In some 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 an internal investigation into a principal at one South Atlanta high school who changed more than 100 student grades from failing to passing with scant justification at 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,” the report states.
Among the missing safeguards cited in report: Currently, all school staff have access to a feature of the district’s online gradebook that allows them to enter grades directly to a student’s transcript.
“This is a serious issue and virtually eliminates all controls over grade changing,” according to the report.
An Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation published last month found that in recent years, district 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 APS report details the 2,134 grade changes made last year. About 50 percent involved changing a numeric grade to a higher grade. About 25 percent were letter grades changed to numeric grades. And another 25 percent involved lowering grades.
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 whose grade changes led to 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 show that in Atlanta high schools grades were sometimes changed months or years after the fact due to "remediation" work.
The school district will make changes 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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