Black students in Fort Bend ISD were six times more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions than white students and four times as likely to be placed on in-school suspensions, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Federal investigators identified several likely culprits that led to the disproportionate punishments, including a vague code of conduct that left discipline decisions in the hands of select school administrators while giving them a slew of different punishments they could prescribe for similar misbehavior. It also determined that the district’s failure to track students referred to law enforcement made it nearly impossible to determine whether minorities were referred more often than others.

Those concerns and statistics, however, were missing from a press release issued by the district on July 26, which touted an end to the education department’s six-year Office of Civil Rights investigation.

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District officials wrote the department did not find “any wrongdoing” on their part. They did not acknowledge that investigators identified large racial disparities in its disciplinary practices or that black students continue to be overrepresented across all five types of harsher punishments tracked by the Texas Education Agency.

Nor did the release mention a resolution agreement or the five corrective steps school officials must take to satisfy the Office of Civil Rights, mentioning only that “Fort Bend ISD will continue to review and provide training regarding its discipline policies and procedures and will track and monitor discipline data.”

“What the district failed to mention is the reason there wasn’t a finding of discrimination is because they entered into voluntary resolution process, and OCR guidelines state there won’t be findings of discrimination in these instances,” said Deborah Fowler, executive director of the education advocacy group Texas Appleseed. “It’s not until you actually see the resolution letter that you realize how much they actually did find and some very large concerns they expressed.”

Fort Bend ISD Superintendent Charles Dupre disagreed. In an interview last week, he said schools across the country struggle with racial gaps in discipline and that larger trends and patterns found in his district do not equate to wrongdoing or discrimination on the district’s part.

“I don’t think we’re discriminating, but that’s not to say there are not isolated cases that need to be addressed,” Dupre said. “The point I’m trying to make is that there’s nothing hidden. Everything they said or identified, we also identified and are working on to address.”

Discipline rates in the 72,000-student district have fallen significantly since Dupre became superintendent in April 2013. The number of students placed on out-of-school suspensions dropped by half, from 5,876 in 2011-2012 to 2,891 in 2016-2017, according to the Texas Education Agency. Students given in-school suspensions dropped from 8,420 students to 3,595 during the same period.

The district also has implemented restorative discipline practices aimed at preventing poor behavior rather than punishing it in many of its schools and created a Department of Student Affairs to look into disciplinary disparities over the past several years.

Vanesia Johnson, a social worker who created the Citizens Advocating for Social Equity group after she said her son unfairly was given an out-of-school suspension in a Fort Bend ISD elementary school, said the district’s representation of the investigation’s end is deceptive.

“I’m used to much more transparency with the district because of my outreach efforts,” Johnson said. “Now, I’m just suspicious.”

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Even though the overall number of Fort Bend students disciplined has decreased, black students were much more likely to be given the severest punishments than their white, Asian and Hispanic peers. In fact, a higher proportion of black students were placed on in-school and out-of-school suspensions in 2016-2017 than before the U.S. Department of Education investigation began.

Black students represented about 64 percent of all students given out-of-school suspensions in 2016-2017, even though only about 28 percent of the Fort Bend ISD student population was African American. About 60 percent of students given out-of-school suspensions in 2011 were black.

Meanwhile, white students comprised about 7 percent of students given the same punishment in 2016-2017, even though they made up about 17 percent of all Fort Bend ISD students. That is down from the 8.7 percent share of students who received out-of-school suspensions in 2011.

That disparity exists at varying degrees for four of the five harsher punishments the TEA tracks: in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, disciplinary alternative education program placement and juvenile justice alternative education program placement. The TEA also tracks expulsions, but the district did not expel any students in 2016-2017.

The punishment gaps exist throughout the state of Texas and in the TEA’s Region 4, which surrounds much of the greater Houston area. Bob Sanborn, president and CEO of the Children at Risk nonprofit advocacy group, blamed institutional racism and cultural differences between white teachers and the students of color they encounter.

“It’s not that students of color’s judgment is different from any other young kid. It’s that the punishments are significantly more severe,” Sanborn said. “The idea of pursuing justice is very different for black and Latino students than it is for white students. The data is pretty clear on this. There’s just inequity.”

Over the course of six years, federal investigators visited Fort Bend ISD schools several times, to collect data and interview those on campuses.

Among their findings: Data analysis showed black students who were slapped with dress code violations at Elkins High school were nearly twice as likely to receive in-school suspensions than their white peers. While a black student at Quail Run Middle received one day of in-school suspension and one day of out-of-school suspension for making a derogatory statement, a white student accused of the same infraction received only a parent conference and a notation that the student will “think before he speaks.” Of 14 white students referred to Sugar Land Middle administrators for first-offense tardiness, only one was given detention. Of 17 black students sent to the office for the same infraction, six were given detention slips.

The investigation laid out several concerns that may have contributed to the difference in punishments. Chief among them was the district’s code of conduct, which investigators found to be so vague that it gave administrators wide latitude to choose punishments for different students.

The remedies for those issues proposed by Fort Bend ISD and accepted by the OCR, however, do not include mandatory fixes to the code of conduct or changes to how offenses are categorized. Instead, the OCR allowed the district to set up a framework to oversee itself. District administrators will determine whether changes to Fort Bend ISD’s existing code of conduct are necessary. Administrators will review their own data at the end of the upcoming school year to see if discipline practices still over-punish black students.

The remedies amount to little in Fowler and Johnson’s eyes.

“To me, it’s hard to see what the OCR really brought to the table in terms of their enforcement authority and their ability to engage in this resolution process to bring about meaningful change,” Fowler said. “This is an example of the OCR totally abdicating its responsible for enforcing civil rights law.”

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The U.S. DOE’s Office of Civil Rights has come under criticism in recent months by some education advocates who say it is scuttling discrimination investigations, has weakened its enforcement of rules relating to equal treatment and has made it more difficult for complainants to dispute their findings. Investigative outlet ProPublica obtained a 2017 internal memo from the OCR’s former head, telling investigators to stop looking at cases as systemic issues and nixed a requirement that investigators review three years of data in discipline and sexual violence investigations.

In May, the NAACP and other groups filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. DOE after it changed its case-processing manual and made it more difficult for groups to file multiple complaints and appeal department findings.

Dupre also groused over the department’s handling of the case, which he said languished for years with no communication from federal officials. Such cases typically are to be resolved within 180 days, department policy states.

“If they had done their job, they would have come in, done their work and issued findings in a short order. It should not have dragged on for six years,” Dupre said. “They did not do their job.”

shelby.webb@chron.com

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