Peer victimization is a severe problem faced by many of today's youth. Researchers have spent the last three decades investigating various aspects of peer victimization, including its impact on children's academic achievement. Though findings from various studies indicate that peer victimization is negatively related to academic achievement, mixed findings have continuously emerged suggesting that peer victimization may not always lead to poor achievement (Nakamoto & Schwartz, 2010). To address these conflicting results, scholars have proposed that proximal indicators of academic adjustment may be more sensitive to peer victimization and therefore mediate this relationship (Kochenderfer-Ladd et al., 2021). However, this line of research overlooks intraindividual variability that may contribute to divergent academic adjustment outcomes. Grounded in appraisal theory, the aim of this dissertation was to utilize Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) Transactional Model of Stress to explain why some victimized children appear to show no significant decline in academic achievement. Towards this goal, this dissertation (1) created and validated a scale that assessed two forms of control (2) examined the concurrent and longitudinal relationship between peer victimization, control, academic adjustment, and academic achievement, and (3) examined the concurrent and longitudinal relationship between peer victimization, emotion, threat appraisal, and academic achievement. Findings revealed that (1) maladaptive control is negatively related to academic adjustment while the inverse is true for adaptive control and (2) differences in victimized children’s control appraisal formation may, in part, account for variation in academic adjustment outcomes. Importantly, findings from this study offer initial insights into the complex and nuanced relationship between peer victimization, appraisal formation, and academic adjustment outcomes providing a foundation upon which future studies can build upon this line of research.