Dozens of struggling Atlanta high school students were encouraged to leave school in their senior year in 2014 and transfer to private schools, a practice that kept the students from dragging down their schools’ graduation rates.
People throughout the district knew of the practice, but it was investigated only after Channel 2 Action News began asking questions, according to an internal district report recently released to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution under state public-record laws.
The transferring students had failed the state graduation tests. At the time, passing the tests was generally required for graduation at public schools but not at private ones.
Former Jackson High School teacher Tish Glover worked closely with some of the students who transferred. Referring those children to private schools — at their families’ expense — is unethical, she said.
“I think we’re sending a very bad message to students,” she said. “They think they can subvert the system and get what they want without having to work for it.”
Graduation coaches at Jackson and Grady high schools were disciplined in connection with the withdrawals. Both received warnings not to violate district policy again. But the district found no evidence of a deliberate attempt to improve graduation rates.
“Atlanta Public Schools wants to see every student succeed; however, we do not condone the approach these two employees used to help our students,” district spokeswoman Jill Strickland said Friday in a written statement. “The district also informed its high school staff that these are not acceptable practices under this new school administration, which seeks to build a culture of trust while preparing every student to graduate ready for college and career.”
Similar practices happened at schools throughout Atlanta. Some private schools even sent ads to counselors soliciting students who had failed the tests, according to the report the AJC requested in May of this year.
At Grady, graduation coach Charmaine Gray, one of the two reprimanded, said she gave parents of students who had failed the graduation tests a list of private schools — but only if they asked for options.
At Jackson, graduation coach Arlena Edmonds, who was also reprimanded, said she never directly told parents to enroll students in private schools. But she did talk about her personal experience with one school. Edmonds told investigators she was only trying to give families an option. She had a responsibility to help students graduate, she said.
At Therrell High School, administrator Yamilsa Roebuck, who was not reprimanded, told staff the school's graduation rate would take a hit if the students stayed in school, one educator told district investigators. Enrolling in a private school was an option on the "action plans" for students who failed the graduation tests. But some school staff told investigators they did not encourage students to transfer. Instead, they told them to attend tutoring sessions and try to pass the tests again.
At Douglass High School, former principal Eldrick Horton had a staff member drive a few students to a private school the same day they withdrew from their public school, according to the report. The school’s counselor told investigators the transfers were just a way to help students get a diploma, not an attempt to increase the graduation rate.
Atlanta Public Schools accountability chief Bill Caritj told Channel 2 Action News last year that a total of 60 seniors transferred to private schools after May 1. A district spokeswoman said that kept the district’s graduation rate from falling by 1.4 percentage points.
Last September, associate superintendent Timothy Gadson told high school principals the practice of referring students who failed the graduation tests to private schools had to stop.
It was a moot point. The Class of 2014 was the last class required to pass the graduation tests.
Still, Tish Glover, the former Jackson teacher, says pushing students off to private schools wasn’t right.
“I guess I’m from a different generation,” she said. “I think you need to know something.”
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