The transcript that Open High School senior Kellen Milburn-Town submitted to colleges lacked proper weighting of dual enrollment classes and failed to list several college-level courses.
Kellen Milburn-Town first realized something was wrong with his high school transcript in August 2017 when he was picking out classes for his senior year at Open High School and noticed he was missing credits necessary for graduation.
Milburn-Town was confused, because he had completed a lot of his credits at Reynolds Community College through the Early College Academy — a dual-enrollment program that Richmond Public Schools students can participate in to graduate with an advanced diploma and an associate’s degree.
During the past several months, multiple families of RPS high school students have contacted the administration about inaccurate grade point averages, transcripts missing coursework and grades not being weighted appropriately for dual-enrollment and International Baccalaureate students. On Thursday, RPS formally recognized there was an issue.
“I wanted to let you know that we have identified an issue related to the calculation of grade point averages (GPAs) for students who participate in dual enrollment (DE) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses,” RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras, whose tenure began in February, wrote in an email to parents. “Board policy assigns these courses extra weight (‘quality points’) in students’ GPAs. It has come to our attention that RPS practice has not aligned with that policy.”
In other words, if a student is taking a dual-enrollment or IB course, an “A” grade should translate to six quality points — as opposed to a standard course receiving a maximum of five points for the same grade — according to board policy. This has not been — and, until RPS addresses the issue, is not — the case for students currently, which has consequently affected GPAs submitted to colleges for admission and scholarship opportunities.
In his email, Kamras told students’ families that the school system is making corrections so that the GPAs reflect School Board policy. “Transcripts will be updated, as will class ranks,” he wrote, adding that adjusted transcripts will be distributed to affected students.
“On behalf of RPS, I want to apologize to you and your students for the frustration this issue has caused,” he wrote. “These kinds of errors are simply unacceptable. RPS must do better — and it will.”
Though recently acknowledged, the issue is not a new one; since August 2017, Milburn-Town and his mother, Betsy Milburn, have repeatedly reached out to the Open High administrators and members of the RPS central office staff to address the issues and seek clarification. Other families have been in contact with RPS and school staff since the spring semester of last year.
Liz Doerr, the 1st District School Board representative, responded to a request for comment on the issue by saying, “Data integrity must be a top priority for RPS. This is not our first technology glitch, and we must invest in the right technology processes, people and solutions for all RPS stakeholders.”
Betsy Milburn says that school system officials asked her not to speak out about the series of issues she and her son have faced in rectifying his transcript.
“RPS wanted time to get their stuff together, but after speaking to another family last week and thinking about how this could impact many other children, I didn’t feel that was the correct thing to do,” Milburn says.
“I emailed last week and received a response back of ‘We’ll fix the transcript, but we don’t know how to fix the GPA,’ so I continued to cut and paste the GPA policy from RPS and told them, ‘No, no, no, you will fix this; this is a violation of state and federal law’ ” regarding management of student records.
Shavae Ward, another Open High senior, says she and her family first began trying to fix the problem when she noticed her class rank had fallen after completing dual-enrollment classes, despite the fact she had only achieved “A” grades in those courses. After sending emails to RPS administration and requesting in-person meetings to no avail, Ward says she was told there wouldn’t be a way to fix her inaccurate GPA calculation.
“I felt discouraged and wished I would not have enrolled in dual-enrollment classes,” Ward says. “I was told that, ‘It’s too late in the year to fix’ and ‘there wouldn’t be much change to your GPA.’ ”
Earlier this week, students whose transcripts were affected at Open High say they were pulled aside in groups to address the issue with their principal and guidance counselor. Students were told to share acceptance letters with staff so that when the transcripts are amended, the school can resend them to colleges if needed.
Amari Brown, another senior at Open, says the staff did not address potentially negative consequences of inaccurate transcripts, such as being denied or wait-listed from schools. Brown has also encountered issues other dual-enrollment students face, too: colleges classes not counting for credit.
“[Dual-enrollment] classes are not counted as two separate classes, they were counted as one class when it should’ve been ‘English 111’ and ‘English 112’ as two separate dual-enrollment credits,” Brown says. “Instead, English 112 was just counted as English 111, so I never got credit for that second class.”
Milburn-Town has encountered similar problems with his course listings, which has in turn affected his applications to colleges. Though accepted to several Canadian and American schools — including Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia Tech and the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry — he did not receive the expected financial aid and scholarships.
Kellen Milburn-Town
“This whole process has been stressful, and it has many issues,” Milburn-Town says. “When applying to college, every point counts, but with the screw-ups in my transcript, I have lost GPA points, credits, and by the middle of this semester, colleges believed I had slacked during the fall semester by only taking one class.”
In reality, Milburn-Town had successfully completed four college-level courses and a high school class — all with “A” grades — during the fall semester, but the damage had already been done. He and his family are now appealing financial aid and merit-based scholarship decisions due to his inaccurate transcript.
Brown says during discussions about the transcripts, she also learned that she needs to take another class — World History II — in order to graduate with an advanced diploma.
“I have to take another course that I should’ve taken sophomore year that they didn’t catch until now, so I have two months left to finish a whole course,” Brown says. “The teacher is working with me to make sure I can get everything done, but it was just kind of out of the blue for me to not have this class and nobody knew that I needed it.”
Betsy Milburn sent an email to Eric Rhoades, director of the RPS Department of Curriculum and Instruction, on March 30 after discovering her son’s GPA and transcript were still inaccurate during a college visit the previous week — despite having first reached out about the issue in late summer. Rhoades responded April 13 and provided an updated transcript.
Rhoades did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the GPA and transcript issues raised by students and their families.
“I think there are good people within RPS,” Betsy Milburn says. “I think there are people who work very hard, but I think the system is broken and very damaged.”
