The Federal Government Collects Data on How Often Schools Seclude Children. The Numbers Don’t Add Up.

Even though school districts are required to report their use of seclusion and restraint to the U.S. Department of Education, it can be difficult for parents to see the full picture.

This investigation is a collaboration between ProPublica Illinois and the Chicago Tribune.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

In fall 2015, Glacier Ridge Elementary School in Crystal Lake first used its Blue Room, a padded space that allows school workers to place students in “isolated timeout” for safety reasons.

Students were secluded in that room more than 120 times during the 2015-16 school year, according to records obtained by ProPublica Illinois and the Chicago Tribune. Yet the district, in its required reporting to the federal government, said it hadn’t used seclusion at all that school year.

Crystal Lake District 47 is an example of how even with federal reporting requirements, it’s nearly impossible to know how often some Illinois schools seclude children. An investigation by the Tribune and ProPublica Illinois found widespread use of seclusion but little transparency.

All public school districts are required to report their use of seclusion and physical restraint to the U.S. Department of Education as part of its Civil Rights Data Collection, which the department uses to help investigate discrimination complaints and to ensure districts follow federal policies. The data is collected every other school year and published online.

Because the Illinois State Board of Education does not monitor the use of seclusion or restraint in public schools, the federal data is the only systematic way for communities to determine whether and how frequently those practices are being used in their schools...

https://www.propublica.org/article/illinois-school-students-seclusion-rooms-federal-government-data

GAO: K-12 Education: Education Should Take Immediate Action to Address Inaccuracies in Federal Restraint and Seclusion Data

From Government Accounting Office:

As we reported in February 2019, the Department of Education’s (Education) data suggest that the restraint and seclusion of K-12 public school students is rare nationwide, though it disproportionately affects students with disabilities and boys in general.1 In broad terms, Education defines restraint as restricting a student’s ability to freely move his or her torso, arms, legs, or head, and defines seclusion as involuntarily confining a student alone in a room or area from which the student is physically prevented from leaving. Education’s 2012 resource document on the use of restraint and seclusion states that restraint or seclusion should never be used except when a child’s behavior poses imminent danger of serious physical harm to self or others...

2019 Government Accounting ... by Parents' Coalition of Montg... on Scribd

VIDEO: This Is What ‘Seclusion’ Looks Like At One Fairfax County School

An exclusive video obtained by WAMU shows a student being forced into seclusion at a Fairfax County public school, then struggling to be let out. The footage offers a glimpse into how such interactions — especially with special needs students — can play out. The district is already under scrutiny for not fully reporting such incidents.

In the video, an unidentified student’s arm hangs out of a doorway while two adults appear to be talking to one another and to the student. After one adult walks away, another appears to push the student inside the room before slamming the door shut.

The student bangs against the door and screams continuously as the adult struggles to close it. The room is labeled as a “reflection room.” Also called a seclusion room, such facilities are used to isolate students as a means to manage behavior. Rooms like this are built into multiple Fairfax County special needs schools...

https://wamu.org/story/19/03/21/video-this-is-what-seclusion-looks-like-at-one-fairfax-county-school/?fbclid=IwAR1gqbH_4_5V15X0tcspwYny2eukL4p3Rzc6T09rdyT37fy2RdZ4t_vlKJg#.XJTuDZbVcvw.facebook

Children Are Routinely Isolated In Some Fairfax County Schools. The District Didn’t Report It.

https://wamu.org/story/19/03/13/children-are-routinely-isolated-in-some-fairfax-county-schools-the-district-didnt-report-it/#.XJUPXShKg2z

‘Excessive force’: Judge rules in favor of children who were handcuffed at school

A Kentucky sheriff’s deputy who handcuffed an 8-year-old boy and 9-year-old girl at school violated the children’s constitutional rights, a federal judge ruled, labeling the move “excessive force” and an unnecessary reaction to their misbehavior.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit on the children’s behalf, said last week’s ruling vindicates its position that schools should not use police officers to deal with misbehaving students, particularly children with disabilities. The children who were handcuffed had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a condition that made it difficult for them to focus and follow instructions.

“This judge drew a line in the sand and said this conduct is unconstitutional, and we think that this is helpful in our efforts to advocate against the criminalization of children,” said Claudia Center, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU. “It’s a terrible policy from our view, particularly in elementary schools.”...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2017/10/17/excessive-force-judge-rules-in-favor-of-children-who-were-handcuffed-at-school/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.e4248e37918a

MCPS Teacher was alleged to have used physical and mechanical restraints inappropriately to manage the behavior of her special needs students.

PATRICIA SULLIVAN v. MONTGOMERY COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION, ET AL.

