As you may recall, I have been checking in on the number of Appleton Area School District high school students who have at least one D or one F on their semester report card. I think it’s valuable to look at both of those grades together because, even though a D is technically a passing grade, the CDC places students with Ds in the group as those with Fs 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 they believe giving out Ds simply sets students up to face greater problems further down the road.
As you may also recall, the number of AASD high school students with at least one D or one F rose to shockingly high numbers during the first semester of the 2020-21 school year when the District opted to go all virtual two weeks before the school year started, but even during the normal pre-pandemic 2018-19 school year the number of students with at least one D or one F was still surprisingly high, ranging from 32% of the students at North to 51% at West.
I reached out to AASD Chief Financial Officer Greg Hartjes to find out what those numbers were for the most recent semester.
The percentages for the first semester grades of the 2021-22 school year are much more positive than either semester last year or the second semester of the 2018-19 school year, but across all three high schools over 1/3 of students still earned a D or an F in at least one class.
- East – 32.77% (501 students out of 1,529 total students enrolled)
- North – 28.55% (482 students out of 1,688 total students enrolled)
- West – 42.37% (569 students out of 1,343 total students enrolled)
- All Three – 34.56% (1,552 students out of 4,560 total students enrolled)
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