D.C. Miracle Turnaround School Exposed as a Fraud
30th November 2017
When Ballou High School, once one of Washington D.C.’s worst performing public schools, announced that all of its 2017 senior class graduated with college acceptance letters, the praise was effusive.
Both NPR and the Washington Post ran stories on the miracle school, praising its miraculous feat of boosting its graduation rate from 57 to 100 percent in a single school year.
Thanks to a joint investigation by NPR and local public broadcaster WAMU we know the miracle was cheating. According to the WAMU story Wednesday, many of the students Ballou graduated had missed so many classes they should have been ineligible for their diplomas.
D.C. Public School policy states students who miss more than 30 days of a course automatically fail that course. Records compiled by WAMU showed 141 graduating seniors had at least 30 days of unexcused absences and 86 had at least 60 unexcused absences. Roughly 20 percent of the graduating class was absent 90 or more times, or more absent than in attendance.
Well, they intended to go to school, but they just couldn’t get into it, man.