No clarity on Hawai'i school violence
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By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
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The Hawai'i public school system has no way to accurately compare the disciplinary records of one school to another, a tool that might help control violence, crime and other disciplinary problems by identifying the schools that need help.
If comparable data for each school were available, the state might be able to target schools with the most serious disciplinary issues so that extra state resources could be allocated there.
Makawao resident Rainell Javier became concerned about how the state tracks violence in the schools after her 14-year-old son was attacked and severely beaten by another student in a classroom at Samuel Enoka Kalama Intermediate School on Nov. 28.
Her son suffered a broken nose and broken orbital bone under his left eye, and Javier learned the 15-year-old student who attacked her son allegedly had a history of previous assaults.
After her son's story was publicized, Javier said other Maui residents wrote letters about incidents they had experienced at that school and other public schools.
"There was one girl who wrote in and made me cry," Javier said. "She was saying it seemed like nothing has changed, because when she was there she was hit, she was groped, her hair was pulled and nobody ever did anything about it.
"How do we allow these kids to do that? It's bad, and it's been going on. They need to do something now."
While individual schools scrutinize statistics on their own disciplinary violations, the state Department of Education is unable to compare statistics from school to school because of a lack of consistency in how incidents are reported.
At the request of The Advertiser, the state for the first time has released school-by-school statistical breakdowns that show the disciplinary offenses reported at specific schools.
The state DOE collects statistics on student disciplinary infractions from its 285 public schools into a centralized database called the Safe School Information System.
But department officials said the data can't be compared between schools because different schools report the discipline problems differently. What one school may classify as an assault, for example, another school will list as disorderly conduct.
Jean Nakasato, educational specialist in the DOE's student support section, said the detailed data traditionally has been considered confidential because it might be misinterpreted, and might mislead parents about safety issues at their children's schools.
Greg Knudsen, communications director for the DOE, said the department is aware of the reporting inconsistencies.
"We've been well aware of either some inadequacies of the reporting, or just the way there's variation within the reporting. Part of it is our record system, too," he said. "We're looking to upgrade that so that there would be perhaps a little more consistency, but I don't see a point where there would ever be total consistency on every item."
Knudsen said he doesn't believe it would be feasible or desirable to get each school to report the data the same way.
"It's too large a system to apply that. It just would be impractical," he said. "It would bind the schools and their ability to react to the situations that are localized."
However, the value of numbers has been proved at the individual school level. For example:
NO COMMON STANDARD
Systemwide data would be more useful if the department standardized the reporting of discipline problems. Without a common standard in reporting, the information can indeed be misleading.
For example, Hilo Union Elementary School, which had 520 students in kindergarten through sixth grade, reported 38 Class A assaults in the 2005-06 school year, making it second in the state for assaults among elementary schools, and sixth for all schools, including high schools.
By comparison, Honolulu's Farrington High School, which had 2,579 students and lately has been coping with a resurgence in youth gang activity, reported just six Class A assaults last year.
The reason for the curious spread in assault statistics is the way each school defines assault.
Farrington High Principal Catherine Payne said cases at Farrington aren't classified as assault unless one student is attacked, and was trying to get away. Mutual fisticuffs are generally classified as disorderly conduct, and don't qualify as assaults, she said.
"To me, if it's an assault, that's the most serious, that's Class A; you must have the police come in, and almost always they make an arrest," Payne said.
Hilo Union's Mizuba said his school reports as a Class A assault any incident where there is aggressive, unwanted physical contact between students, whether the aggressor is 5 years old or 12.
"Even if they are kindergartners, they get into an argument and one punches or pushes the other one down, that we log in as an assault," Mizuba said.
That approach caused the Hilo Union assault statistics to jump last year, but Mizuba said meticulous reporting and analysis of assault cases has helped. The school has a relatively large population of high-needs special education students, and the data helped document the repeat offenders so the school could provide more support for those youngsters.
Hilo Union also used money it had available to hire a new vice principal position "to make a concerted effort" to deal with disciplinary and other issues, he said.
MISLEADING NUMBERS
On Kaua'i, Kapa'a Middle School listed the most assaults of any middle school in the state last year with 48. With just 719 students, Kapa'a reported more assaults than Honolulu middle schools twice its size.
Similarly, Waimea Canyon Elementary and Intermediate School on Kaua'i, with 486 students last year, posted more assaults than any intermediate or middle school except for Kapa'a.
That doesn't mean those schools are particularly violent, said Kaua'i and Ni'ihau Complex Superintendent Daniel Hamada. He attributed the relatively high numbers of assaults to differences in reporting strategies by the principals.
Keeping in mind the shortcomings, the statewide data show the most serious type of assaults increased sharply last year, while disorderly conduct reports that often include scuffles or fistfights dropped dramatically.
Reports of firearms in the schools, which include pellet guns as well as actual firearms, also increased sharply last year, as did reports of students caught with marijuana.
Theft reports declined, but reports of terroristic threatening increased, according to the reports for the 2004-05 and the 2005-06 school years. Incidents that principals classified as most most serious types of sex offenses increased, while less serious sexual harassment reports remained about the same.
CHANGING DEFINITIONS
These numbers could be moving simply because of schools changing the definitions they use in reports.
The education department doesn't generate statewide reports from its discipline database to identify which schools might need help.
Even if consistent data were available, it isn't clear what the state would be able to do with it, Knudsen said.
"The broader question," he said, "is would the state even be in a position to provide that level of analysis and intervention and whatever you might envision, if in fact everything were equated and analyzed on a school-to-school basis?
"Yes, you could probably come up with different ways of thinking how that (consistent data) would help, but primarily it's a school-level matter.
"All schools are charged with the same directive, to maintain a safe school environment, and how they go about doing that needs to be based on their own circumstances."
Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.
