The Public School With The Highest Attendance Rates In D.C. Is Empty Most Of The Year

SUMMARY:

In a school district that has struggled with attendance, the top public school bucking the trend doesn’t actually require kids to come to class.

Friendship Public Charter School Online is the only K-8 tuition-free virtual school in Washington, D.C., and it reported the highest attendance rates in the city for the 2017-2018 school year — 99.8 percent.

But these rates may not be what they seem. In D.C., there are no attendance policies that specifically address virtual school programs, which gives these school officials the flexibility to report and interpret numbers as they see fit.

Read the full story and listen to the audio on the WAMU website.

HOW I DID THE STORY:

This was another data-driven story. I decided to pursue this story after our news director brought in a group of people to train us on “solutions journalism.” I decided to try and apply what I learned.

In the past, our newsroom did multiple stories about the challenges public schools in D.C. faced getting students to show up for class. So I wanted to flip that narrative and learn which school had the highest attendance rates and how they achieved those numbers.

By highlighting what this school was doing to beat the odds, I might produce some public service or solutions journalism.

To do this, I pulled data from both traditional and charter public schools in the district and compared the numbers. Friendship Public Charter Schools, a charter network in the area, stood out from the rest. They had one campus with a 99.8 percent attendance rate.

However, as I tried to tell the story, I discovered that the school was virtual, meaning students attended class online. And this gave teachers and administrators the flexibility to count attendance any way they wanted since there were no policies in D.C. that applied to “virtual” schools.

On top of all this, a for-profit company called K12 managed the schools. In other states, K12 was sued and lost contracts for gaming attendance policy loopholes.

IMPACT:

Following the publication of the story the executive director of the charter school board said he would work with the state superintendent's office to decide whether it was time to create attendance policies for virtual school programs.