After Globe probe, BPS member asks for new audit of city graduation rates
"We are committed to the law and following the law and holding ourselves accountable for accurate reporting."
After a Tuesday Boston Globe story showing city auditors found Boston may have overstated its graduation rate for five of the last seven years, a newly-appointed School Committee Member on Wednesday called for an expanded audit of students the district claimed had left BPS but didn’t drop out.
During Wednesday’s school committee meeting, Brandon Cardet-Hernandez raised concerns over the “way that we erode [public] trust” referring to the story and how the district would respond to it.
Boston’s auditors found school officials wrongfully removed dozens of students from graduating classes by claiming, without sufficient proof, that they transferred to another school, moved to another country, or died. In each of those instances, auditors could not find the paperwork to support the reasons for their departure, even though federal rules require such documentation to ensure accurate graduation rate counts. Auditors in 2021, for example, found the district didn’t provide documentation for 16 out of the 40 students randomly chosen for the sample.
Students who drop out lower a district’s graduation rate, which is used by the state to measure a school or district’s performance. By counting students who dropped out or went missing as transfers, a district can make the graduation rate appear better than it is.
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