	DCPS’ Enrollment Count Process in School Year 1996-97

We reported that even though DCPS changed parts of its enrollment process in school year 1996-97 to address prior criticisms, the process remained flawed. In addition, DCPS’ enrollment procedures allowed multiple records to be entered into SIS for a single student, and its student transfer process may have allowed a single student to be enrolled in at least two schools simultaneously. Furthermore, DCPS’ practice of allowing principals to enroll unlimited out-of-boundary students increased the possibility of multiple enrollment records for one student. Nevertheless, DCPS did not routinely check for duplicate records. Furthermore, even though the District of Columbia Auditor has suggested that students unable to document their residency be excluded from the official enrollment count, whether they pay tuition or not, DCPS included these students in its enrollment count for school year 1996-97. Problems persisted, however, in the critical area of residency verification. In addition, the pupil accounting system failed to adequately track students. Other school districts report that they use several approaches to control errors, such as the ones we identified, and to improve the accuracy of their enrollment counts. the enrollment count. Because the enrollment count will become the basis for funding DCPS and is even now an important factor in developing DCPS’ budget and allocating its resources, we recommended in our report that the Congress consider directing DCPS to report separately in its annual reporting of the enrollment count those students fully funded from other sources, such as Head Start participants and tuition-paying nonresidents; above and below the mandatory age for compulsory public education, such as those in prekindergarten or those aged 20 and above; and for whom District residency cannot be confirmed. Institute internal controls in the student information database, including database management practices and automatic procedures and edits to control database errors. Reported Responses to Our Recommendations

DCPS has made some changes in response to our recommendations. For example, it dropped the enrollment card. DCPS officials believe SIS’ residency verification status field also serves as a safeguard against including both duplicate records and inactive students in the enrollment count. DCPS considers the form alone, however, the only required proof of residency for the 1997-98 count. Until DCPS students are required to provide substantial proofs of residency, doubts about this issue will remain. Furthermore, DCPS staff told us that the school district has not yet monitored and audited the schools’ residency records but plans to do so shortly. DCPS has proposed modifications to the Board of Education’s rules governing residency to strengthen these rules. Finally, as noted earlier, the count includes students who have not completed residency verification. Additional copies are $2 each.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed its recent report on the enrollment count process that District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) used in school year 1996-97.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) in spite of some changes in DCPS' enrollment count process in response to criticisms, the 1996-97 count process remained flawed in several respects; (2) for example, the Student Information System (SIS) continued to have errors, such as multiple enrollment records for a single student and weaknesses in the system's ability to track students; (3) in addition, verification of student residency remained problematic; (4) although DCPS made some changes in its enrollment count process for the 1997-98 school year in response to GAO's recommendations and plans to make more, the larger systemic issues appear to remain mostly uncorrected; (5) consequently, fundamental weaknesses still remain in the enrollment count process, making it vulnerable to inaccuracy and weakening its credibility; (6) for example, DCPS staff report that although an important internal control--duplicate record checks--has been implemented for SIS, additional internal controls are still lacking; (7) several DCPS enrollment and pupil accounting procedures continue to increase the possibility of multiple enrollment records for a single student; (8) GAO is concerned that duplicate record checks alone may not be sufficient to protect the integrity of SIS, given the many possiblities for error; (9) furthermore, the enrollment count may still include nonresident students; (10) more than half of DCPS' students have either failed to provide the residency verification forms or have provided no proofs of residency to accompany their forms; (11) GAO questions the appropriateness of including students who have failed to prove residency in the official count, particularly students who have not even provided the basic form; (12) in addition, because DCPS has not yet monitored and audited residency verification at the school level, additional problems may exist that are not yet apparent; (13) proposed new rules governing residency will help DCPS deal with residency issues; (14) until these issues are fully addressed and resolved, however, the accuracy and credibility of the enrollment count will remain questionable; (15) in GAO's more recent discussions with DCPS officials, they acknowledge that more needs to be done to improve the enrollment count process, particularly in the areas of further strengthening DCPS' automated internal controls and addressing the nonresident issue; and (16) they have expressed concern, however, that GAO has failed to recognize fully the improvements DCPS made in the enrollment count process for school year 1997-98.