Kerby Anderson

When it was announced that all of the 2017 senior class in a Washington, DC high school graduated with college acceptance letters, various news outlets called it a miracle. Teachers, students, administrators, and parents were celebrating. It turns out the miracle was cheating. Both NPR (National Public Radio) and the Washington Post ran stories about Frank Ballou High School boosting the graduation rate from 57 percent to 100 percent in one school year. It was too good to be true. The story collapsed two months ago when an investigation by WAMU (Washington DC area NPR affiliate) and NPR found that dozens of these students had high rates of unexcused absences. Records showed that 141 graduating seniors had at least 30 days of unexcused absences and 86 had at least 60 days of unexcused absences. This is fraud at numerous levels. First it is taxpayer fraud. Ballou High School received some $12.7 million for fiscal year 2017. Teachers cooked the books and perpetrated this fraud on the taxpayers and community. Second, it is a fraud to allow students who often missed class and didn’t do their work to walk across a stage and receive a diploma. Some of them could scarcely read or write. Only nine percent of the students passed DC’s standardized test for English last year. None of them passed the standardized math test. Third, it is a fraud for colleges that accepted them based upon fraudulent academic records. Students will either have to take lots of remedial courses or else flunk out within a semester or two. And it is a fraud for any student who was rejected by those colleges in order to make room for these students who should not have graduated with a diploma. It may be tempting to think this is a singular exception. But I wonder if there are other examples of schools that haven’t been caught yet.