WICHITA, Kansas — Wichita school district leaders say some student records at Southeast High School were changed — possibly to meet graduation requirements — and the district is investigating allegations of grade fixing at the school.
Southeast High’s principal, Claudia Cooper, was replaced unexpectedly last week. In an email to employees, Lauren Hatfield, assistant superintendent of secondary schools, said Connie Redic would serve as Southeast’s principal for the coming school year.
Redic previously served as principal at Curtis Middle School in Wichita.
District officials say Cooper is still employed by the district, but would not say where she is assigned. They did not say whether she or other employees are involved in the investigation.
“Recently, some anomalies at Southeast High School came to light. District administration reviewed and corrected data to ensure accurate information is reported to the state,” said district spokeswoman Susan Arensman in an email.
“Less than 10 records were changed and, at this point, there is no indication of data inaccuracies in past years.”
Like many districts in Kansas, Wichita has focused on raising its graduation rate as a measure of student achievement. A strategic plan approved by the Wichita school board in 2023 pledged to increase the graduation rate from 79.2% to 85% in 2029.
In a report to the board in November, Hatfield announced the graduation rate for Wichita’s class of 2024 was 84.3% — 5.1% higher than the previous year.
“It is the largest jump we have ever taken in one year, and it is by far the highest graduation rate Wichita Public Schools has ever had. Just soak that in for a second,” Hatfield said, and several board members applauded.
The graduation rate increased at every Wichita high school, but Southeast High showed especially sudden gains.
Less than a decade ago, Southeast’s graduation rate was the lowest in the district, at 65.4%. By 2023, it had increased to 76.7%. In 2024, Southeast’s graduation rate soared to 86.3% — a 12.5% increase in one year, and higher than the district average.
Two other Wichita attendance centers posted higher gains in 2024 — Sowers Alternative High School at nearly 17%, and Chester Lewis Academic Learning Center, with 47%. Because those schools have fewer than 100 students, graduation rates can vary widely year to year.
North High and South High reported increases of about 9% from 2023 to 2024.
A teacher at Southeast High School said the extraordinary increase at that school raised concerns among some faculty, who worried the school could be manipulating data to artificially inflate its graduation rate.
“One of the assistant principals … said they had a 100% graduation rate" among students they supervised, "which I’ve never seen in over a decade,” said the teacher, who asked not to be identified because of fear of reprisals.
This spring, concerns intensified when some teachers said they noticed students graduating who had failed required classes.
“We have a good idea who can make it and who can’t before graduation,” the teacher said. “Kids who think they’ll bring multiple failing grades up by 20 to 30% and make up missing credits in the learning center in two weeks. Those are the names we really notice — kids we’ve had to fail multiple times without even getting close" to a passing grade.
The surprises continued during this year’s commencement ceremony at Wichita State’s Koch Arena on May 19.
“We had to add almost two rows of chairs at graduation, like while we were on the floor with kids walking in,” the teacher said. “Most of us thought it was a miscount, but as other things came to light, we wondered if it was something else. … We just know our kids and all hear names that we know shouldn’t be said that night.”
Another teacher who asked not to be identified said at least one Southeast faculty member raised concerns with district administration in April, and that one or more teachers alerted the Kansas Department of Education.
Asked whether the state was investigating possible grade manipulation at Wichita’s Southeast High, a department spokeswoman said, “We don’t have any comment.”
Diane Albert, president of the Wichita school board, also refused to comment.
As districts across the country face pressure to increase their graduation rates, some are being criticized for manipulating data or using loopholes to boost their rates.
Investigators in South Bend, Indiana, say they uncovered more than 2,500 grade changes across that district’s high schools. The investigation found some South Bend high schoolers were passing classes they had spent only a couple of hours attending.
In Anderson County, Tennessee, an investigation into grade manipulation led to charges against a fired teacher and a former guidance counselor.
In Baltimore in 2017, a state audit found nearly 5,000 students who graduated from Prince George’s County schools over two years had late grade increases after final cutoff dates.
Wichita officials say the district’s record-high graduation rate is the product of hard work on the part of students, teachers and school leaders.
Over the past several years, the district launched initiatives targeting what they call “neglected and delinquent” students, including night programming, summertime credit-recovery classes and learning centers in every high school.
According to state law, students have until Sept. 30 to earn the credits required to be counted among that year’s graduating class. Hatfield, the assistant superintendent for secondary schools, said Wichita teachers and administrators “turned over rocks” to get kids back to class and on track to graduate.
“There are schools that went and found kids and said, ‘You are so close. You only have a class left. Come to school and finish. We’re not letting you slip through the cracks when you’re this close,’” Hatfield told the school board in November. “I’m just so, so impressed by all of the work that our system did to get there.”
Arensman, the Wichita district spokeswoman, said in her email that graduation rates are part of the district’s strategic plan, and preparing students for life beyond high school is part of its mission.
“We will not tolerate activities that undermine the work of students and dedicated educators,” she said. “WPS leadership is developing processes to ensure the systemic integrity of data to remove this type of concern in the future.”
Suzanne Perez reports on education for KMUW in Wichita and the Kansas News Service.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KMUW, KCUR, Kansas Public Radio and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.
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