The goal was not just to measure harm, but to better understand what school actually feels like.

For years, GLSEN’s survey has been a cornerstone of education research, used to document the realities LGBTQ+ students face across the country. But this latest iteration reflects a shift in approach. Rather than assuming what matters to students, researchers worked directly with young people to redesign the survey – asking what questions felt relevant, what language resonated, and what experiences had gone unrecognized.

“We didn’t want to impose a narrative,” Moorthy explained. “We didn’t want to say, ‘you are victims,’ and we didn’t want to say, ‘you are resilient heroes.’ We wanted to understand how students are actually experiencing school.”

That shift led to new kinds of questions, not just about harassment or discrimination, but about joy, connection and anticipation. Do students look forward to school? Where do they feel safe? When do they feel like themselves? The answers, in many cases, are difficult.

According to the survey, 62% of LGBTQ+ students experienced harassment based on their sexual orientation, and 68% experienced harassment based on their gender identity or expression. More than half reported facing some form of discrimination in school. Among trans and gender-expansive students, 86% said they avoided certain spaces entirely, altering their behavior to minimize risk.

These findings are consistent with previous years, but they are unfolding within a different context. Students are not only responding to their immediate environments – they are responding to a broader political climate that has become increasingly visible in schools.

“When we look at what’s happening politically,” Moorthy said, “we’re seeing attacks on LGBTQ+ inclusion happening alongside attacks on racial education and broader social justice efforts.”

For students, those shifts are not abstract. They shape policies, classroom discussions, and the tone of school environments. The result, many reported, is a growing sense that schools feel more hostile than they have in the past.

And yet, within that reality, another story emerges.

Roughly 73% of LGBTQ+ students said they feel somewhat or very connected to other LGBTQ+ students at their school. It is a quiet statistic, easy to overlook alongside more alarming numbers, but it reveals something powerful: students are not only experiencing their environments – they are actively shaping them.

“For a long time, we focused on what adults can do,” said Yu-Chi Wang, GLSEN’s School Climate Research Manager. “But we didn’t focus as much on what students are doing for each other.”

In focus groups, students described moments of recognition that changed how they understood themselves – discovering a shared identity with a friend, or realizing that someone else had already navigated what they were going through. In some cases, simply seeing another student live openly created a sense of possibility.

Those moments are not captured easily in data tables. But they matter.

They suggest that even in environments where students feel unsafe, they are building networks of care, forming connections that make school not just survivable, but meaningful.

At the same time, the survey reinforces what educators and advocates have long known: institutional support makes a measurable difference. Students in schools with inclusive curricula, explicit anti-bullying policies, supportive educators, and student organizations like Gender and Sexuality Alliances report stronger academic outcomes, higher levels of belonging, and lower rates of absenteeism.

But what this year’s report makes especially clear is that safety is not simply the absence of harm. “Safety is not just the absence of harm,” Moorthy said. “It is active affirmation.”

That distinction is critical. It shifts the goal from minimizing negative experiences to actively creating environments where students feel seen and valued. It asks schools not just to prevent bullying, but to create belonging.

GLSEN’s own approach to research reflects that shift. Previous reports were lengthy, academic, and often inaccessible to the people most directly affected by their findings. This year’s executive summary is intentionally shorter and more readable, designed for educators, advocates, and students themselves.

“The previous report was over 200 pages,” Wang noted. “This time, we wanted something people can actually use.”

That decision reflects a broader understanding of research as a tool — not just for documentation, but for action. Because the stakes of this work extend far beyond the report itself.

In recent years, schools have become central to broader political debates about identity, inclusion, and belonging. Policies affecting LGBTQ+ students are being debated at state and local levels, often without direct input from the students most affected. In that context, research like GLSEN’s serves a dual purpose: it provides evidence, and it amplifies voices. It also complicates the narrative.

LGBTQ+ students are often portrayed either as victims in need of protection or as symbols within larger cultural debates. This report resists both simplifications. It shows students as they are – navigating difficulty, forming relationships, finding moments of joy and making meaning within imperfect systems.

They are not just experiencing school. They are interpreting it, responding to it, and, in many ways, reshaping it.

The question the report leaves behind is not just what students are going through, but what adults – educators, policymakers, communities – choose to do with that knowledge.

• If we know that inclusive policies improve outcomes, why are they not universal?
• If we know that connection matters, why are some students still isolated?
• If we know what safety requires, why is it still unevenly distributed?

Data can answer what is happening. But it cannot answer why the change remains inconsistent. That responsibility lies elsewhere.

What GLSEN offers, through both its data and its storytelling, is not just a diagnosis of school climate, but a challenge: to listen more carefully, to respond more intentionally, and to recognize that students are not abstractions within policy debates.

They are, as the report emphasizes, whole people, moving through school with “courage, creativity, exhaustion, and joy.”

And if the purpose of education is to support students, then the measure of a school is not only what it teaches, but how it makes students feel while they are there.

---

If you want to contribute to GLSEN’s next round of research, visit http://glisten.org/nscs27/ to learn more about their 2027 survey, which opens on April 15th. LGBTQIA+, questioning, and/or Two Spirit individuals who are 13 and older and attending a US-based K-12 school in the 2025-2026 school year are eligible to respond.