Failing Grades Soar At Top San Francisco High School After Dropping Merit-Based Admissions
“Nearly 25% of Lowell High’s 620 freshmen students received a D or an F in the fall 2021 semester”
Lowell High School in San Francisco was a top performing school that admitted students based on test scores and grades, until the city decided that merit-based admissions didn’t comport with ‘equity’ standards.
Against the objections of parents, they switched to admissions based on lottery and now it’s no longer a top school. Who could have predicted such a thing would happen?
As we noted back in February, this change played a major role in the school board recall elections.
Now the obvious is coming to pass.
NextShark reports:
Top SF high school sees record spike in failing grades after dropping merit-based admission system
San Francisco’s Lowell High School, regarded as one of the best in the nation, is seeing a record spike in Ds and Fs among its first batch of students admitted in fall 2021 through a new lottery system instead of its decades-long merit-based admissions.
Of the 620 first-year students admitted through the lottery, nearly one in four (24.4%) received at least one letter grade of D or F in the said semester, according to internal records obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle. This marks a triple increase from 7.9% in fall 2020 and 7.7% in fall 2019.
Principal Joe Ryan Dominguez attributed the rise in failing grades to “too many variables.” Last month, Dominguez announced his resignation from the school district, citing a lack of “well organized systems, fiscal responsibility and sound instructional practices as the path towards equity.”
The Daily Caller has more:
Elite High School Ended Merit-Based Admissions. It Was A Complete Disaster
Students at San Francisco’s Lowell High School received significantly more failing grades at the end of the fall 2021 semester following the school board’s decision to end merit-based admissions.
The San Francisco Board of Education voted to end merit-based admissions in February 2021 and switched to a lottery-based admission system at the beginning of the fall 2021 semester. Lowell High freshmen admitted through the lottery program received three times the amount of Ds and Fs than those of the previous two years, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.
Nearly 25% of Lowell High’s 620 freshmen students received a D or an F in the fall 2021 semester, according to The Chronicle. Only 7.9% of freshmen in Fall 2020 and 7.7% of freshmen in Fall 2019 received a D or an F.
Of course, the biggest losers here are the students who might have benefited from the merit-based system.
What else do you expect? San Francisco’s Lowell High School, formerly regarded as one of the best schools in the country, saw a spike in Ds and Fs after canceling merit-based admissions. Those who claimed merit is “racist” now say grades are “racist.” https://t.co/9gAGuiWeIe
— Helen Raleigh (@HRaleighspeaks) May 28, 2022
NEW: Teachers at San Francisco’s Lowell High gave freshman students significantly more D and F grades this past fall, the first semester after the school board eliminated merit-based admissions.https://t.co/JUFJvBILMB
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) May 25, 2022
A sad but entirely predictable situation.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
All together now: “Unexpectedly!”
As usual, everything that liberals touch they turn to crap.
The left – always wrong but never in doubt.
People really do need to understand a simple idea: “Good” schools and “good” teachers are good because of their clientele. “Good” schools are good because of who they let in and keep out. That isn’t to say all teachers are competent, but there are a lot of places a competent teacher cannot succeed and a lot of places where an incompetent teacher can.
It’s not quite as simple as that. A ‘good’ College Prep school does tend to assume readiness for AP classes, which is why they usually test for entrance. A ‘good’ lower tier but still college preporatory school (that does not adverstise as College Prep) has a large number of AP readiness classes that ‘get you to the level to take those AP courses’. I suspect Lowell is among the first not the second. Nothing wrong with that, but it does mean the teachers syllabi are for ‘hit the ground running’ students.
I know it is more complicated. Those tests to “ensure” a certain state of readiness do an absolutely fantastic job of weeding out students that can’t keep up. That is, after all, the point.
That is how selective schools get good test scores or various other bragging rights. We run into a real problem, however, when we hold up those schools as examples because most schools cannot use the most powerful tool used by those schools.
Everyone is equal all you get is mediocrity
Until they lower the standards, then everyone gets an “A.”
Problem solved.
Academic mismatch ain’t a theory.
In other news, last year’s champion ${SPORT} team decided to recruit this year’s team by lottery instead of by ability; amazingly, they came bottom of the league in this year’s tournament.
But, at least the lottery was faaaiirrr.
Why would they participate in a racist league? It isn’t fair that “life’s lottery” made some athletes better than others.
Though those videos of Rabbi Goldberg as fullback will entertain at least two generations.
I suspect that a disproportionate number of minority students are getting D’s and F’s. Given that the school district won’t admit that their lottery system is the reason that so many students are failing, they will have to force “equity” in some other way.
They will likely give teachers new rules for giving grades, where part of teachers’ evaluations depends on how many failing grades they give. Or, they might just stop giving grades at all. That would achieve “equity.”
So in other words in the Democrat world, this has been a success.
Precisely.
I’m surprised they kept up their grading standards. Good for them.
That’ll change.
I would bet this is after a bit of relaxed rigor. They would have prepped for this change.
Every student in the public schools deserves a “good” education, i.e., an education tailored to their abilities and needs.
High quality magnet schools allow academically talented students to excel. There is nothing wrong with that. Students not admitted to such school have no reason for complaint, but rather their parents should focus upon whether they are getting a good education at their own school. If the answer is “no”, then fix the problem rather than falsely claiming that it is attributable to “systemic racism.”
Preach it. It is wrong to hold the brighter/quicker students back. It is wrong to advance students beyond their ability so that they have little choice but to fail.
I typically agree with you, lawgrad, but on the first statement here, I do not. Public education is not a tutorial service (where it IS possible to cater to individuals at their level, etc.). There must be standards and set academic goals at each grade level, and if some students can’t meet those standards and goals, there have long been remedial courses available to help get them up to speed. If they still cannot meet them, there are (or at least were) paths they could take, such as those for the learning disabled. No, Virginia, not every student can be Einstein if only they had [fill in the blank].
This crazy idea that teachers can teach 30-35 students on an individual, catered basis is what got us into this mess by first dragging us down to “teaching to the middle” (and it was all downhill from there). Education has become such a touchy-feely mess, absorbed somehow by our side, that I really wonder if we can ever claw our way back.
What does “disproportinate number’ mean? If you take the standardized test score, did they accurtely predict the grade point averages of the students, that is did students with As have the high test scores while students who got D and F have lower test scores? If so,, there was no racial disparity and no “equity” issue.
You will find that educrats have little ability to calculate statistics nor have they the ability to derive meaning from them once another person does the calculation.
Two things come to mind. First, these SF educrats have pointed to European Socialism as their ideal governing system while conveniently ignoring the fact that most European countries have merit based secondary schools.
Second, this new SF system is racist, just as is the Ivy League, in that it is designed to exclude Asians.
Just outlaw D’s and F’s.
Problem solved.
In other SF news, the city is removing the title “chief” from previously described positions… in deference to Native Americans. How quaint as “chief” derives from French. Highest ranking Indians (I can say that!) in the French regions of North America were called “Sachem”. So in French the referred equivalent was “Chief”. If you watch “The Last of the Mohicans”, Hawkeye goes before the Huron leader referred to as “Sachem”. So, out of ignorance we see stupidity. We have to endure these idiots.
They will probably just “cure” this with grade inflation.
The school’s name should be changed to “Harrison Bergeron High School,” in honor of the Kurt Vonnegut story whose plot so presciently predicted all of this corrosive “equity” insanity being installed by Dumb-o-crats.
What is that great line from The Incredibles? Dash says “When everybody is special, nobody it.”