Surprise state visit finds problems at Hope Academy charter school

A surprise visit by Missouri education officials found evidence of attendance fraud and academic integrity violations at Hope Academy charter school, the state announced Tuesday.

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The team examined records from a six-week period and found evidence that school leaders may have inflated attendance and enrollment information and allowed students who live outside district boundaries to enroll.

State officials also said they learned that a school employee had taken $700 from a student in exchange for granting that student academic credit toward graduation. The money was later returned to the student.

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State officials decided to visit the school after the school reported a 99.5 percent attendance rate.

“That means better than 99 percent of its students were in school 90 percent of the time,” said Sarah Potter, spokeswoman for the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. “That is highly unlikely. It is highly unusual ... for even our highest-performing ones to have an attendance rate that high.”

She said the state also found the charter school listed a higher than average percentage of the school’s population reporting perfect attendance. According to state officials, Hope Academy reported that 11 percent of its students had perfect attendance. The state average is 3 percent.

The day the state showed up at Hope Academy, 174 students were in attendance. That’s less than 30 percent of the 636 students the school says are enrolled there. The state also identified some students who live outside the Kansas City Public Schools’ boundaries.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/11/05/4599923/surprise-state-visit-finds-problems.html#storylink=cpy