Students head back to school across Genesee County

Students and parents gather outside of Central Elementary School before the start of the first day Tuesday, September 6, 2016 in Flushing. Mark Felix | MLive.com

(Mark Felix | MLive.com)

ANN ARBOR, MI -- Children across the state of Michigan returned to school on Tuesday morning Sept. 6. A new study shows they may not be returning to the friendliest of environments.

The study published by personal finance social network Wallethub.com ranked Michigan as the state with the biggest bullying problem in the United States.

Read the entire bullying study here

Wallethub used data collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Bureau of Labor Statistics, StopBullying.gov, National Education Association, National Center for Education Statistics, Cyberbullying Research Center and GLSEN to create categories that ranked the states on a 100-point scale.

The three categories weighed are: bullying prevalence, bullying impact and treatment and anti-bullying laws. In those three categories, 17 different metrics were considered to determine the scores in each category.

Michigan finished with an overall score of 60.18, nearly a full point higher than Louisiana which is second with a score of 59.34. Michigan placed fifth in bullying prevalence and bullying impact and treatment respectively and 17th in anti-bullying laws.

Michigan also has the third highest percentage of high school student who say they've been bullied on school property and fifth highest percentage of students bullied online. In January 2015, Michigan added cyber bullying to the state anti-bullying law.

Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington were excluded from the study because of limitations of the data available. The District of Columbia was included in the study.