D.C.’s new schools chancellor grilled after releasing graduation data

New D.C. schools Chancellor Amanda Alexander told lawmakers on Thursday that she already has directed the troubled school system to release timely performance information in order to not repeat the grade-inflation scandal that erupted last year.

“I’ve issued two orders,” Ms. Alexander said Thursday in her first testimony since being put in charge of the school system. “The first is transparency. The second is accountability. As it relates to transparency, we have already released the graduation data.”

But the data show that only 42 percent of D.C. high school seniors are “on track” with regard to credits needed to graduate. Of the remaining 58 percent of seniors, 19 percent of them could receive a diploma if they make up credits for classes they failed.

Ms. Alexander said the rest of the city’s high school seniors are students who will be held back for failing too many classes or whose status is unknown because they have transferred out of the school system.

“I don’t have confidence in the data that we get from our school system,” D.C. Council member Robert C. White Jr., at-large Democrat, said during the Education Committee hearing.

Thursday’s hearing marked not only Ms. Alexander’s first testimony as chancellor, but also the council’s first education oversight meeting since an enrollment scandal was reported at the District’s highly competitive Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that an investigation of Ellington’s files found about 100 students whose families had claimed D.C. residency but actually live outside the city, flouting the $12,000-a-year out-of-state tuition fee.

According to The Post, an Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) official suggested slowing the probe so as not to harm Mayor Muriel Bowser’s re-election bid. An OSSE spokesman has denied the allegation.

Ms. Alexander was assigned last week as interim chancellor after Antwan Wilson resigned over transferring his daughter to a school outside her district in violation of a policy he had written himself.

Mr. Wilson’s departure came in the wake of reports last year that about a third of Ballou High School’s seniors had not met requirements for grades and attendance before graduating. Instances of grade inflation were found to be widespread in the school system.

Jon Valant, an education researcher at Brookings Institute who specializes in urban schools, told The Washington Times that high school graduation data often can be unreliable.

“Without question, we need third-party eyes on school data to ensure that the numbers that school and district officials report are accurate,” Mr. Valant said. “D.C. does some of this already and obviously could use more of it.”

Denise Krepp, a mother and Advisory Neighborhood Commission member, told The Times that she finds the new graduation rates “appalling,” adding that she has lost faith in Miss Bowser and her top education officials’ ability to improve D.C. Public Schools.

“D.C. leaders, including Mayor Bowser, former chancellors, and the DCPS system writ large, have failed these students,” Ms. Krepp said. “They’ve failed to educate them and their failure will have life-long consequences.”

ANC Commissioner Daniel Ridge said he recently completed a new school lottery application for his children to attend Capitol Hill Montessori @ Logan because he is “prepared to believe in DCPS.” He nonetheless expressed doubts about the school system’s leadership.

“The new Chancellor and DME [deputy mayor of education], like their predecessors, will have their tenures defined by how closely they stick to the formulation of misdirection, secrecy, and favoritism that have defined Muriel Bowser’s tenure,” Mr. Ridge said in an email to The Times.

Former deputy mayor for education Jennifer Niles resigned last month over the Wilson transfer scandal.