8 kindergartners were arrested last school year, Indiana reported. But it's not true

A report from the Indiana Department of Education shows that 18 students were arrested at Maple Elementary in Avon last school year for a range of offenses, including battery, intimidation and disorderly conduct. And an additional 14 students were arrested off school property as a result of referrals from school staff to police.

In total, eight kindergarteners, three first graders, one second grader, eight third graders and 12 fourth graders were reported arrested. The details come from the annual "Indiana Schools Bullying, Arrests, and Safety Staffing Report," which was published in July.

The arrests appeared to show a surge in violent behavior by young children and the first time in at least seven years the state reported a student in kindergarten was arrested, according to data obtained from the IDOE.

But a WFYI review of the data found these 32 arrests of Maple Elementary School students never happened. Avon school officials say an error by a district employee led to faulty information being included in the state’s report.

The errors skew data on racial disparities in school discipline. And a top discipline researcher also said it raises concerns about the validity of other data schools are required to report to the state and make available to the public.

The faulty arrests make up nearly 70 percent of all arrests in the report for students in grades kindergarten through fifth.

Kevin Carr, a spokesperson for Avon Community Schools, said school officials learned of the reporting error after WFYI requested information from the district in early August about the arrests.

“There were zero arrests at that school in [school year] 23-24, so clearly the data was out of order,” Carr said. “So what happened was a school member made a mistake.”

A district employee accidentally coded these incidents as arrests, he said. Instead, the incidents should have been reported as less severe forms of discipline, including in-school suspensions, removals from class, loss of recess, and at least one out-of-school suspension. The school employee was using a new system to input this data, Carr said.

“All we've been able to ascertain is that it's simple human error,” he said.

Carr said Avon schools alerted the Indiana Department of Education to the mistake after they discovered it.

But, as of Sept. 26, the error has not be corrected either in the IDOE’s “2024 Bullying, Arrests, and Safety Staffing Annual Report,” nor in an associated spreadsheet that lists arrest incidents at all Indiana schools, as well as demographic data, like gender, grade and ethnicity of arrested students. The information is published on a page dedicated to student safety on the IDOE’s website.

A spokesperson for the IDOE wrote via email that the department is working with Avon schools to understand how the arrests should have been coded, “and to add a note to the Discipline Arrest report to reflect new information received through this process.”

But a school discipline expert warns errors of this kind raise questions about the accuracy of other state data, including other types of discipline and bullying incidents, as well as the demographic data associated with those incidents.

“If your data is inaccurate, it doesn't make much sense to make it available to anyone,” said Russ Skiba, professor emeritus at Indiana University, who has conducted extensive research on the suspensions and arrests of school children.

Without accurate data, Skiba said parents don’t have a clear idea of what’s going on inside schools.

“It's troubling and confusing that they are not immediately making corrections on this,” Skiba said.

And, he said, the state can’t appropriately provide resources and training to the schools that need it the most if the data isn’t reliable.

“These data are important,” Skiba said. “This is a legislature and an administration that are extremely concerned with transparency for parents, and if they can't even guarantee that the data that parents want and need is accurate, it seems like they maybe ought to up their game on transparency.”

Reporting the data

Last school year, schools submitted arrest incident data to the IDOE through a new method, said Jason Brames, director of technology for Avon Community Schools. Previously, he said the district provided this information “manually” by uploading spreadsheets to the department.

Now, he said the department’s data exchange system is connected directly to the district’s student information system. Brames said that means that data entered into the school’s student information system are uploaded automatically to the IDOE’s data exchange system.

“Essentially, there's a live connection between the Department of Education's data exchange and each school's student information system,” he said.

If information is entered incorrectly, it’s automatically sent to the department, Brames said. That means, in this case, no one from Avon Schools saw that they had reported 32 arrests at Maple Elementary to the IDOE.

Brames said the new method of providing data to the state is more efficient, but it would also benefit from additional validation or checks.

Carr, the Avon spokesperson, said the district is also “doubling down on training” to make sure their employees understand the new data input system.

Courtney Crown, a spokesperson for the IDOE, wrote via email that the department is working to add “functionality” to data exchange that would allow schools to view trends in data over time.

“Even with very sophisticated systems at both the state- and local-level, there is always the chance for human error,” Crown wrote.

Carr said Avon schools are working with the department to create a way for schools to appeal or correct data mistakes.

“So we want to correct this incident, but we hope that our case really helps the IDOE to have a system in place that allows other schools to correct this kind of data if and when it's reported incorrectly,” he said.

A spokesperson for the IDOE did not confirm whether schools have no way of appealing incorrect data submissions to the department.

“We’re a public entity, and we want to make sure that our parents, our constituents, are fully aware of the status of what's happening within our schools,” Carr said. “And so this type of data collection is an effort to provide the kind of transparency that voters and taxpayers and community members deserve.”

State law requires school corporations to annually report student arrest data for each school to the IDOE. The report is compiled by the Office of School Building Physical Safety and
Security.

Contact WFYI investigative education reporter Lee V. Gaines at lgaines@wfyi.org.