38% Of AASD North Students and 49% Of East Students Received At Least One D or One F For Second Semester – Total Number Not Known Because West Has Not Released Their Numbers

As previously, reported, per Appleton Area School District Chief Financial Officer Greg Hartjes, as of the end of the second semester 25.4% of High School students failed at least one class—19% at North, 30% at East, and 29% at West.

I was curious how many students received either a D or an F as of the end of the second semester. As you may recall, during the first quarter, 50% of students at North, 60% of students at East, and 67% of students at West received at least one D or one F, [percentages that struck me as troublingly high.]

I did submit open record requests for these numbers which Appleton North and Appleton East fulfilled. Appleton West simply did not run a list of students who had either a D or an F as of the end of the second semester, and I was given no explanation as to why they chose not to. They provided a list of students with Fs and Incompletes, but that information was already available as reported on by Assistant Superintendent Steve Harrison at the June 17^th Programs and Services Committee meeting.

The numbers do show some improvement as compared to the first quarter.

For the first quarter, 50.96% of North’s students had at least one D or one F. By the end of the second semester, that was down to 38.10% (650 students out of a total January enrollment count of 1,706).

At East, 60.47% of students had at least one D or one F at the end of the first quarter, and, by the end of the second semester, that was down to 49% (739 students out of a total January enrollment count of 1,507).

The numbers for North and East average together to 43.55% of students having at least one D or one F.

As noted, West simply didn’t provide these numbers. If their numbers were included, that combined percentage could very well go up.

The percentages tell only part of the story. Instead of providing numbers or percentages in response to my request, AASD provided excel sheets listing the students by numbers instead of names and showing what grades they received in various classes. While there are some students that appear on these lists only once, the majority of students appear to have received Ds and/or Fs in multiple classes, and it is not uncommon to see students with 4, 5, or even 6 classes for which they received Ds and/or Fs.

Those excel sheets are available for review below. They also include the number of students with incompletes, which are back to much more normal levels than the 20% it stood at at the end of the first semester.