You may recall the story. Last Year year, NPR reported on a dramatic transformation at Ballou High Dchool in the District of Columbia. Despite a long record of poor performance, 100% of its students graduated and every one of them was accepted into college. Great things are happening in D.C., the reporter said. However, months later, NPR ran another story admitting the errors in the miracle story. The school was burdened by excessive absences, students graduated who had not met basic requirements, and some were admitted to community colleges that accept all applicants.
Enough questions were raised about the story to get the attention of the ombudsman, who explained what happened here.
The ombudsman, Elizabeth Jensen, writes:
”The original piece is somewhat startling to read, given what we know now. As the story points out, the graduation rate in the 2015-16 school year was 57 percent. That year, only 3 percent of students met citywide English standards and no one passed the math. The question in any reporter’s mind should then be: Was the 2017 progress simply too good to be true?”…
”On its face, the report in late June was accurate; as the headline said, the students did get accepted to college (some of them to a D.C. community college that accepts all who graduate, information which was only uncovered later by McGee). Still, a story can be accurate but incomplete, and therefore leave a misleading impression.
“The report also included this line: “But it was a strong support system within D.C. Public Schools that made it a reality.” There appears to be truth in that: The story documents the college application support, the pep rallies and the paid-for college tours the school system provided.
“But it’s also an ironic truth, in retrospect. The school may have provided lots of support but, as the second story showed, it also subsequently graduated students who did not meet graduation requirements. That included overlooking “high rates of unexcused absences.” How high were those rates? As NPR and WAMU reported last week, “Half of the graduates missed more than three months of school last year, unexcused. One in five students was absent more than present — missing more than 90 days of school.”
“So WAMU/NPR did not fall for a P.R. pitch. It invested time in reporting. Why did its report fail to turn up the other problems?”…
”My take? The first piece was far from perfect. It contained some overly enthusiastic language about Ballou’s accomplishments (I like feel-good stories as much as others, but unqualified statements are often what get reporters in trouble). The claims the school made were hard to believe — which should have made the newsroom more skeptical. If the reporting team needed more time, it should have been granted, despite deadlines.
“But this situation also underlines one of the challenges of reporting: when to stop. Often the reporter’s instinct is to keep reporting, but deadlines are a reality, after all. I don’t believe the reporting was slapdash (some reports I found in other news outlets simply took Ballou officials at their word and did not do any original reporting at all), but it is unfortunate that of all the people talked to, not one raised the problems that became apparent later. Perhaps one more interview would have been the one that unlocked the bigger picture.”
Ahem. My take? Journalists should always question stories that involve miraculous claims about test scores and graduation rates. Skepticism should be their default attitude towards claims that sound too good to be true. If at first they take the bait, they will tend to stop digging and become defensive. Those who take the bait will look foolish, and indeed they are. When a school makes outlandish claims about test scores, ask first who graded the tests. Then check the process for excluding and selecting students. Ask whether the school has the same proportion of students with disabilities and English learners as neighborhood schools. Dig deeper. Ask whether it accepts students with cognitive disabilities, or only those with mild learning disabilities. Keep digging. It has been my experience that behind every “miracle” school there is either fraud, dubious practices (e.g., credit recovery), or careful selection and exclusion of students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
NCLB requirements led our public schools to pay too much attention to graduation rate. This, as many have pointed out here, had led to cheating either with statistics or on tests. Broader measures of success would paint a truer picture of whether student’s needs are being served.
“Ahem. My take? Journalists should always question stories that involve miraculous claims about test scores and graduation rates? Skepticism should be their default attitude towards claims that sound too good to be true.”
Good but too many words. “Journalists should always question stories. Skepticism should be their default attitude.” Period. Verification is a journalist’s number one job regardless of the story. If your own mother tells you she loves you, don’t take her word for it.
Saved me some typing.
Who remembers the “miracle” of the American Indian Charter Schools in Oakland, CA? The head of the school, Ben Chavis, was interviewed by numerous media outlets. Here in Los Angeles, an LA Times reporter wrote a very positive article. But he failed to look at the demographics. Chavis originally sold the school as a haven for American Indian students. However, the original students disappeared and were replaced by Asians whose parents endorsed the “no excuses” delivery of education.
And, we can’t forget that Chavis was arrested and charged with crimes relating to his financial management of the schools.
Yes, if it sounds too good to be true, check and double check first.
The American Indian charter school was endlessly hyped. FOX News featured them over and over.
Boasting about “100% graduation!” with no context was a real specialty of Arne Duncan. It always amazed me because this was literally his full time job at the time. He couldn’t be bothered to ask the simplest questions- he would simply repeat whatever he was told.
If these adults are to have any credibility when they are scolding children about becoming “critical thinkers” and adopting “rigor” they will have to model that. They don’t model it.
I discount graduation rates because it’s a number that can be gamed. My district has a lower rate than a neighboring district but it is common knowledge that the district with the higher rate is counseling children into “credit recovery”- that’s where their better number comes from.
