Scope of OSSE errors in Ellington case revealed
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Anonymous
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New report (see Wash Post link below) shows how badly OSSE botched the Ellington residency fraud situation -- by concluding that bad records meant students lived out of state.
65% of the families that OSSE accused of not being residents have successfully proven their residency. "The report released this month updates the review of each of the 219 alleged enrollment fraud cases. About 10 percent admitted committing fraud, while 5 percent did not appeal the superintendent’s findings and, thus, have been deemed nonresidents. About 20 percent of the cases have been referred to the D.C. Office of Administrative Hearings because the families claim to be residents, but the city is still unable to verify those assertions." https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/nearly-23s-of-students-at-dc-arts-school-wrongly-accused-of-residency-fraud-city-finds/2018/11/27/3f9abf26-8552-4d78-bd52-4809ac9ba74d_story.html?utm_term=.2d2e7fb8aea9 |
Anonymous
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But again the bar for proving residency is pretty low and as I understand this process the bar was not raised in the questionable cases here. Which doesn't say much about the efforts that 15% of families who apparently decided they'd been caught and didn't try to come up with a DC based utility bill.
Also 15% of the high number of cases turning out to be fraudulent is still a lot of students cheating - if you have similar numbers of students at Deal and Wilson cheating you are talking about a lot of students. (And I get that it is not 15% of the total student body that was caught) |
Anonymous
15% of the 219 accused is 33 confirmed non-residents. An additional 40-ish students still appear to have residency unconfirmed - my guess is that many of these students will ultimately clear the low residency bar but probably didn't/don't really live in DC. OSSE did mess up. But 75 cases of almost certain residency fraud at a 520-student school is still a big deal. |
Anonymous
Yup I agree with this. OSSE messes up and Ellington needs to fix their residency paperwork. |
Anonymous
| Especially when the education is so heavily subsidized, 15% is a lot! That’s quite a few non-residents that are enjoying a $200M renovation from my tax dollars. Good job Bowser! |
Anonymous
| Agree this was handled poorly but 15-35% is still a lot. Shows there was major problems at Ellington that need to be addressed. I hope they are going after the tuition on those students. Unless there are real consequences this will never stop. |
Anonymous
| 33 confirmed cheaters is still way too much cheating, no matter how much OSSE got it wrong initially. Someone was negligent to let that many families get away with it and it cost DC tons in taxpayer dollars to foot the bill for however many years for each kid, not to mention the untold numbers of cheaters before them. |
Anonymous
| Yeah, DCPS, OSSE and DC citizens should be prepared to do this, have this kind of error rate, and correct it. I am not interested in people giving up on this because they make mistakes. Integrity matters more to me. |
Anonymous
Anyone know what happened to the 11 non-residents found at Shepherd or the 6 at Breakthrough? |
Anonymous
| And, even if the total number of students initially identified were not all cheaters, their paperwork was dodgy enough to raise concerns, which overall indicates the registrar at Ellington is not doing due diligence. Just because those families proved residence, doesn’t mean the paperwork was proper up front. |
Anonymous
| 75 cheating student seats in a small school is a lot. How much money is that? Almost a million in fraud? |
Anonymous
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Greg Smith is an idiot.
He should be mad AT THE SCHOOL. OSSE can only go by what THE SCHOOL provides as verification of residency. Since THE SCHOOL had such poor paperwork THE SCHOOL is responsible for damaging their own reputation. And yes, there are still a lot of cheaters at Ellington which Ellington didn't care about. |
Anonymous
The registrar at Ellington was fired. She clearly wasn't doing her job. But OSSE also clearly jumped the gun and caused a whole lot of upset to families that didn't deserve it. They also could have done their work without blasting alerts to the media about how many cheaters they nabbed, only to have been wrong in 2/3 of those cases. Doesn't mean that the 15% who were cheating should be punished / charged tuition. But it didn't need to be this crazy. |
Anonymous
This is what jumped out at me. Even if all the kids ultimately proved their residency, the fact that so many were enrolled with suspect paperwork is a problem. I can understand that a few students are going to have unusual living arrangements, but most people should be able to supply the requisite number of approved documents. The school needs to be vetting this stuff better. |
Anonymous
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Please -- you think this is a new problem and only the registrar's fault? Administration and families willingly turning a blind eye doesn't make it only one person's fault.
Plus this wasn't simply OSSE going in randomly to Ellington and auditing 100% of the files to check, finding out fraud and OSSE running to media. This was an initial look (like at every school), a lot of irregularities found, more thorough look, then findings released. The investigation happened between Oct and April. Over those months it was crickets from Ellington. And then they fire the registrar. What a joke. From the report: In this year’s enrollment audit, Duke Ellington will be required to undergo a 100% review of residency verification documentation for all students. The results of this audit will be included in OSSE’s annual enrollment audit report, which will be released in January 2019. OSSE is hopeful that the results of this year’s audit at Duke Ellington will ultimately reveal a transformation in the quality and the consistency of recordkeeping and significant gains in compliance with statutory and legal requirements for residency verification at the school level. |