Midlands high school’s accreditation is downgraded after audit uncovers grading issues
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A Midlands high school’s accreditation has been downgraded by the state because of a string of grading problems identified in an S.C. Department of Education audit report.
In a letter sent to the Lexington 2 school district this week, the department told district officials that Brookland-Cayce High School would have its accreditation dropped from the top level to “accreditation/advised” for the 2021-22 school year — essentially a formal warning that the school has fallen short of state standards.
The letter also warns that Brookland-Cayce could fall to a lower accreditation status unless the issues are corrected and the school faces no new problems during the 2022-23 school year. If the problems are solved, Brookland-Cayce will have its full accreditation restored for the next school year.
Some students were ultimately allowed to graduate without completing all the required course work, while others were permitted to take the same course as many as five times before passing. “What types of intervention/content recovery process is being used to help these students?” the report asks.
The findings of the report do not affect the diplomas received by the Brookland-Cayce graduating class just a few weeks ago.
Lexington 2 declined to address the issues raised by the report with The State on Thursday.
”Because Acting Superintendent Barry Bolen has been out of town all week, he has not had an opportunity to review the letter and discuss it with the appropriate school and District officials,” school district attorney Andrea White said in response to The State’s request for comment. “Mr. Bolen will be back in the office early next week and will begin reviewing the information provided by SCDOE and implementing any necessary corrective actions.”
The Education Department conducted a simultaneous review of senior class grades at Airport High School in Lexington District 2 and did not find cause to affect Airport’s status. But the department is also reviewing external audits of the two schools’ grading that were commissioned separately by former Lexington 2 Superintendent Nicholas Wade, and “will notify the district if... further action is needed.”
Wade resigned suddenly last month, necessitating an emergency school board meeting the next day to name Bolen as a replacement. A settlement agreement with Wade calls for the district to pay him $240,000 to end his contract after only a year in the job, and commits the former superintendent to assist with “any litigation arising from events occurring during his tenure as superintendent.”
The department reviewed the course credits for graduating seniors at both Lexington 2 high schools for 2021 and 2022, after what the department described as “alarming” discrepancies in at least one graduating student’s resume.
The audit uncovered more issues with graduating students’ credits, including 28 at Brookland-Cayce and six at Airport High School.
One student was cited as graduating without taking all the required English courses, while another had only 23 course credits — short of the required total to earn a diploma.
Several students were found to have taken required courses out of order, to have repeated courses, or to have taken “recovery” courses they should not have been able to take. One student took English III without taking English II, while another took Health Sciences 1 and 3, but not 2. “Is 2 a prerequisite for 3 or not?” the department’s report asks.
One student passed a credit recovery course — an end of year course designed to “make up” a course a student did not pass — but never received credit for it. On more than one occasion, a student passed an initial course and then took credit recovery for the same course.
“Why did a student take credit recovery when he passed the initial credit class?” the report asks.
The report also flags issues with students taking the same class over again, even when they passed the first time. Others highlight course scheduling that seemingly makes no sense.
“A student took PE I all year, in the same year, twice,” the report notes. “The first time the student failed it and then repeated it to earn the credit. How is it possible to take two initial credit courses twice in one year if the courses are year-round?”
In another case, a student took a year-long Foundations in Algebra course, then signed up for Intermediate Algebra the next semester without completing the lower-level course and apparently taking both classes simultaneously. Another student failed Intermediate Algebra but was then placed in a higher-level algebra course without retaking the intermediate course.
“Foundations in Algebra and Intermediate Algebra are issues,” the report succinctly states at one point.
A second year with similar issues would drop the high school further to the “accreditation/warned” status that would require the school to make “substantial progress toward removal of deficiencies” before the end of the school year or face being put on probation. In the worst case scenario, a school could lose the ability to issue diplomas entirely.
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