Mercedes Schneider Reports the story of the New Orleans charter school that awarded diplomas to its seniors, but had to revoke 49% of them after a whistleblower pointed out that these students lacked the credits needed to graduate.
She writes:
Just shy of half of the Class of 2019 at John F. Kennedy High School at Lake Area did not meet graduation requirements and are therefore not eligible to receive the diplomas that they may have expected to receive when they participated in a graduation ceremony on May 17, 2019. (I write “may have expected” because at the time of the ceremony, both students and the general public knew the school was under investigation for grade fixing.)
That’s 87 out of 177 graduates, or 49 percent (which, by the way, indicates a four-year graduation rate that is at best 51 percent.)
Scandals like this do not begin and end in a single year. And this scandal was not uncovered by state or district oversight. Like too many charter school scandals nationwide, revelation of what you will see described by the board president of the charter organization (New Beginnings Schools Foundation) as “malfeasance and negligence that had for years gone undetected” depended for its detection upon a whistleblower.
How sad for the students that no one warned them. Some will make up their credits in summer school. Others are so far behind that they will have to repeat the year.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is what happens when education is taken over by for profit companies. They know how to cash those checks full of public money. but they do not know or care about students are doing. With amateurs that are not really educators running schools, this type of blunder is more likely to happen. Where I worked the guidance department kept an eye on students’ credits to make sure that students would graduate on time. Each student had a checklist of credits. It is one of the major functions of the guidance department.
the damaging reality in our heavily invaded low-income schools: the counselors who spoke out about kids not actually being on track to graduate after test score invasions hit were among the first to be “transferred” out of their buildings
Well, in this case, the University of New Orleans was the takeover specialist. The following is from rom the website of the charter school network.
“In the summer of 2004, the University of New Orleans’ College of Education and Human Development embarked on a journey that was described in statewide newspaper coverage as “the unprecedented gamble, “a major risk” and “good news”. The university became the first entity in the state of Louisiana to take control of a failing public school.
New Beginnings’ commitment to quality public education is an outgrowth of the vision of the charter network’s founder, James Meza, Jr., Dean of the College of Education and Human Development. “As an urban university, our mission calls for us to assume a greater responsibility for the quality of public education in the New Orleans area,” said Meza. “Through our charter school initiative we have established opportunities for our faculty and students to engage in professional development and research though school based inquiry. This systematic teaching and learning process empowers our college teaching community to clearly understand problems and identify best practices for school improvement.”
Pierre Capdau Elementary became Louisiana’s first “takeover” charter school after voters in 2003 approved a state constitutional amendment to allow state takeover of repeatedly failing public schools.”
Capital One helped this fraud along with some financing. I have no idea why the history of sponsorship of this fraud has not been publicized.
Once again, Laura, you get to the heart of the matter. UNO was once an up and coming urban university. Now it’s a rudderless institution in search of a contrived identity. It saddens, but does not surprise, me that it is so entrenched in the charter scam in the city it purports to serve.
Institutions everywhere would do well to pay attention to you and Mercedes for the stellar, important work you both do.
Disgusting. And they knew in February, yet hadn’t figured out who was eligible to graduate in May???????
If by “they” you mean the private charter school JFK authorities then the fact is that they knew about it way before February.