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When Tennessee’s mother contacted Propublica last year and shared that a 10 -year -old child was kicked out of the school because she made a finger gun, she questioned how many other children had experienced the same thing. I thought.
The state has recently passed laws to increase penalties to threaten large -scale violence at school. There were many speculations between supporters and lawyers how schools and law execution agencies apply laws. As a long -term educational reporter who has reported the discipline of students, I thought it would help to acquire meaningful data and understand whether this 10 -year -old experience is a flap. 。
After a few months of investigations, I discovered that the state law brought the expulsion and arrested waves of children who were accused of being threatened by rumors and misunderstandings.
However, in the process of publishing stories about 10 -year -old children and other children, children involved in these laws are more frustrating than lighting. I noticed that it was. Tennessee learned that it has refused to publish data by providing a wide latitude to public institutions. And for the contradiction of how the school district collects and reports information, the members themselves are sometimes dark like the people.
I started exploring by asking dozens of school districts, including the number of students who have been expelled by the threat of a large -scale violence over the past few years. Also, if possible, I wanted those students’ population statistics. I live in Georgia, and Tennessee allows agencies to refuse recording requests from people without Tennessee’s address. For this reason, he partnered with Nashville’s WPLN News, Paige PFLEGER, who has been spending for years on reporting Tennessee guns and criminal justice.
Tennessee, as in all states, needs to submit school disciplinary data to the federal government, and school districts need to collect this data throughout the year. Some areas, such as public schools in Metropolo Building and schools in Lazaford County, provided numbers relatively easily. This shows that, despite the fact that or a small number of cases, the Zero Torance method appeared in a book to expel students to make threats more frequent.
However, other districts fought data release, alleged that sharing one of this basic information violated the confidentiality of the students and could lead to violence on the campus. “We believe that it will adversely affect our security plan and security work,” a private lawyer of the Patnam County School System east of Nashville was returned by email. To publish data, lawyers added that “it could lead to threats and actual cases.”
Highlights of this series
Some people have quoted the state public recording method, which said they allowed their requests to reject them, and did not maintain the database to make it easier or to be able to make it easier. I said.
In other examples, the district has released incomplete or inconsistent data. Some said they were happy to tell us about the suspicion of threats from students, but said they could not share expulsions. The threat of large -scale violence was summarized, gathered for many other disciplinary violations and expanded the numbers.
I wondered how the parliament did not even know how many students were expelled, how to evaluate how the expulsion is working. So I asked the State Ministry of Education to let me know what it was looking at. It turned out that the school district had sent incorrect data directly to the state. The division told me that the school district reported about 170 “incidents” of the threat of large -scale violence last year. However, samples from the school district under the age of 20 showed almost 100 incidents, so they could not clearly explain the inconsistency.
A Nashville reporter has found that the school system of Clarksville Mongomery County has accidentally reported data on destructive school cases, including large -scale violence threats. When I reached out to the district representative, he improved its record, but said, “I can’t withdraw the accurate data of the past.” He recommended that the county officer office for data on the number of students charged with a threat of large -scale violence. (The sheriff’s office has already refused my request and claimed that it was confidential information.)
This year, when legislative conferences rose in Tennessee, I asked Gloria Johnson, a former Democratic member and former special education teacher, to see if I could succeed in where I failed. She asked the Education Division to expel the threat of large -scale violence last year.
Probably due to the report error, the department could only clearly check 12. Our excavation has discovered 66 expulsions against large -scale violence threats over 10 school districts.
In response to questions about the difficulties I encountered, a spokeswoman in the Education Department stated that the agency was training the area on how to accurately report data.
After a 11 -year -old and 13 -year -old students are arrested under the Through the Tennessee School of Tennessee, two families complain
Spokesman has also supported a school survey, stating that the department has reported to the Safe Ministry of Land Security that the department is responsible for tracking the threat of large -scale violence. Earlier this year, I asked the department to what it would track it and whether one of the data will be released in the future.
The information was confidential by a spokeswoman.
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