So how did this dream become a reality? It started with a pledge from the class of 2017 when they were just juniors looking ahead to their final year of high school.

But it was a strong support system within D.C. Public Schools that made it a reality. For months and months, staff tracked students’ success, often working side-by-side with them in the school library on college applications, often encouraging them to apply to schools where data show D.C. students perform well.

The reporter tacked on two disturbing facts at the end of the piece, one of which contains a highly misleading internal contradiction, calling all seniors ‘graduates‘ while acknowledging that 26 of these ‘graduates‘ had not done the work necessary to earn diplomas. (The punctuation error in the print version doesn’t help matters).

More than a quarter of the teaching staff quit before the end of the school year — that’s not usually a good sign. And out of the nearly 200 graduates, 26, are still working toward their high school graduation — hoping to earn their diploma in August.  

The reporter did not explain why so many teachers had left, nor did she dig into the school’s boast about 100% admission to college.   An obvious question–How do 26 students who haven’t yet graduated from high school get admitted to college? Which colleges accept non-graduates?–were apparently not asked, and we were not told whether any local colleges automatically accept everyone with a high school diploma.

A quick visit to the website of the University of the District of Columbia reveals that “All students who have earned a high school diploma, GED, or equivalent are eligible for admission to the Community College.”   One wonders how many Ballou seniors had been accepted there.  After all, how much does that 100% mean if a lot of students have been accepted by a college that accepts everyone?  And the reporter might also have followed up by asking how 26 non-graduates got college acceptances.  How does that work?

What’s more, given that Ballou High School is in the District of Columbia, a school district that has been plagued by years of academic corruption, the reporter and her editor(s) ought to have approached this story with heightened skepticism.

(Because context matters, it’s worth noting that The Washington Post had reported two months earlier that all Ballou seniors were applying to college, a first.  So apparently this was a simple “Let’s follow up and find out how many get accepted” kind of story and not a more skeptical “Will colleges accept students from a school where 95% cannot pass the city exam?” approach.)

The cliché, “When something seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t,” applies to this story, big time, and five months later, on November 30th, NPR walked back the story with this editor’s note.

Since this story was originally published, we’ve done additional reporting. We spoke with 11 current and recent Ballou teachers and four recent Ballou graduates, and we reviewed hundreds of attendance documents, class rosters and emails. They show that many students graduated despite chronic absenteeism. Records show half the graduates missed more than three months of school, or 60 days.

NPR could as easily have said, “Whoops, we got just about everything wrong the first time around,” because, sadly, it did.  In the new report (which runs for nearly 8 minutes), listeners were told, ”

We reviewed hundreds of pages of Ballou’s attendance records, class rosters and emails after a district employee shared the private documents. 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.  According to district policy, if a student misses a class 30 times, he should fail that course. 

After the piece aired, I was told, quite a few listeners were upset and angry about what they felt was an incomplete story.  At least one person, a school district employee, leaked documents revealing just how badly NPR had missed the mark.  Here’s how NPR explained it:

An internal email obtained by WAMU and NPR from April shows two months before graduation, only 57 students were on track to graduate, with dozens of students missing graduation or community service requirements or failing classes needed to graduate. In June, 164 students received diplomas.

Because the devil is in the details, this longer excerpt is worthy of attention. It reveals just how low administrators were willing to go.

“It was smoke and mirrors. That is what it was,” says (history teacher Brian) Butcher.

WAMU and NPR talked to nearly a dozen current and recent Ballou teachers — as well as four recent graduates — who tell the same story: Teachers felt pressure from administration to pass chronically absent students, and students knew the school administration would do as much as possible to get them to graduation.

“It’s oppressive to the kids because you’re giving them a false sense of success,” says one current Ballou teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her job.

“To not prepare them is not ethical,” says another current Ballou teacher who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It’s rumored that certain administrators filled out and submitted college applications for students who had no interest in attending. They were then called to the office and told to sign the applications….all in the name of achieving that 100% success rate. NPR’s follow up report, which is a 1000% improvement, still does not include an important fact: The University of the District of Columbia, accepts all DC high school graduates.

