School Violence Data Under a Cloud in Houston

[Paschall]

HOUSTON, Oct. 31 {mods this was published Nov. 7) — It was one of the most unforgettable of schoolhouse crimes: a disabled 17-year-old student was shoved into a boys' bathroom in her wheelchair by a classmate at Yates High School here, dragged to the floor and raped. Her attacker was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Yet the Houston Independent School District did not include that rape, committed two years ago, when it came time to report the school year's campus crimes to the state as required by Texas law. And that is not the only school crime that appears to have been airbrushed from the official record.

On Oct. 3, 2000, a boy named Joseph Hamilton was "stomped and beaten" by another student in the cafeteria of Williams Middle School and was left injured on the floor, according to a school district memorandum, but the assault went unreported to Texas authorities. Last April, a 16-year-old boy was stabbed in the chest by another student at Washington High School; that attack was not reported, either.

In the last four school years, the Houston district's own police, who patrol its 80 middle and high schools, have entered 3,091 assaults into a database that is shared with the Houston city police but not with the Texas Education Agency in Austin.

In the same period, the Houston district itself has listed just 761 schoolhouse assaults on its annual disciplinary summaries sent to Austin. That means that the school authorities either have not reported or have reclassified 2,330 incidents described as assaults by the district's police.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/07/education/07HOUS.html?hp

[Noordam]

1. kick

:kick:

[ClintonTyree]

2. It's Texas..............

what else need be said?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

3. kick

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. Large schools are moving towards giving their local campus police

the power to dispense justice, soup to nuts. I believe on the UCF campus in Orlando, they can handle rape cases on their own. I have no idea if that allows them to hide the evidence so that young men of their chosing can walk away from their "youthful indiscretions." But it sure does sound like that's what can happen.

[seasat]

8. FL colleges are different.

I found out the other day that the campus police at USF is actually a division of the Florida Highway Patrol. They may be able to handle certain cases like rape here in FL.

[mbperrin]

5. Now who do you wanna believe?

Your own eyes or the honorable school administrators who also left out every single dropout from the official lists?

(They're not dropped out - they're on sabbatical!)

(Those aren't assaults - they're just horseplay!)

We begin to see what happens when jobs depend on certain statistics being in a given range no matter the reality!

[Muddleoftheroad]

6. This is common in college as well

Campus police use stats of crimes THEY investigate but don't count it if you report the crime to real police often enough.

[donsu]

7. watching Texas crumble

nt

[pfitz59]

9. US Education Sec Page ran this system!

Appears his CYA memo is still in effect!