Chicago Public Schools miscoded dropouts as transfers but won't fix wrong graduation rates

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Chicago Public Schools admits that it mischaracterized some of its students who dropped out as “transfers,” thereby inflating its 2014 graduation rates, but the district refuses to consider changing those graduation numbers.

At least 2,200 students from 25 district-run schools were coded as transfers out of the district between 2011 and 2014 — and therefore not factored into CPS graduation rates, according to a joint report released Wednesday by WBEZ and the Better Government Association. Some 610 were listed as getting a GED — meaning, according to state law, they should have been counted as dropouts against the district’s graduation rate. CPS couldn’t say exactly where 1,300 of those students were transferring.

That means CPS’ 2014 graduation rate was 67 percent, not 69.4 percent as Mayor Rahm Emanuel often touts, the report said.

District spokesman Bill McCaffrey said that CPS has no plans to go back and recalculate the 2014 graduation rate accounting for added dropouts. Nor did he refute any of the numbers. Asked whether any of the students were miscoded on purpose for political purposes, he said, “Absolutely not.”

In any other element of society this is called... mail and wire fraud. The truly great moments of public education!