“If these adults are to have any credibility. . . ”
Hmmmmm! They don’t!
When I read about miracles, I am always wary of the journalist. So much half-baked news is out there.
The linked apologia is sickening. Inflated graduation rates, rampant excessive absenteeism, high drop out rates and grade falsification are well known methods of obfuscation. The mainstream media is enthralled by feel good close the achievement gap by doing nothing to ameliorate poverty, inequitable distribution of educational resources and pervasive institutionalized racism stories.
But we shouldn’t forget that the “miracle schools” narrative served a very specific purpose in ed reform, and THAT’S why it proliferated.
Miracle schools “proved” that schools could fix all of society’s problems, and that idea is central to ed reform.
They promoted “miracle schools” because it was politically useful for them to do so.
Miracle schools were NECESSARY to the promotion of ed reform- it was no accident that these stories appeared all over the place.
Maybe the journalist graduated from a “Relay type” of school with a fake degree in journalism? If these for profit “institutions of higher education” are pumping out fake teachers, they are likely pumping out other unqualified students as well. Guess they don’t teach the who, why, when, where and how of journalism anymore.
NPR has been an echo chamber/stenography service for so-called reform for years, but at least now it apparently feels obliged to issue (disingenuous) qualifiers to its dreadful reporting..
Considering the incompetent/dishonest reporting on education we’ve suffered under for decades, I guess this counts as progress. At least they’re finally feeling some pressure to respond to push back to their lies.
Diane,
You’re absolutely right.
To its credit, NPR corrected the error. The blowback in DC has been interesting: NPR was accused of “picking on” Ballou H.S. by the chairman of DC Council Education Comm., David Grosso and a volunteer coordinator of Reach, Inc., a foundation funded after-school organization that teaches hs students to tutor elementary students. Students were bused to a Council hearing to criticize the NPR corrective report.
Nonetheless, NPR should have gotten the story right in the beginning. Critics of DCPS and charter policies are not hard to find and the Washington Teachers’ Union would have put the reporter in contact with teachers at Ballou, including its building representative, who would have provided some of the details that were reported much later.
As others have remarked in recent years, NPR has become too friendly to corporate “school reform” interests, e.g. the Walton Foundation.
I would have to guess that there must have been revolt in NPR that led to the correction instead of NPR just letting the matter die.
How the 80%:20% attendance rule misrepresents attendance.
The DC Office of the State Supt uses the 80%:20% attendance rule, which is part of its ESSA compliance.
The 80:20 rule creates confusion around attendance statistics, because it overlooks the requirement that each classroom teacher must take attendance online, i.e. into the DCPS attendance database.
Like “school”-wide test averages, the 80:20 rule is a convenient short cut statistic for the central administration to “hold a school,” i.e. teachers and staff, accountable and, if the numbers look bad, impose measures of blame like turn-around and staff reconstitution.
It’s not an individual student accountability measure as the following example shows.
Take a student who arrives in the middle of 2nd period, which is roughly 30% into the school day, every day for the whole year, but attends the remaining two classes with no absences or lates.
For the school’s single unexcused and/or excused absence statistics, that student would have 180 absences, but that isn’t the absence statistic for each class that goes into the student’s records, because teachers take attendance online in every class:
Per 1: 180 absences
Per 2: 180 late arrivals
Per 3: 0 absences
Per 4: 0 absences
The student, the student’s teachers, administrators, parents, et al. ALL KNOW that, if the student met the course requirements for periods 3 & 4, he/she will pass. The student will fail period 1 – unless a fake grade is entered – and may or may not fail per 2.
By the same token, if a student arrives on time and is counted present in the first period or advisory/homeroom, whichever comes first, then skips a couple of classes, he or she will be counted present for the whole day and absences overlooked, a problem reported at Ballou H.S. and true in many high schools.
The school-wide attendance count is a performance indicator. Using it to make general decisions about a school’s staff is misuse of statistics.
And one more thing: How does one contact an NPR reporter or make a comment?
There’s a convoluted contact form that functions as a convenient clogged filter.
Not that I’m cynical or anything, but look in the 2016 annual report at the foundations from whom NPR receives major funding for their education reporting and then ask if that might have had anything to do with the direction of the reporting. (cough Walton/Gates cough)
NPR has done some really shoddy education reporting.
Worse, they have engaged in editorial censorship, removing comments that called out the shoddiness. Eric Westervelt did a piece a while back on STEM that was just chock full of errors and misinformation. In a lengthy comment, I pointed out and documented the nonsense. NPR kept removing my comment. I kept replacing it.
Now, NPR no longer allows comments on its articles. According to ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen, there are a variety of reasons for this:
https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2016/08/17/489516952/npr-website-to-get-rid-of-comments
One of them – though NPR is not likely to own up to it – surely has to be that some of NPR’s reporting was far less than stellar, and commenters noticed, and responded.