Opening Statement of Councilmember Grosso

Chairperson, Committee on Education

Hearing on Graduation Rate Accountability
June 13, 2018

We are gathered today to hear directly from our agency partners about how they are
strengthening graduation accountability in the District of Columbia. The Committee has held
two other roundtables on this issue.

Seven months ago, NPR and WAMU released a news story that alleged dozens of graduates at
Ballou High School had passed courses despite extreme levels of absenteeism, teachers were
pressured to award higher grades to students, and credit recovery had been improperly used in
school year 2016-2017.

As a result, the Mayor directed the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (“OSSE”)
to conduct an analysis of student-level attendance and graduation outcomes at public high
schools throughout D.C. Under this directive, OSSE contracted with Alvarez and Marsal to
perform a system-wide investigation and audit of D.C. Public Schools (“DCPS”) high schools,
which confirmed these allegations to be true- not only at Ballou but at many other high schools
in the city. The report found that 34% of DCPS seniors graduated with the assistance of policy
violations last year.

Since then, DCPS has reexamined its internal controls and processes, retrained staff, held
resource fairs, met individually with seniors to discuss their academic progress, and enforced
its attendance related grading policy this school year.

D.C. Public Charter School Board reevaluated its high school graduation requirements policy,
revised its transcript audits policy, and required charter local education agencies to develop
their own written credit recovery policies.

And OSSE, as the state education agency, began developing statewide credit recovery
regulations.

Through its oversight role, the Committee on Education sent several letters to our agency
partners to gauge process and received about 100 pages of data back. This enhanced oversight
has forced DCPS to look at every senior and identify where they’re falling short. I have also
been asking them to do the same with students in grades kindergarten through 11th but have
yet to receive a satisfactory response.

In May I was deeply disappointed in DCPS’ answers to my questions at the joint Committee of
the Whole and Committee on Education public oversight roundtable on student attendance
but appreciate the efforts by DCPS to keep the Committee updated on progress since then.
Additionally, the Committee sent a letter to the Mayor asking her to investigate deeper into

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graduation accountability at charter schools and grade promotion in lower grades, but I am still
awaiting a response.

Overall, it’s been a grueling school year. We’ve found ourselves without a Deputy Mayor for
Education and a permanent Chancellor of DCPS- two of our cities’ top education leaders.
Additionally, media reports indicate that several teachers changed students’ attendance
records from “absent” to “present” at Roosevelt High School.

Confidence in our public education system is at an all-time low. But never before have we been
in a better position to solve the issues that plague public education in this city.

I look forward to hearing a full update from each government and executive witness about how
they are strengthening graduation accountability, implementing the recommendations from
the Alvarez and Marsal report, and preparing young people for postsecondary education, the
workforce, and life.

With that said, I’d like to thank the government and executive witnesses for appearing before
the Committee today.

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