Audit reveals problems with student records

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - The state is ordering a comprehensive review of the records of recent East Baton Rouge Parish public high school graduates.

Officials tell The Advocate (https://bit.ly/Nn33j4 ) a limited audit found that some students earned grades or credits that differed from those the school system reported to the state.

The audit, made public Sunday night, also looks at whether some students listed as transferring elsewhere should be considered dropouts, and probes deeply into a case, which sparked the audit, where a student was allowed to graduate despite lacking the necessary credits.

State Superintendent of Education John White said the mismatch between teacher grades and those reported to the Louisiana Department of Education’s transcript database could be inadvertent errors, or in a small number of cases, intentional fraud by principals and other school leaders.

The state agency has told the school system it has until April 4 to develop a corrective action plan to prevent such problems from recurring.

“The LDOE takes these findings very seriously,” the audit states. “The procedures undertaken as part of this audit were common practices, but the severity and breadth of the findings are uncommon and, in many cases, troubling.”

White said such problems are easily fixed.

“This stuff is not hard, to say that when a teacher gives an A to put it in the system as an A,” White said.

White relayed the findings Friday morning to East Baton Rouge Parish School Board President David Tatman and Vice President Tarvald Smith.

“(The school system) has fully cooperated with (the state’s) records audit by making records and staff available and will continue to do so, including with any other agencies involved with the matter,” Taylor said in a statement released Sunday night.

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Information from: The Advocate, https://theadvocate.com