HOUSTON -- It is a dangerous lesson.

School districts in Harris County are hiding reports of campus crime from the Texas agency they’re required to notify.

And, they’re hiding them from you, the parent.

That’s what an 11 News Defenders investigation has uncovered after identifying 70,000 police reports at Harris County schools and comparing those with the student discipline districts reported to the Texas Education Agency.

When a student commits a crime, the school district must report the discipline taken against that child to the state for every parent to see. But after reviewing records from 21 local school districts, we found weapons, drugs and assault charges watered down to look far less serious, or sometimes, they just seemed to vanish.

That can leave you in the dark about your child’s safety.

“That’s just wrong, it’s just wrong,” said Patty Pinkley, an Humble ISD parent and substitute teacher.

The 11 News Defenders gathered a group of Harris County parents together to share our findings on the underreporting and misreporting of student criminal behavior.

“Why are the schools doing this? Why?” echoed Yvette Silva, a parent from Spring Branch ISD.

“To be less than accurate is just dishonest,” said HISD parent Arva Howard.

“I believe that people are hiding things,” added Shana Augillard, a mother from Alief ISD.

The 11 News Defenders identified every police report written for the past three school years in every Harris County school district. We found when students were arrested and disciplined for serious crimes, the schools didn’t always report them to the Texas Education Agency—a requirement which allows parents to look up online the level of problems at that district.

Instead, some of those crimes just seemed to disappear.

Consider what happened in March, 2007, at Katy ISD’s Mayde Creek Elementary. Police wrote “student hit another in the face with a metal lunchbox breaking a front tooth.” But when it came time to tell the state what discipline was taken, Katy ISD never reported the act.

In April, 2007, Humble ISD’s Creekwood Middle School had an aggravated sexual assault on campus that was never reported to the state.

“That’s a disgrace,” said George Scott, a longtime education activist who runs his own watchdog Web site, www.georgescottreports.com.

“There is absolutely no justification for the gaps you have identified,” Scott said.

For example, at HISD, we found students arrested for possession of brass knuckles at Bonham Elementary in May 2007, and at Madison High in April 2007. But the state never found out because it was never reported.

At Dowling Middle School in February 2007, a student punched two other students, sending both to the hospital.

But as we shared with HISD Superintendent Abe Savaadra-

11 News: “That was never reported to the state.”

Savaadra: “OK”

11 News: “Never reported at all, kid sends two kids to the hospital and it just disappears.”

Savaadra: “Should have been, should have been reported, I agree with you.”

But George Scott sees it in stronger terms.

“It is offensive,” Scott said, adding that it amounts to a distortion of reality.

“We’re talking about school safety and the parents are the losers. The parents lose control over their ability to make judgments for their children,” Scott said.

Case in point, the “miraculous” Crosby ISD. In the 2005-2006 school year, the district didn’t report a single incident of fighting to the state. But a check of police records showed 53 reports of fights in the school district during that time.

Also that year, police made seven arrests for drug possession, but Crosby ISD told the Texas Education Agency that “zero” students were disciplined for drugs.

Crosby ISD Superintendent Michael Joseph offered no excuses-

11 News: “On paper, it looked as if there were no drugs in this district at all for one year.”

Joseph: “And that’s our mistake, and I take the responsibility for that, I’m the superintendent.”

Joseph would not say exactly who dropped the ball, but said extra training will help prevent such mishaps in the future.

“We’re taking steps to correct that situation,” Joseph said. “There was no intent to mislead.”

But 11 News we found something else going on—kids get arrested for one thing, but school districts “re-label it” in state reports to obscure what happened or make it sound far less serious.

Students arrested for possession of brass knuckles at Alief, Clear Creek and HISD should have been coded “prohibited weapon” with the TEA. But instead, the more generic and benign label of “violation of student code of conduct” was used.

The same held true for switchblades found at Spring Branch and HISD. The proper code “illegal knife” was replaced with, once again, “violation of student code of conduct.”

At Galena Park, drug possession arrests even got coded as “violation of student code of conduct.”

Perhaps the worst example is at Spring Branch ISD’s Spring Woods Middle School. In September 2005, district police arrested two students for stripping a boy on the football field and attempting oral sex on him.

The cops called it sexual assault.

The District Attorney’s office filed charges for sexual assault.

But to the district, it was simply labeled a “violation of student code of conduct.”

We questioned Superintendent Duncan Klussmann about this incident-

Klussmanm: “We took this incident very seriously.”

11 News: “Apparently you didn’t, sir.”

Klussmann: “Uh, apparently we did, our police were involved, charges were filed, we reported it but it was incorrectly reported.”

11 News: “Well, if you were taking it so seriously you would have reported it correctly wouldn’t you?”

Klussmann: “Well that’s why we are changing, it was very unacceptable that our code was done incorrectly.”

11 News also found arrests for weapons and assaults at Spring Branch that were also misreported to the TEA in a way that made them appear far less severe.

“Clearly we recognize that we were reporting the information incorrectly, that was unacceptable and we have changed the system so that it doesn’t happen in the future,” Klussmann said.

So are all of these omissions and mislabelings that the 11 News Defenders found just mistakes or something more?

That isn’t known for sure.

But one thing is clear: Normally, if enough students are expelled for serious crimes at a campus, and it is reported to the State of Texas, that school could be branded a “persistently dangerous school” per federal law.

“School districts are more concerned about the image than almost anything,” George Scott said, adding that a “persistently dangerous” label would be a huge black eye for any campus.

“It places a motivation on the school district to paint the rosiest possible picture,” Scott said.

But that may come with a real price.

“We could have schools that are dangerous that are not classified as dangerous if the information is not complete and accurate,” said Professor Dennis Puck, Dean of the School of Education at University of Houston Clear Lake.

“Without good data, you don’t really have a sense of what’s going on in those schools,” Spuck said.

“It’s no excuse for it,” said HISD parent Arva Howard.

“It should be reported as is,” added Sylvia Adams of Alief ISD.

Those parents and others demand full disclosure, for the kids’ sake.

“You don’t have transparency,” said Katy ISD parent Baldo Garza.

“This is so huge, you’ve just skimmed the surface of it,” added Yvette Silva of Spring Branch ISD.

There may be more cases of underreporting and misreporting than the approximately 150 we identified, but the TEA refused to provide 11 News with complete student disciplinary data for our analysis and reporting, claiming it would violate a student’s right to privacy.

The problem? We never asked for student names.

Next, in Part Two of “A Dangerous Lesson,” the 11 News Defenders examine the question, “where is all the oversight?”

Guess what? There is next to none.