Washington D.C.’s Ballou High, which bragged about getting every graduate into college, handed out diplomas to students with months of absences, a WAMU/NPR story revealed. Ballou High graduated students with 90 days of absences or more. That triggered an audit, which found that one-third of graduates districtwide weren’t eligible for their diplomas. Now that students have to show up and pass classes, the graduation rate is expected to fall sharply, reports Perry Stein in the

Every senior was admitted to college at Washington D.C.’s low-performing Ballou High in June. Most had applied to the open-admission community college that’s part of the University of the District of Columbia. I had my doubts, because so few students earned college-ready scores: 9 percent passed in English on the PARCC exam, none in math. It was “smoke and mirrors,” Brian Butcher, who taught history, tells WAMU/NPR. Students who didn’t show up in class and didn’t complete the

But many students won’t make it, legislators feared. Now schools are hiring “interventionists” and scrambling to put weak students on alternative graduation pathways, reports Jeremy P. Kelley in the Dayton Daily News. Students can graduate by meeting any two of nine standards that include 93 percent attendance senior year, a 2.5 GPA in at least four full-year senior-year courses, a senior-year “capstone” project, or 120 hours of senior-year work or community service. Schools