New Orleans Charter School Fradulently Tried to Graduate 49% of Its Class of 2019.
Just shy of half of the Class of 2019 at John F. Kennedy High School at Lake Areadid not meet graduation requirements and are therefore not eligible to receive the diplomas that they may have expected to receive when they participated in a graduation ceremony on May 17, 2019. (I write “may have expected” because at the time of the ceremony, both students and the general public knew the school was under investigation for grade fixing.)
That’s 87 out of 177 graduates, or 49 percent (which, by the way, indicates a four-year graduation rate that is at best 51 percent.)
Scandals like this do not begin and end in a single year. And this scandal was not uncovered by state or district oversight. Like too many charter school scandals nationwide, revelation of what you will see described by the board president of the charter organization (New Beginnings Schools Foundation) as “malfeasance and negligence that had for years gone undetected” depended for its detection upon a whisleblower.
The June 21, 2019, Advocate details the fiasco, including backstory. Some excerpts:
Nearly half of the senior class at John F. Kennedy High School was not eligible to graduate this year, even though dozens of those students walked across the stage at a commencement ceremony held in May, officials with the New Beginnings Schools Foundation said Friday.The charter network’s review of student transcripts, ignited by grade-fixing allegations, revealed that 87 members of the 177-student senior class at Kennedy were ineligible to graduate for a number of reasons CONTINUE READING: New Orleans Charter School Fradulently Tried to Graduate 49% of Its Class of 2019. | deutsch29
