Researchers at an Ivy League school have made changes to a study on African American suspension rates in Southern schools after hearing from angry staff and alumni at a local high school.

The study, conducted by University of Pennsylvania researchers and released on Aug. 25, compares the rate at which black students are suspended in a school district to the black student population in that district. To produce the study, researchers analyzed 2011-2012 data from the U.S. Department of Education on more than 3,000 school districts in 13 Southern states, including Mississippi.

The study noted that at Mississippi School for Math and Science, 100 percent of suspended students were black, while only 29.9 percent of the student population was black. The study claimed this was one of the worst examples of black students being disproportionately punished.

MSMS officials felt the claim "didn't make any sense," according to Wade Leonard, spokesperson for the school, which is based on the Mississippi University for Women campus.

MSMS administrators looked into records for the 2011-2012 school year and found that only two students had been expelled that year -- and only one of them was African American.

"Number one, it's statistically insignificant, as any of our first-year stat students can tell you," Leonard said. "You can't draw conclusions based on a data set that small."

The administrators also noted one of the students suspended that year was not African American, meaning that the Department of Education had incorrect data.

"I can't blame the study's authors because the data they got was incorrect, but at the same time, it wasn't a whole and clear representation of what was going on," Leonard said. "Like I said -- two students. And there was nothing (in the report) that indicated that it was that low a number. I think we ought to be congratulated on only suspending two kids in the entire school year, personally."

Leonard contacted MSMS alumni by posting about the report on the MSMS Alumni Facebook page. Several alumni wrote to the University of Pennsylvania pointing out discrepancies in the data and asking why only Southern states were included in the study.

One of the study's researchers, Dr. Shaun Harper, an associate professor of education at UPenn and the executive director of the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education, told The Dispatch that all the data in the study is accurate according to data from the Department of Education's website. He added that of the 3,022 districts represented in the study, only MSMS had contacted them with a complaint.

However, the researchers did consent to add a column including the total number of suspensions in each district, per the request of MSMS and some alumni.

"We did not adjust the numbers," Harper said. "We did not change the numbers. We did not correct any inaccuracies, because there were none. We merely added to every single school district a column that included the total number of suspensions so that readers could determine for themselves (if the disproportionality was an issue)."

The headings listing the worst offenders, which included MSMS, were also removed from the study.

"Once we added the total number of suspensions per district, we did not include a list of the most outrageous offenders because again we wanted readers to determine for themselves," Harper said.

He added that the study is not meant to defame MSMS.

"The real story of this report is not in the district by district presentation of the data," he said. "It's really in the state by state numbers as well as the regional story ... it's not about the 3,022 individual districts."

MSMS does not take issue with the study itself, Leonard said.

"I want to make clear that our official position is that this study is important," Leonard said in an email to The Dispatch. "The issues the researchers bring up are critical for justice and economic prosperity for all. We cannot speak to the overall accuracy or lack thereof, but we do know that as the study was originally published, it put MSMS in a grossly inaccurate light. Our hope is that we will create a conversation between MSMS and the authors of this study, not to discredit their work."