WSMV4 Investigation reveals incorrect data in state report used to guide school safety decisions
“The department requires that inaccuracies in reporting be remedied by the end of June and provides training to districts on how to code data accurately.”
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - Over the past couple of years, there have been several disruptive and potentially violent incidents on school campuses in Middle Tennessee that have made headline news.
Those include a 16-year-old Wilson County student getting arrested after deputies found a stolen handgun in his car at Lebanon High School, a student in Nashville getting arrested for bringing a BB gun to school, third graders finding a loaded hand-gun on a Rutherford County elementary school playground, and a classroom aide getting arrested for allegedly assaulting a student at a Metro Nashville Public Schools’ middle school.
Incidents like those that are related to student safety and welfare are supposed to be recorded by school districts and turned over to the Tennessee Department of Education, which then complies with that data for its annual Safe Schools Report.
Called “serious incidents” these often violent events include guns, weapons, and explosives found on campus, as well as physical and sexual assaults. The Safe Schools Report breaks down the number of serious incidents reported at each school in every school district in the state, and the report is used by TDOE and state lawmakers to track guns and violence in schools and help guide policy on improving student safety.
However, after closely examining the Safe School Report for the 2021/2022 academic year and the 2022/2023 academic year, WSMV4 Investigates learned some of the data included in those reports may not be accurate.
The realization came when we observed a nearly 50% increase in the serious incidents reported by Clarksville Montgomery County School System last year.
According to the Safe Schools Report, Clarksville-Montgomery schools recorded 738 serious incidents during the 2021/2022 academic year. But that number jumped to 1,456 serious incidents over the 2022/2023 school year according to that year’s Safe School Report.
“You know that’s mind-blowing,” said Amberlece Berman, whose son is a fifth grader in Clarksville-Montgomery schools. “You hear that, and you start to think reflectively because we as parents didn’t know about that number. So, it makes you ask ‘Were they reporting correctly? Is that number real?’”
Berman’s two questions are the ones we posed to Clarksville-Montgomery Schools after uncovering the spike in serious incidents reported to the state. And according to the district’s Chief Communications Officer Anthony Johnson, the numbers are way off.
“When you sent that to me it was obviously very alarming,” Johnson said. “And to see under the category of serious incident, that high a number, especially at some of the schools where you rarely have issues, was definitely concerning.”
After our call, Johnson says district leaders and people now responsible for recording that data and transferring it to DOE, went back through several years of reporting and learned that they had been misclassifying many student incidents.
The district also discovered that TDOE had notified Clarksville-Montgomery schools about the alarmingly high increase in incidents reported, but according to Johnson that communication “did not get a thorough internal review” that would have alerted district officials to the problem much earlier.
“It appears we potentially had incorrect reporting in those reports [Safe Schools Report] for the past several years,” said Anderson. “So, I very much appreciate your reaching out, and it’s been a great learning experience because since then I would say what we’ve done is almost like a forensic analysis of our reporting.”
That analysis led Clarksville-Montgomery Schools to learn they were overreporting serious incidents by hundreds of events each academic year, due to miscoding incidents in the district’s computer system, so things like ordinary schoolyard fights and things like a kindergarten student throwing a shoe were recorded as violent assaults.
That resulted in the district massively overreporting the number of serious incidents taking place, making Clarksville-Montgomery Schools look like one of the most violent districts in the state on paper, when in fact according to Johnson it is not.
“We take safety very seriously,” said Johnson. “And there’s no denying that we have had some serious incidents that we need to address, but in reality, we’ve had some challenges that caused us to overreport, and thankfully we have the opportunity to correct that and get it right moving forward.”
Turns out, Clarksville-Montgomery is not the only district that now questions the accuracy of the data published in the most recent Safe Schools Report. After we contacted district officials in Williamson and Rutherford County Schools, both districts told WSMV4 Investigates that they believe the serious incident numbers attributed to some of their schools are off.
In a statement, RCS said that “[i]n reviewing some of the numbers, we know the information is not accurate in all cases, and it appears some schools have miscoded certain discipline issues which cause the number of “serious incidents” to be skewed. We plan to review this with our administrators so that our report is more accurate moving forward.”
Berman, who is also a former school resource officer in Clarksville-Montgomery Schools, says she is glad to see her son’s district admitting their overreporting mistakes, but worries other districts may be “underreporting” violence and guns on campus if there is not a way to catch mistakes like the ones WSMV4 Investigates has uncovered.
“It’s good to know the district is owning up,” said Berman. “No question our kids are safe. Clarksville is trying to get it right. But I don’t know if other districts around us are hiding it and keeping those numbers down for whatever reasons.”
So, WSMV4 Investigates reached out to TDOE, to request an interview, wanting to ask if more can be done to verify the serious incident data that districts report, and if not, whether that information as published in the Safe Schools Report should be relied on in guiding state policy on school safety.
TDOE declined the opportunity to sit down for an interview, but in a statement to WSMV4 Investigates said;
“Serious incident data is collected and reported at the district level. The state works to review the data and report extreme anomalies in trends back to the LEA to encourage them to review and correct any coding issues. That said, as these incidents occur locally and the data is handled locally, the state does not have insight into each issue to ensure data integrity, leaving final checks and data reviews to the districts. The department requires that inaccuracies in reporting be remedied by the end of June and provides training to districts on how to code data accurately.”
Johnson says leaders with Clarksville-Montgomery plan to meet with DOE officials to receive more training and hopefully find ways to improve the district’s reporting. Johnson believes that will lead to new approaches that can help the state and other districts become more accurate in the future when recording serious incidents on campus.
“There isn’t a school anywhere in this world that is 100% safe, it’s just not a reality,” said Johnson. “But you must strive every day to make your schools as safe as possible, and this is one example of how we plan to do that moving forward. Because that data helps us focus where to focus certain safety priorities and make sure we have to appropriate interventions and best practices in place.”
Johnson tells WMV4 Investigates that since we first contacted the district, they have already made plans to change some aspects of the student code of conduct and other protocols to ensure their reporting is more accurate in years to come.
According to Johnson, the district has also gone back and reviewed several years of data to correct the number of serious incidents reported to the state. Based on their initial review, Johson says the district believes the most accurate count for serious incidents in the district is around 200, a number that has not increased much since the pandemic.
“What our data is actually reflecting right now is that we’ve stayed pretty stagnant. Obviously, we want to see that number go down, and we are going to continue to do everything we can to get those numbers to go down.”
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