Dept. of Education Failed to Take Bias Bullying Seriously;
Agency Didn’t Enforce Its Own Reporting Requirements for Student Harassment, Audit Finds
Comptroller John C. Liu
today announced that the Department of Education had failed to
effectively record and track Citywide incidents of student-to-student,
bias-based
harassment and bullying based on race, creed, nationality, sexual
orientation or body type. The DOE adopted regulations in 2008 for
recording, investigating, and following up on bias bullying complaints,
but the agency did not update its online reporting
system and has been unable to automatically flag and track incidents
recorded by schools, Comptroller Liu’s audit found. Staffers were
basically sifting for bias incidents among thousands of reports by hand.
“The
DOE needs to show parents, students and educators that it takes
bullying seriously,” Comptroller Liu said. “DOE cannot combat bullying
and protect students from bias harassment when its own tracking system
is blind to it. The DOE is famous for employing legions of expensive
consultants, but for years it couldn’t find someone to write that simple
code? Every day, students are unable to learn
because they are bullied for their race, religion, sexual orientation,
or body type. Our children deserve better. The DOE needs to do better.”
“In my own district, we are still grieving a tragic incident of bullying
that led the young victim to take his own life,” said Assemblyman
Robert J. Rodriguez, District 68, East Harlem. “This audit will be an
important step in making sure that what happened
to 12-year-old Joel Morales does not happen again.”
“In
order to ensure that all students have access to safe and positive
learning environments, the DOE must make student safety a priority by
systematically addressing bullying and bias harassment in schools,”
said Tejpreet Kaur, Director of Community Development for the Sikh
Coalition. “Regular, competent, and consistently reported tracking of
bullying incidents in city schools is critical to addressing
the problem. If the DOE’s prohibitions on school bullying are going to
be more than paper tigers, more resources must be invested in
implementation, diversity education, and restorative justice practices.”
“I
am appalled at the incompetence and negligence of the Department of
Education,” said Mona Davids, President, New York City Parents Union.
“Throughout the country and in New York City, students are being
bullied to death, committing suicide and afraid to come to school, yet
the DOE cannot even enforce their own reporting requirement to classify
and tabulate bullying and harassment incidents.
Unbelievable. The DOE has money for useless consultants but not for a
basic online system to track and combat bullying. The DOE’s disregard
for our children's safety and well being is despicable and clearly shows
parents this administration does not put
our children first.”
Background on Efforts to Track and Curtail Bullying
In
2004, the NYC Council passed the Dignity in All Schools Act, over the
Mayor’s veto, mandating that the DOE record, track, and provide annual
statistics on discriminatory harassment and bullying. City Hall never
implemented the law. Then, in 2008, the DOE created
Chancellors Regulation CR-A832,
which substantially adopted the requirements of the 2004 Council Act. Finally,
in
July 2012, Governor Cuomo signed the Dignity for All Students Act
(DASA), which contains many of the requirements for tracking and
accounting for bullying found in the NYC Council’s
2004 law and the DOE’s 2008 regulation.
Audit Findings
Comptroller
Liu launched the audit to determine if the DOE and schools were
following the 2008 Chancellor’s regulation. Under the regulation,
principals and other designated staffers at schools report complaints
and incidents of bullying and other behavioral infractions to the DOE’s
Online Occurrence Reporting System (OORS), a database that enables
staffers to rank the complaints by the Disciplinary
infraction code from 1 to 5, with 5 being the most severe. Not all
recorded bias incidents are severe enough to trigger the regulation; the
bullying must have interfered with a child’s ability to learn,
according to the DOE.
DOE
officials told auditors that, through the 2011-2012 school year, the
online system could not identify bias-bullying incidents that violated
the 2008 regulation because OORS was not equipped to classify them and
sort them out.
Comptroller
Liu’s audit found that when faced with the fact that their online
data-collection system didn’t capture violations of the Chancellor’s
regulation, DOE staffers resorted to identifying bias-incidents in
OORS, first by sorting them by their infraction code and then using
keyword searches for specific slurs and insults in the behavior reports’
comments field, in order to compile and report Citywide
incidents of bias-based harassment and bullying.
When
DOE staffers found certain keywords, they would read the accompanying
details to determine if the incident was in fact bias-related. Such
a subjective and inaccurate system for identifying bias incidents in
schools made it impossible for the DOE to properly track and identify
problems and trends in bullying in schools, the audit found.
2009-2010 bullying reports
In
the 2009-2010 school year, the DOE recorded 8,298 bias incidents, which
accounted for 6 percent of all behavioral incidents. Because of
the flaws described above, however, the DOE could not determine how
many incidents violated the 2008 regulation and required particular
handling. Moreover, the DOE’s sorting system for bias-incidents did not
differentiate between student-to-student harassment
(covered by CR-A832) and student-to-staff harassment (not covered by
CR-A832).
Percentage of Bias-Related Incidents by
Discipline Code Infraction Level for All incidents at All Grade Levels*
|
Discipline Code
Infraction Level
|
Percentage of All Incidents
with At Least One Bias
|
|
Level 1 (Least Serious)
|
4.18%
|
|
Level 2
|
13.63%
|
|
Level 3
|
22.86%
|
|
Level 4**
|
57.65%
|
|
Level 5 (Most Serious)
|
1.68%
|
|
* Source:
DOE’s “OORS Audit of Bias-Related Harassment Incidents 2009-2010” report
** According to the DOE, most Level 4 incidents related to sexually suggestive comments or physical conduct of a sexual
nature.
|
Lack of Oversight
Comptroller
Liu’s audit examined 40 bias-bullying reports sent to DOE by three
schools — Murry Bergtraum HS, Jordan L. Mott JHS 022, and Juan
Morel Campos PS 290 — during the 2009-2010 school year. Of these, 27
(67 percent) were student-to-student, but DOE could not be assured that
the schools consistently followed the guidelines of the 2008 regulation.
Comptroller Liu’s audit did not expand its
examination to more schools because the DOE could not determine how
many violations of the regulation had occurred, making a larger sample
irrelevant.
The
audit further examined the schools handling of 10 bias-bullying
incidents and found that each school quickly reported the incidents and
properly investigated and followed up on them, including reaching out
to parents of students involved. However, the schools did not provide
the alleged student victims of the bullying with a written report on the
outcome of their investigation within 10 days
of the incidents, as required by the regulation.
If
the DOE cannot monitor whether schools consistently follow its own
student-to-student anti-bullying regulation, it cannot effectively
identify
problem areas or trends in such behavioral infractions in schools.
Auditors
noted that, as of May 2012, the DOE had still not made any changes to
the live OORS system used Citywide. Yet, at the very end of the audit
process, DOE
officials stated that they had modified OORS so that it complied with
state DASA reporting requirements and captures violations of the
Chancellors 2008 regulation. Without actual evidence of these
improvements (i.e., data, such as the total number of incidents
for the 2012-2013 school year), the audit could not verify the DOE’s
assertion and whether it was now able to identify and report such
incidents.
The audit is attached to this e-mail and can also be downloaded here:
http://www.comptroller.nyc.gov/bureaus/audit/yearlyview.asp?selaudyear=2013
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