“They’re not prepared to succeed,” says Morgan Williams, who taught health and physical education at Ballou last year. Williams says the lack of expectations set up students for future failure: “If I knew I could skip the whole semester and still pass, why would I try?”

Williams taught physical education and health at Ballou for two years. She says her students were often chronically absent, but the gym was always full. Students skipping other classes would congregate there, she says, and her requests for help from administrators and behavioral staff to manage these students were often ignored.

Williams, and other teachers we spoke to for this story, say they often had students on their rosters whom they barely knew because they almost never attended class.

The NPR report provides shocking numbers: One-fifth of seniors missed more than 90 days of classes, and one-half missed 60 days.  District policy calls for automatically failing any student who misses more than 30 days of classes.

Near the end of a term, Williams says, students would appear, asking for makeup work like worksheets or a project. She would refuse: There are policies, and if students did not meet the attendance policy, there was nothing she could do to help them. Then, she says, an administrator would also ask how she could help students pass.

At one point, while she was out on maternity leave, she says, she received a call from a school official asking her to change a grade for a student she had previously failed. “[They said] ‘Just give him a D,’ because they were trying to get him out of there and they knew he wouldn’t do the makeup packet.”

Williams says she tried to push back, but she often had 20 to 30 kids in one class. Repeatedly having the same conversation about dozens of students was exhausting. And the school required extensive improvement plans if teachers did fail students, which was an additional burden for a lot of already strained teachers.

Many teachers we spoke to say they were encouraged to also follow another policy: give absent or struggling students a 50 percent on assignments they missed or didn’t complete, instead of a zero. The argument was, if the student tried to make up the missed work or failed, it would most likely be impossible to pass with a zero on the books. Teachers say that even if students earn less than a 50 percent on an assignment, 50 percent is still the lowest grade a student can receive.

It’s at this point that the highly suspect–and widely popular–scheme known as “Credit Recovery” raised its ugly head at Ballou.  Typically, “Credit Recovery” entails spending about a week in front of a computer, responding to prompts.  The usual outcome for this effort is a full semester’s credit!

During the last term of senior year, some seniors who weren’t on track to graduate were placed in an accelerated version of the classes they were failing. Those classes, known as credit recovery, were held after school for a few weeks. School district policy says students should only take credit recovery once they receive a final failing grade for a course. At Ballou, though, students who were on track to fail were placed in these classes before they should have been allowed. On paper, these students were taking the same class twice. Sometimes, with two different teachers. Teachers say this was done to graduate kids.

Whistle-blowing was apparently not an option.  If teachers pushed back against these practices, they told NPR, the administration retaliated against them by giving them poor teacher evaluations.

“Going along” was the best way to get ahead in a system that hires, fires and promotes teachers based largely on student performance. Playing the game has financial benefits. If an evaluation score reaches the “highly effective” mark, teachers and administrators can receive $15,000 to $30,000 in bonuses.  While the NPR report did not include information about bonuses at Ballou, the local NBC station did, in its follow-up story: “Last school year, 15 teachers at Ballou received bonuses of $20,000 to $25,000, a school district spokeswoman said. Additionally, six administrators received bonuses of as much as $2,000, sources said.”  NPR did report that three teachers it interviewed lost their jobs at Ballou, perhaps because they protested against changing grades.

In their detailed report, NPR also explored the lessons that students may have learned from this broken approach.

Many students have figured out they don’t have to show up every day.  “These students are smart enough to see enough of what goes on,” (music teacher Monica)  Brokenborough says. “They go, ‘Oh, I ain’t gotta do no work in your class; I can just go over here, do a little PowerPoint, pass and graduate.’ Again, this isn’t about the teachers. What is that doing to that child? That’s setting that kid up for failure just so you can showboat you got this graduation rate.”