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Assignment grade: F? In an embarrassing backtrack, schools Superintendent Christina Kishimoto has had to inform the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights that Hawaii needs to amend faulty records it submitted about student suspensions.
“The inconsistencies in student discipline data resulted in the doubling or tripling of data counts of suspended days,” she wrote to the federal office. The Civil Rights Data Collection of the 2015-16 school year was the first time the feds had required schools to report the number of “school days missed” due to out-of-school suspensions.
There had been hints of a data disconnect: The erroneous numbers showed Hawaii suspending far fewer students overall than the national average — 3.5% of students per year versus the national rate of 5.3% — but Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students and those with disabilities losing more than twice the number of school days here than nationally. Odd.
The state DOE did catch its own mistake eventually, so perhaps its assignment grade should be revised upward. Certainly, this week’s adjusted data looks more reassuring, cutting by nearly half the erroneously double- or triple-counted numbers.
Unfortunately, though, the overstated stats quickly alarmed the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii and the Hawaii Disability Rights Center, the latter calling on the federal government to look into possible discrimination against disabled students.
Let’s hope the DOE ensures that such faulty data reporting doesn’t happen again; and that the adjusted, true numbers calm the alarm over student suspensions. Some school discipline is unavoidable, of course, but other options must be vigorously tried first, to try to keep troubled youths engaged in learning.
