Three students have been stripped of honor graduate status after the Burke County School district discovered it wasn’t following its own grading policy for dual enrollment.
Burke County School District corrected how it calculated dual enrollment grades for the Class of 2026 and Class of 2027, resulting in three seniors losing potential honor graduate status. The district discovered it was not following its own grading policy and had given incomplete information to families about how dual enrollment grades would be recorded.
What Changed: The district found two errors. First, Burke County High School was not recording dual enrollment grades according to pages 3 through 5 of the Burke County Board of Education Policy Manual. Second, information presented to students and parents during dual enrollment meetings was incomplete, containing information from page 5 only.
The corrections involved only dual enrollment grades for which the postsecondary institution provided a numerical grade to the school. The changes affected school years 2024-2025 and the current 2025-2026 school year. All dual enrollment grades are weighted at 1.1 per policy and calculated into the student’s high school Grade Point Average.
Who Was Affected: Approximately half of the senior class took at least one dual enrollment course. The correction resulted in three students who would have potentially qualified as honor graduates no longer meeting the requirement. Per Board Policy: Class Rankings, graduates maintaining a four-year weighted numerical average of 90 or above and who have met all state requirements to earn a regular high school diploma are declared Honor Graduates.
What’s Important: The correction does not affect HOPE Scholarship or Zell Miller Scholarship eligibility. A student’s high school HOPE GPA is not the same as his or her high school GPA. The high school HOPE GPA calculation is used for determining academic eligibility for HOPE Scholarship and Zell Miller Scholarship. Any weighting added by the high school is removed for that purpose.
The Timeline: At the time of discovery, averages had not been finalized. The district states there had been no formal announcements regarding class rankings or honor graduates before the correction was made.
What the District Says: “Adult errors and the subsequent correction of those errors has resulted in anxiety, hurt, continuous spread of false information, and unfair and unwarranted targeting of individuals, something we deeply regret,” Superintendent Dr. Angela Williams wrote in a letter to families.
Williams stated the district had a “moral, ethical, and legal obligation” to correct the error immediately once discovered.
