Erich Martel, retired veteran teacher in D.C. school system, wrote a public letter calling for a thorough investigation of graduation rates in all D.C. high schools, including charters, and for the reinstatement of the whistleblower teachers who were fired at Ballou High School. You may recall that NPR ran a story about the miraculous graduation rate and college acceptance rate at Ballou. After a teacher came forward and pointed out that students with numerous absences from school and inadequate credits were allowed to graduate, NPR investigated and corrected the earlier story. The underlying story was about gullible reporters wanting to believe in miracles.
Martel writes:
Council Member David Grosso
Chairman, Committee on Education, Council of the District of Columbi
Dear Chairman Grosso,
Today’s Washington Post article on the investigation into the Ballou H.S. graduation scandal reports that “a group of [Ballou H.S.] teachers met with D.C. Public School officials” the day after the June 2017 graduation to report that “students who missed dozens of classes had been able to earn passing grades and graduate.” https://tinyurl.com/yc37lerj
A month later, music teacher Monica Brokenborough wrote to Chancellor Antwan Wilson requesting a “thorough investigation … inclusive of pertinent stakeholders,” but never heard back from him. The Washington Post has evidence that Ms. Brokenborough, the WTU representative “tried time and again to reach district officials about her concerns” resulting in the principal cutting her position from the school budget this year.
Chancellor Antwan Wilson conceded at your December 15th Education Committee hearing that effort “he and other officials did not look into it until the November airing of a WAMU and NPR news report.” His words of acknowledgement were chilling:
“‘We know that there was a Ballou teacher who in August complained through the grievance procedure about concerns along with 30 other concerns,’ Wilson said at the hearing. ‘Our team, prioritizing impact [IMPACT???], had not gotten to it.'”
Question:
Will you request that Mayor Bowser immediately instruct Chancellor Wilson to reinstate whole all Ballou teachers who reported these violations and were subsequently terminated/excessed by the principal?
On the December 8th Kojo Nnambi show, you stated,
“I think it is unfair to focus only on Ballou H.S. in this situation. Ballou HS has some wonderful things going on there that we need to celebrate.”
“I’m saying it just frustrates me that this is always going to come down on Ballou.”
“To pick on Ballou alone is unfair. … But let me tell you, that’s not the only place where students are leaving high school not ready for college in the District of Columbia.”
The current investigation appears to be focused solely on Ballou H.S., but I haven’t heard of you requesting that it include all DCPS and charter high schools.
Question:
Will you request that Mayor Bowser expand the investigation to all DCPS AND all DC charter high schools?
I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Erich Martel
Ward 3, Retired DCPS high school teacher (Cardozo HS, Wilson HS, Phelps ACE HS)
ehmartel@starpower.net
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The better question is where isn’t this happening?
LikeLike
“Gullible reporters wanting to believe in miracles,” or corporate scribes serving their masters?
So hard to tell sometimes, though the end results are identical…
LikeLike
I’m not sure the end results are entirely the same. If reporters were just gullible, there would be room for education. Eventually they’d start to get it when they see the same failures over and over and over again. But we all know what Upton Sinclair said about what a man’s salary depends on. Women’s salaries too, unfortunately.
LikeLike
Part of the problem is that education reform stenography-posing-as- journalism appears to be a form of dues-paying.apprenticeship that leads to a promotion as a corporate or government stenographer for “important,” high status reporting.
Over the past twenty years I’ve witnessed a succession of dreadful NY Times education reporters go on to cover the White House,State Department, etc. In each and every case, they functioned as the exact same mouthpieces for power and privilege as they had when providing verbal fellatio for Michael Bloomberg or Joel Klein.
Thankfully, we’ve seen some recent improvements in education reporting – though not editorializing – at the Times, with the expose of Success Academy abuse of students. But even that seems to have fallen off the radar of the Paper of Record.
My sense, Dienne, is that most of the gullible reporters, if and when they wake up, realize there’s no professional benefit to be earned by being skeptical of the claims of so-called reformers, or reporting on their actual behavior rather than recycling their press releases, and they then morph effortlessly into active shills.
LikeLike
This happens at my local high school. Also, my child went to a charter school and was asked whether he wanted a diploma from the charter school or the high school he had come from. How can you give a student a diploma from a school they didn’t graduate from?
LikeLike
I’ve asked for further clarification on some of your prior comments on this site and haven’t seen a response. Please go back and check as I would like to see the clarifications as part of the discussion. Gracias.
LikeLike
I’ll be surprised if it happens. Better high school graduation rates are the only (measurable) ed reform success and DC is one of their favorite examples.
Arne Duncan trumpeted “100% grad rates” in charters for years and no one ever questioned it, outside of one teacher-blogger.
“Credit recovery” in Chicago seemed to be a complete scam and there was a piece exposing it. Nothing happened. The story died never to be mentioned again. They have to point to success and grad rates are the only metric that is on the upswing.
LikeLike
From my experiences with credit recovery I’d say that there’s a 100% chance that 100% are “a complete scam”, whether in a public school, private charter/private school or any other school.
LikeLike
It’s happening in my regular public high school. I could see how it is likely happening in many others, too.
LikeLike
“The underlying story was about gullible reporters wanting to believe in miracles.”
If that’s that case, then let’s not call these people “journalists “, who are supposed to objectively report out on the facts they discover and uncover. If they wanted to opinionate, then they should be writing for the op-ed sections of the periodicals they work for.
LikeLike
As Ms. Ravitch stated in Reign of Error, if you want 100% graduation rates, you will get it. It doesn’t mean it’s meaningful.
LikeLike
They fired the whistleblowers who informed the press of facts? Ahem, shouldn’t they not just reinstate the whistleblowers but reprimand the dishonest administrator(s) who misled the press? Since when do we punish honesty and reward lying and cheating!
LikeLike
Unfortunately, we reward lying and cheating everyday that our current elected officials sit in office. Honesty is a thing of the past…and it doesn’t sell a story.
LikeLike
“Gullible reporters”… who wanted to believe in miracles? Is that the excuse for the flow of talking points on Common Core and other education issues we’ve gotten for almost 10 years?
LikeLike
Bill Gates paid out millions for PR for Common Core. Many journalists print the press releases
LikeLike
Dear WaPo look into Antwan Wilson’s record at Oakland Unified in CA. You’ll see why his answers are evasive. He overspent our budget by 100%!!!!! in a financially struggling school district, majority comprised of undeserved children of color. And said ” it was for the children”, although a huge percentage didn’t go to fund anything at schools.
LikeLike