Back in July, I posted about the number of Appleton Area School District high school students who received a D or an F on their 2020-2021 second semester report card. 38.10% of students at North had at least one D as did 49% of students at East–most of them had multiple Ds and/or Fs. West did not provide any numbers whatsoever.
I asked specifically about Ds and not just Fs because I thought it would give a fuller picture of the number of students who were struggling. The CDC groups students with Ds and Fs together in terms of their risk for certain health and safety concerns, and some schools have opted to eliminate Ds completely because there is such little difference between the proficiency demonstrated by achieving a D vs failing completely and giving out Ds simply sets students up to face greater problems further down the road.
Some of my readers were interested to know what the rate of students with Ds and Fs were prior to the pandemic, so I submitted an FOIA request to AASD for the number of students at North, East, and West who had at least one D or one F during the second semester of the 2018-2019 school year.
Chief Financial Officer Greg Hartjes answered that he would “respond to this request and inform you of any fees pursuant to the District’s Access to Public Records Policy as soon as practicable and without delay. Please understand that if the time needed to locate these records is substantial there may be a charge.”
I submitted that request back on July 16, and it is now August 25. The records have not been forthcoming, and I have received no follow-up from AASD regarding the status of my request. I suspect that that open records request has not been filled because there simply were no records responsive to it.
As noted, when I asked for the number of students with Ds and Fs for the most recent school year only North and East responded. When I asked Mr. Hartjes about that he told me, “I can’t answer the question as to why West did not pull their report with ‘D’s, but my guess is they did not have a reason to do so given that a ‘D’ is a passing grade. From my experience as principal, we generally focuses [sic] our time on students who failed a class. A lot of resources are then expended to support students that fail a class.”
I ended up reaching out to Mark McQuade, the principal of West High School, and asking him directly about it.
He answered, “My understanding is that you were requesting a document from us. The document we generated was indeed for students who failed and had incomplete grades for the express purpose of being able to focus on that in order to assure we were able to help as many students recover credits as possible.”
I then responded, “My impression from what both you and Mr. Hartjes are saying is that students with Ds are not tracked and are not viewed as needing academic interventions. Is that an accurate understanding?”
He then answered, “It is more accurate to say that we have not generated records this year to track our students who received a D in a course. That doesn’t mean that some students who earned a D would not be viewed as needing academic interventions.”
I responded, “I’m glad to hear that some D students are viewed as needing academic interventions. How do you determine which students with Ds require intervention? Is getting a certain number of Ds in and of itself enough to flag a student as needing academic intervention or do other criteria need to be met as well?”
His answer was, “The best way to explain how we determine who needs additional support is that we meet weekly with a student support team and talk about individual students and what we are seeing. Getting to know our students well is critical and a huge emphasis in our building. There are a variety of things that might flag a student for additional intervention including, but not limited to, attendance, testing, and behavior. We believe that all behavior is communication, and we find that building trusting relationships with our students allows us to taylor [sic] interventions to their individual needs.”
I then asked him, “Would it be accurate to say that Ds aren’t tracked in a systematic way and getting them doesn’t automatically flag students as potentially needing assistance, but Ds could be factored in for a student that is also experiencing other issues?”
I received no response from Principal McQuade regarding that question so I assume he did not find my understanding of the issue to be inaccurate.
As far as I can tell, the Appleton Area School District does not seem to be tracking high school students who receive Ds and does not seem to view a student getting Ds in and of itself to be a situation that warrants intervention.
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