Last school year, 8 kindergarten students were arrested, Indiana reported. But that's not true

An Indiana Department of Education report shows that last school year at Maple Elementary in Avon, 18 students were arrested for a variety of offenses, including assault, intimidation and disturbing the peace. Another 14 students were arrested off school grounds because they were referred to police by school personnel.

In total, eight kindergarten students, three first-graders, one second-grader, eight third-graders and 12 fourth-graders were arrested. The details come from the annual Indiana Schools Bullying, Arrests, and Safety Staffing Report, released in July.

The arrests appear to indicate an increase in violent behavior among young children. According to IDOE data, this is the first time in at least seven years that the state has reported the arrest of a kindergarten student.

But a review of the data by WFYI found that those 32 arrests of Maple Elementary School students never occurred. Avon school officials say an error by a district employee led to incorrect information being included in the state's report.

The errors distort data on racial disparities in school discipline. And a leading discipline researcher also said it raises doubts about the validity of other data that schools are required to report to the state and make available to the public.

The report found that erroneous arrests account for nearly 70 percent of all arrests of students in kindergarten through fifth grade.

Kevin Carr, a spokesman for Avon Community Schools, said administrators learned of the reporting error after WFYI requested information about the arrests from the school district in early August.

“There were no arrests at this school in [school year] 23-24, so the data was clearly not correct,” Carr said. “So what happened was a school member made a mistake.”

A district employee inadvertently coded those incidents as arrests, he said. Instead, the incidents should have been reported as less severe disciplinary actions, including expulsions, suspensions, refusal to attend recess and at least one expulsion. The school employee used a new system to enter that data, Carr said.

“All we could determine was that it was a simple human error,” he said.

Carr said Avon schools alerted the Indiana Department of Education to the error after discovering it.

But as of Sept. 26, the error had not been corrected in IDOE's “2024 Bullying, Arrests, and Safety Staffing Annual Report,” nor in an accompanying table that lists arrest incidents at all Indiana schools, along with demographic data such as gender, grade and ethnicity of the students arrested. The information is posted on a student safety page on IDOE's website.

An IDOE spokesperson wrote via email that the department is working with Avon Schools to determine how the arrests should have been coded “and to add a note to the disciplinary arrest report that takes into account new information obtained through this process.”

But a school discipline expert warns that errors like this raise questions about the accuracy of other government data, including other types of disciplinary and bullying incidents and the demographics associated with those incidents.

“If your data is inaccurate, there is little point in making it available to anyone,” says Russ Skiba, a professor emeritus at Indiana University who has conducted extensive research on suspensions and arrests of schoolchildren.

Without accurate data, parents would not have a clear idea of ​​what was going on in schools, Skiba said.

“It is disturbing and confusing that they are not making immediate corrections here,” Skiba said.

And, he said, if the data is not reliable, the state cannot provide the resources and training needed to the schools that need them most.

“This data is important,” Skiba said. “This legislature and this administration care deeply about transparency for parents. If they can't even guarantee that the data parents want and need is accurate, maybe they should be a little more transparent.”

Reporting of data

Last school year, schools reported arrest data to IDOE using a new method, said Jason Brames, Avon Community Schools' director of technology. Previously, he said, the district provided that information “manually” by uploading spreadsheets to the department.

Now, he said, the department's data exchange system is directly connected to the district's student information system. Brames said that means data entered into the school's student information system is automatically uploaded to the IDOE's data exchange system.

“Essentially, there is a live connection between the Ministry of Education’s data exchange and each school’s student information system,” he said.

If information is entered incorrectly, it is automatically sent to the department, Brames said. That means in this case, no one from Avon Schools saw that they had reported 32 arrests at Maple Elementary to IDOE.

Brames said the new method of transmitting data to the state would be more efficient, but would also benefit from additional validations or checks.

Carr, the Avon spokesman, said the district is also doubling training efforts to ensure employees understand the new data entry system.

Courtney Crown, a spokeswoman for IDOE, wrote by email that the department is working to add “functionality” to the data exchange that would allow schools to view data trends over time.

“Even with very complex systems at the state and local level, there is always the possibility of human error,” Crown wrote.

Carr said Avon schools are working with the department to create an opportunity for schools to appeal or correct data errors.

“So we want to set the record straight on this incident, but we hope that our case will really help IDOE establish a system that will allow other schools to correct this type of data if and when it is misreported,” he said.

An IDOE spokesperson did not confirm that there is no way for schools to appeal the submission of inaccurate data to the department.

“We are a public institution and we want to make sure that our parents, our constituents, are informed about the current state of affairs in our schools,” Carr said. “And this type of data collection is an attempt to provide the transparency that voters, taxpayers and community members deserve.”

By law, school districts are required to report student arrest data at each school to the IDOE annually. The report is prepared by the Office of School Building Physical Safety and
Security.

Contact WFYI investigative education reporter Lee V. Gaines at [email protected].