Strath Haven High School Parent to Board: Transcripts Sent to Colleges Were Late and Inaccurate
WSSD School Board President David Grande and Superintendent Lisa Palmer hear about problems with student transcripts at Monday’s school board meeting. Photo: Rachel Pastan
At the Wallingford-Swarthmore School Board meeting on Monday, February 24, Swarthmore resident and Strath Haven High School parent Todd Strine raised concerns about the school district’s learning management system, PowerSchool. Last summer, PowerSchool replaced the MMS platform, which had been used since 2003.
Strine, who is a co-publisher of the Swarthmorean, told the board that he had recently learned of problems with his daughter’s mid-year transcript, sent to colleges as part of her application. The transcripts were due February 1, but the school did not send them out until February 5, he said. “That can cause issues, obviously, for students whose decisions are pending right about that time.” He said he believed the guidance department had alerted the administration to the late transcripts as the February 1 deadline approached.
The second problem: his daughter’s transcript was incorrect. It listed grades different from — and lower than — her actual grades.
He believes that no one discovered the errors until Wednesday, February 19 — weeks after they had been sent out — when his daughter requested a copy of her transcript to send to a school in Canada and detected errors. He credited the guidance department for working hard since that discovery to alert the other colleges that they had received faulty information. But he worried that other students might also be affected.
Also, because weeks had passed since colleges received the transcripts, students face the prospect of schools basing admissions decisions on inaccurate information. Many colleges and universities make admissions decisions in February. “This is a time sensitive issue,” Strine emphasized.
After the meeting, District Superintendent Lisa Palmer spoke with Strine about the situation. Palmer said that acting Strath Haven High School Principal Andrea LaPira and Assistant Principal Christopher Matsanka had alerted her to the errors in the transcripts earlier that day. She said they had contacted PowerSchool to try to understand and solve the problem, which seemed to occur only with full-year courses. Palmer speculated that the mistakes might be due to a coding error on the part of school district personnel. She suggested that accurate transcripts could be created manually, and that colleges could be alerted quickly. “It can’t wait,” she said.
At the same time, however, Palmer insisted that transcripts due February 1 had gone out to colleges on January 31. She promised to look into Strine’s assertion that they had not been sent until February 5, days after the deadline.
Problem Traced, Fixes in Progress
On Tuesday, February 25, the day after the school board meeting, Palmer met with LaPira and Matsanka. They traced the issue, Palmer reported, to “a code missing in the course set up — meaning something on the WSSD end.” She said the coding issue had been fixed.
The superintendent said that the transcripts of all seniors were reviewed by high school staff, and that the problem was limited to 12 students and three full-year courses: A.P. chemistry, A.P. studio art, and A.P. English literature.
Having determined this, Palmer said, the administration began alerting admissions offices, initially by email. Any who did not respond quickly received follow-up phone calls. “It is our hope that we will have the transcripts completely generated tomorrow and in the hands of the colleges.”
As an added precaution, paper copies of all senior transcripts are being printed and given to the students to review.
Parents of all seniors are being contacted with information about the problem and the fix.
Questions Linger
Palmer conceded that Strine was correct that the transcripts had not gone out until February 5. She said she did not know why the transcripts were late.
It remains unclear why the PowerSchool system generated multiple versions — inaccurate in varying ways — of some students’ transcripts. One version of Strine’s daughter’s transcript, for example, not only misreported grades in two of the three courses Palmer named, but reflected a failing grade in an additional course in which she actually maintained an A average. That problem appeared to have been corrected on a subsequent version of the transcript. Strine said he had been assured that the incorrect version, with the failing grade, had not been sent to colleges.
Palmer also admitted that the implementation of PowerSchool had not been trouble-free.
The district has contracted for additional training to get staff up to speed on various aspects of the platform. She said that such issues were to be expected with an unfamiliar system.
Strine said that while he was grateful for the administration’s quick response once he flagged the issue, his sympathies were with all Strath Haven seniors affected by the delays and inaccurate grade reports. “PowerSchool is being beta tested on the class of 2020,” he said. “As if our seniors aren’t already under enough stress at this time of year about getting into college. I hope that, despite these issues, our kids end up happy with the choices they have come April 1.”
An article about other aspects of the February 24 meeting will be in next week’s Swarthmorean.
View this or any other school board meeting. The next meeting will be Monday, March 9, at 7 p.m., in the Strath Haven Middle School library.
