With scant oversight, schools routinely physically restrain students or confine them alone in small rooms. Parents don’t always know. Abuses and discrimination occur. Children are traumatized, injured, even die.
A year-long national investigation by Hearst Newspapers provides the most comprehensive look to-date at how often restraint and seclusion are used in America’s schools – and how often children are harmed or die as a result. This series uncovers and highlights systemic abuses and problems, from discriminatory practices to major gaps in oversight. Journalists scrutinized years of patchy federal data on restraint and seclusion, conducted an unprecedented effort to gather records from all 50 state education agencies and obtained tens of thousands of pages of school district documents. Reporters scoured news articles, court records, government reports and other sources, studied laws in all 50 states, spoke to researchers and policy makers and interviewed more than 70 parents, students, teachers and school administrators.
Components of this investigation were supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project. The funding was used to pay for software and support to analyze handwritten documents and some freelance photography. The Data-Driven Reporting Project is funded by the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University | Medill and awards funds to investigative journalists working for local news outlets and outlets serving underrepresented communities across the U.S. and Canada.
If you have tips, documents, or other information that you would like to share with a reporter, please contact: Emilie Munson at emilie.munson@timesunion.com or on Twitter: @emiliemunson; or Matt Rocheleau at 508-265-2050, matt.rocheleau@hearstmediact.com or on Twitter: @mrochele.
If you would like to share information anonymously, please indicate that when you contact us. For additional security, use encrypted methods. Signal: 347-541-8115, or securenewstips@protonmail.com
Credits
REPORTING
Emilie Munson
Alex Putterman
Libby Seline
Taylor Johnston
Ying Zhao
Currie Engel
Mary Katherine Wildeman
REPORTING & EDITING
Matt Rocheleau
Alexandra Kanik
EDITING
Brendan Lyons
John Ferraro
Casey Seiler
Wendy Metcalfe
COPY EDITING
Linda Levinson
Michael Levine
Lisa Robert Lewis
DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT & GRAPHICS
Rahul Mukherjee
Danielle Rindler
Alejandra Matos
Brittany Schell
David Deloso
Christian Leonard
Evan Wagstaff
Taylor Johnston
Alexandra Harris
Bryan Haeffele
Sue Nusbaum
AUDIENCE STRATEGY
Mandy Hofmockel
Erica Smith
Lori Todd
Katie Vogel
Lindsay Boyle
Mike DeSalvo
Derek Turner
Kristina Vakhman
Martha Shanahan
PHOTOGRAPHY
Lori Van Buren
Paul Buckowski
Will Waldron
Tyler Sizemore
TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
Jeff Bustraan
Ian Murren
Chris Preovolos