By: Daily Record Staff March 21, 2017

Administrative law — Employment reprimand — Arbitrary or capricious
Patricia Sullivan (“Appellant”) was terminated from her job as a special education teacher for Montgomery County Public Schools (“MCPS”) on September 12, 2012, after receiving three reprimands for failing to comply with MCPS’s Regulation JGA-RA on Classroom Management and Student Behavior Interventions (“Behavior Interventions Regulation”). The termination centered on three incidents where Sullivan was alleged to have used physical and mechanical restraints inappropriately to manage the behavior of her special needs students.
Sullivan unsuccessfully sought administrative review of her termination with the Montgomery County Board of Education (“County Board”) and the Maryland State Board of Education (“State Board”) (collectively, “Appellees”). Sullivan sought judicial review of the State Board’s decision in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County.
On appeal from the circuit court’s May 4, 2015 opinion and order affirming the decision of the State Board, Sullivan presents three questions for our review, which we have reordered:..

http://thedailyrecord.com/2017/03/21/patricia-sullivan-v-montgomery-county-board-of-education-et-al/

Full text of opinion:

http://www.courts.state.md.us/appellate/unreportedopinions/2017/0692s15.pdf

Special-ed student confined 617 times in 6 months despite state laws

The effectiveness of a law limiting how often school officials physically restrain or isolate students is impossible to judge because nearly half the state’s school districts missed the reporting deadline.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/special-ed-student-confined-617-times-in-6-months-despite-state-laws/

Podcast: Restraints and Seclusion in Public Schools

by Minhee Cho
ProPublica, June 23, 2014, 12:21 p.m.
Full story and podcast here.

In public schools across the country, it’s perfectly legal to take students who act out and isolate them in confined spaces against their will or even physically pin them down, ProPublica’s Heather Vogell reports.

The little-known practice – which was used at least 267,000 times in the 2012 school year alone – has largely escaped federal regulation, even as other government-funded institutions like hospitals and psychiatric centers have faced increasing restrictions on using restraints and seclusion on children over the last decade.

“This has been left up to the states and the school districts themselves to regulate,” Vogell tells assistant managing editor Eric Umansky. “And although advocates have been pushing for more restrictions on the practices for the last few years, it’s still legal in most states to restrain kids for reasons other than an emergency where they’re going to hurt themselves or hurt someone else.”

In a recent survey, 1 in 5 superintendents and other school district leaders approved of using restraints or seclusion as a means of punishment for children, not to protect them, Vogell notes. And a majority of these kids have physical, emotional or intellectual disabilities – some are even nonverbal – yet many states don’t require parents to be notified when their child has been restrained or put in isolation.

Listen to the podcast:  https://soundcloud.com/propublica/podcast-restraints-and-seclusion

Violent and Legal: The Shocking Ways School Kids are Being Pinned Down, Isolated Against Their Will

Carson Luke, a young boy with autism, shattered bones in his hand and foot after educators grabbed him and tried to shut him into a “scream room.” Kids across the country risked similar harm at least 267,000 times in just one school year.

by Heather Vogell
ProPublica, June 19, 2014, 5 a.m.

To read the full story go here.  To send a tip to ProPublica for this investigation, go here.

This story was co-published with NPR.

The room where they locked up Heather Luke's 10-year-old son had cinder block walls, a dim light and a fan in the ceiling that rattled so insistently her son would beg them to silence it.

Sometimes, Carson later told his mother, workers would run the fan to make him stop yelling. A thick metal door with locks—which they threw, clank-clank-clank—separated the autistic boy from the rest of the decrepit building in Chesapeake, Virginia, just south of Norfolk.

The room that officials benignly called the "quiet area" so agitated the tall and lanky blond boy that one day in March 2011, his mother said, Carson flew into a panic at the mere suggestion of being confined there after an outburst. He had lashed out, hitting, scratching and hurling his shoes. Staff members held him down, then muscled him through the hallway and attempted to lock him in, yet again.

But this time, the effort went awry. Staffers crushed Carson's hand while trying to slam the door. A surgeon later needed to operate to close the bleeding half-moon a bolt had punched into his left palm. The wound was so deep it exposed bone.

Carson's ordeal didn't take place in a psychiatric facility or juvenile jail. It happened at a public school.

For more than a decade, mental-health facilities and other institutions have worked to curtail the practice of physically restraining children or isolating them in rooms against their will. Indeed, federal rules restrict those practices in nearly all institutions that receive money from Washington to help the young—including hospitals, nursing homes and psychiatric centers.

 But such limits don't apply to public schools.

Can Schools in Your State Pin Kids Down? Probably.

By Heather Vogell and Sisi Wei, ProPublica
Published on June 19, 2014

Public schoolchildren across the country were physically restrained or isolated in rooms they couldn’t leave at least 267,000 times in the 2011-2012 school year, despite a near-consensus that such practices are dangerous and have no therapeutic benefit. Many states have little regulation or oversight of such practices. This map shows where your state stands. Data compiled as of January 2014. Related: Violent and Legal: The Shocking Ways School Kids are Being Pinned Down, Isolated Against Their Will

ProPublica awarded each state a score based on how closely they follow six key elements that are outlined in reform bills and U.S. Department of Education non-mandatory guidance. The lowest score is 0, with the least restrictions.  Maryland received a score of 6.
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Here are the questions ProPublica investigative reporters Heather Vogell and Sisi Wei asked, and here is how Maryland ranked:

• Is the use of restraints limited to emergencies? No - if included in an IEP.

• Is the use of seclusions limited to emergencies? No - if included in an IEP.

• Is parental notification of either practice required? Yes.

• Is the use of seclusions prohibited? No.

• Are restraints that restrict breathing banned? Yes.

• Are mechanical restraints prohibited? Yes.