As a 10-year vet of the college admission world, this is not uncommon at all. Many inner-city schools have MUCH lower standards for graduation that are uniformly pushed to all teachers (which is a primary reason why they can't hold on to the good ones). The biggest thing that indicates this is the performance gap between GPA and ACT/SAT. Many of the inner city schools I worked with had a "correlation" that just did not make any sense at all...they would have the highest GPAs out of students I worked with, but the lowest standardized test scores by a country mile.

The hardest part of this was the schools who had at least a modicum of respect and willingness to prepare their students for more than just bubble sheets ended up having students come into school with less scholarship money due to their lower GPAs/higher standards of excellence.

For instance, there were two schools near one of the institutions I worked for previous to my current employer who show this incredibly well.

High School A: 3.1 average GPA (with no 5.0 courses) and 28.1 avg ACT
High School B: 3.85 average GPA and 18.2 avg ACT.

The saddest part of this was the fact that there were many schools placing in the 80th-90th percentile range in intelligence factor indicators who weren't getting ANY scholarship money due to their sub 3.0 GPAs while students with sub 30th percentile ACTs were getting half-rides due to their GPAs being manipulated. Many of the students from High School B are only in college for a semester or two because they aren't prepared, and many from High School A tended to perform well, if not better, in comparison to their HS performance.

Charter schools are even worse, especially in Ohio. There was a charter school in Dayton run by a subsidiary of the educational consultant our governor's wife works for that reported attendance figures 400% larger than their enrollment in order to have higher state subsidies because they knew they wouldn't be reviewed. It wasn't until a news agency went sniffing that it came to light.

The damnation of the education system is truly killing our country, and the ones who can and would fix it, aren't involved due to their desire to make a wage commensurate with their effort. The very few who are in the system for the right reasons and work to correct the mistakes are taken (myself included) are taken to the woodshed by both sides due to our desire to increase accountability on one side and funding on the other.