In Atlanta high schools, student grades are commonly changed from failing to passing after students complete extra assignments or "remediation" work, according to an Atlanta Public Schools internal analysis released Friday.
Superintendent Meria Carstarphen asked for the report this summer after the district completed an investigation into a principal at one South Atlanta high school who changed more than 100 student grades from failing to passing with scant justification after the close of the 2013-14 school year.
“This review did not identify additional cases of serious inappropriate actions, although we did find inconsistencies in practice, lack of clarity in process, and a lack of the necessary safeguards to effectively prevent inappropriate activity,” APS accountability chief Bill Caritj wrote in the report.
Among the missing safeguards cited in district report: Currently all school staff have access to a feature of the district’s online gradebook that allows them to enter grades directly on a student’s transcript.
“This is a serious issue and virtually eliminates all controls over grade changing,” according to the report.
The district's findings are similar to those of an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation published earlier this month. That investigation found that in recent years, Atlanta Public Schools administrators monitored how many students failed classes and insisted on fewer F's.
But when more than 7,700 student grades were changed over the past three years, about a quarter of them from failing to passing, no one in the district’s central office checked that the changes were justified.
The report breaks down in detail the grade changes for last year, where there were 2,134 grades changed. About 50 percent were changed from failing to passing or to higher passing grades, about 25 percent were changed from a letter grade, such as incomplete, to a numeric grade, and about 25 percent of the grades were lowered.
The report found that grade changes due to “remediation” work were most common at two schools—Douglass High School and South Atlanta School of Law and Social Justice, the school that sparked the district investigation.
“They had the largest number of cases where the use of remedial assignment, unit recovery, and mastery grading were employed to provide students additional time and opportunities to pass courses or improve low grades,” according to the report.
Records obtained by Channel 2 Action News under state public records laws found that grades were frequently changed months and sometimes years after the fact due to "remediation" work.
APS plans to put a number of changes in place to prevent future problems with grade changing, Carstarphen said in a statement posted online with the report late Friday evening.
“As always, I am committed to complete transparency,” she said in a written statement.
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