The Missouri Department of Education wrongfully imprisoned valuable data, at least until continued effort threatened to require movement. Since beginning an education project last September, the Missouri Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting has acquired various computer files related to education. The Missouri Mastery and Achievement Test, this state's version of a standardized test, seemed a logical addition.

The department's usually helpful programmer could tell me nothing about the file. So I called John Jones, director of school data. In his lofty lobe, journalism serves no purpose beyond nuisance.

"Russ, I don't keep that information, and I don't want it," he said. "If I had it, every newspaper in the state would be calling me for their little score sheets."

You can imagine the sickening image: a director of data providing data.

I asked him who had the data. He said the department contracted with the Educational Assessment Center, another state agency, to administer, score and store the test results.

So I call Sharon Shattgin, assistant director of the center.

"See technically, we don't own the data," she told me. "Technically, it's the property of each school district. We contract with each superintendent. The data is public information, but you have to get a release from the superintendent."

But I didn't want one district. I wanted all 453 districts.

"I guess you'd have to get a signed release from each district," she said.

Even over the telephone, you can tell when someone is talking through a smirk. I asked her if there was anyone else I could speak to about this.

"Have you spoken to John Jones?"

As ridiculous as it sounds in itself, this arrangement, clearly designed to block access to the data, had a much worse effect. As a result of not "owning" the data, the department of education has never analyzed test results in their entirety, nor by gender, race, rural versus urban, or in any other way. It only publishes an annual mean based on a 10 percent sample.

In other words, the state spends millions of dollars administering the tests, but does not use it to uncover weak spots.

Although the leaders in Missouri education seemed to think they had cleverly locked up the data, even from themselves, they had unknowingly propped open a window for us.

Jones, incarcerator of data, had provided us earlier with a computer file containing the title, name and mailing address of every school administrator in the state. It took less than an hour to download the file, move it into an XDB table and export the table as a WordPerfect mail merge file. I then wrote a form letter to the superintendents explaining this ridiculous situation and informing them of their responsibility under the state's Sunshine Laws to respond within three working days.

But I never intended to actually print, let alone mail, those letters.

Instead, I wrote a letter to Otis Baker, the director of elementary and secondary education, explaining our efforts and the apparent necessity of the mailing. I told him our form letters and return envelopes were addressed directly to him "to insure their authenticity," and that each letter referenced his name and phone number "should any of the 453 superintendents have any questions regarding the necessity of this procedure."

I told him we had scheduled everyone on our staff for an envelope-stuffing party on March 3, three working days after he received the letter. If I didn't hear from him by then, out the letters went.

When I arrived at the MICAR office on March 3, I found that Mr. Baker had called.

"He said he needs to talk to you TODAY," said MICAR Administrative Assistant Michele Ward. "He said he just got your letter today. He'll be in meetings all day, but his secretary will interrupt when you call. He definitely needs to talk to you today."

Otherwise deaf bureaucrats seem to perk up to the threatening sound of 400-plus letters and phone calls thundering in over a few days.

"I just got your letter today," he said when I called. "Don't send out those letters. You've gone to too much trouble already. I'll send out a release letter today."

In an eventual story, we might tell Missouri's citizens more than they know about their education system. We might also tell Missouri's education leaders more than they apparently want to know about the jobs they do. Yet I doubt the Department of Education will begin graciously providing files.

Nonetheless, maybe computers can help us free more wrongfully imprisoned data by presenting the jail keeper's greatest menace - the threat of imminent labor.