Toledo Public Schools officials must have believed that the investigation into data scrubbing related to 2010-2011 state report cards was long behind them.
TPS officials admitted in mid-2012 that the district manipulated some data, which improved its attendance records the state report card. The district had been removing the records of some chronically absent students, which was meant to improve the district’s overall attendance average.
RELATED: Ohio Department of Education disciplines TPS employees for data scrubbing
An investigation by the state Department of Education and the State Auditor followed and TPS’ scores for that year were recalculated. Ironically, the scrubbing had had little effect and the district’s adjusted scores were not much different than the original scores.
And that, as far as most people knew, was that.
Except that in recent weeks the Ohio Department of Education has begun handing down discipline for more than a dozen individuals involved in the data scrubbing.
The state has revealed that 17 current and former district administrators and staffers have been sanctioned by the Office of Professional Conduct. Of those, 12 have had their licenses suspended, while five have received less severe punishment in the form a letter of admonishment.
In every case, Ohio Department of Education records on the matter make clear that TPS employees committed the data scrubbing at the direction of district administrators.
TPS is not the only district involved in the recent disciplinary actions. Administrators and other staff at about half a dozen other Ohio districts also accused of data scrubbing in the 2010-2011 school year also have been disciplined by state authorities in recent months.
In April, officials said investigations of employees at Columbus City Schools had concluded after 53 staffers were disciplined for their part in that district’s data manipulation.
In central Ohio’s Marion City Schools and Northridge Schools, superintendents were sanctioned. The state suspended the license of the Northridge superintendent and revoked the license of the Marion superintendent.
The Ohio Department of Education has refused to say whether they are finished with discipline in the TPS case.
For its part, TPS has insisted that any data manipulation was an innocent mistake made by school officials trying their best to follow complicated filing procedures. They question why it took state authorities more than six years to start meting out discipline, which is a fair question and the Ohio Department of Education should explain.
But the louder TPS officials complain about the unfairness of disciplining administrators who apparently followed their supervisors’ direction to fudge attendance data, the more the public ought to wonder more about the crime and less about the punishment.
“The board is outraged,” TPS School Board President Polly Taylor-Gerken told The Blade’s editorial board. “The whole community should be outraged.”
Ms. Taylor-Gerken meant the community should be outraged about the state investigation.
What the community really ought to be outraged about are two things — the scrubbing itself and the fact that TPS seems to care mainly about damage control — loudly protesting any discipline for the people who carried the scrubbing out.
Conspicuously absent from the district’s defense of itself has been Superintendent Romules Durant. TPS officials have said this week that he was out of town and unavailable.
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Mr. Durant has spent his entire career at TPS, becoming the district’s highly visible, vocal, and charismatic cheerleader. At the time of the data-scrubbing incident he served as TPS’s deputy superintendent.
Mr. Durant has become a justly popular, inspiring figure in the community, always championing the potential of Toledo Public Schools and its students. He and the school board have asked Toledo to buy in and Toledo citizens have — approving tax levies and forming public-private partnerships with the school district, among other efforts.
The district — and Mr. Durant — owe Toledo a full and honest explanation for the data-scrubbing scandal.
First Published June 23, 2018, 9:00 p.m.
