Lawmakers: Hold school districts accountable if they falsified graduation numbers
MONTGOMERY — Some state lawmakers said they expect repercussions for any Alabama school systems that knowingly inflated their graduation rates in recent years.
“There should be some sort of consequences and those consequences should be made public as well,” Sen. Dick Brewbaker, R-Montgomery, said this morning. Brewbaker is the chairman of the Senate education policy committee.
State Superintendent Michael Sentance on Thursday said the state’s recent record-high graduation rates aren’t accurate. A review by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General revealed two issues that factored into the bad numbers. First, the state wrongly included a diploma for special needs students in its rates even though it was told not to by the federal department. Second, the state has not properly overseen local systems’ awarding of class credits, resulting in some diplomas that were not honestly earned, Sentance said.
“We didn’t provide serious oversight of school districts as they were collecting the data about whether or not students were earning credits toward their diploma, and we have reason to believe in that, in some instances, the schools were simply handing out diplomas without any real academic credit behind them,” Sentance said Thursday.
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