This story already has sparked action by government officials to end isolated timeouts.
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 have been secluding 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 has not been monitoring 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 have been used in their schools.
Some public schools, however, either reported incorrect data or failed to submit any information — making it difficult for parents to know with certainty whether their children’s school has secluded or restrained students. A spokeswoman for Crystal Lake District 47 said its failure to report accurate data was a mistake.
To determine whether Illinois districts complied with reporting requirements, the Tribune and ProPublica Illinois filed requests under the state’s Freedom of Information Act with 75 randomly selected districts where the federal data showed no instances of seclusion for the 2015-16 school year. Those requests asked for records documenting the use of seclusion or restraint from 2015 through the end of 2018 — records that Illinois law requires districts to keep.
In addition to Crystal Lake, five districts provided records showing they had used seclusion or restraint in 2015-16 despite indicating to the Department of Education they had not.
Administrators for two of the districts — Big Hollow District 38 in Ingleside and New Trier Township High School District 203 — said any reporting errors were unintentional.
Some regional special education cooperatives, which draw students from many districts, didn’t provide information on seclusion and restraint to the Department of Education for 2015-16. The Tribune and ProPublica Illinois found that these cooperatives used those practices hundreds of times in subsequent years.
Administrators told reporters that it was the responsibility of their member districts to provide that data, but those districts didn’t report either. Officials from some member districts said they didn’t understand who was responsible for reporting, the district or the co-op.
A state Board of Education spokeswoman said it is not the agency’s responsibility to determine which districts should submit data because it is a federal reporting requirement.
In January, the U.S. Department of Education announced a plan to improve the Civil Rights Data Collection, and in August, it sent a letter to districts asking them to check the accuracy of the data on seclusion and restraint they submitted for the 2017-18 school year. The letter noted that the recommendations were based in part on a June report from the Government Accountability Office that concluded the database does not “accurately capture” how often the practices are employed.
“I think that would be concerning to any parent or policymaker who is interested in understanding the scope of seclusion and restraint incidents in public schools,” said Jacqueline Nowicki, a director with the GAO.
Crystal Lake District 47 officials said the next time federal data is released to the public, for the 2017-18 school year, the data for the district will be inaccurate again. It did not report its use of seclusion or restraint. Data obtained by ProPublica Illinois and the Tribune shows children were secluded at least 130 times at district schools.
A district spokeswoman called the data omissions an oversight and said the district would provide accurate data to the federal government in the future.