No mercy? Poor grades during COVID-19 could kick students out of KC’s Lincoln Prep
Lincoln College Preparatory Academy, Kansas City’s preeminent district school, is threatening to kick out about 100 students who failed to meet the academic threshold to stay there.
That’s pretty harsh, given that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, students haven’t actually been in classrooms since March 2020. Until this week, students were learning remotely from home.
Education experts here and across the country have said that trying to learn while sitting in front of a computer in your bedroom just doesn’t work for some students. And for a lot of young people, home environments, internet access and emotional health have been barriers to doing their best work.
Of course students fell behind — wasn’t that expected?
While nationwide data is not yet available, some local news reports on how students performed during the pandemic paint a gloomy picture. Michigan educators said they saw twice the number of failing grades in the fall of 2020 compared to 2019. Austin, Texas reported a 70%increase in the number of failing students.
Lincoln Principal Kristian Foster said that in her four years at the school, this is the most kids she’s ever had with grade point averages below the 2.5 needed to stay at Lincoln. In a normal year, 30 or 40 students may start the second semester in academic trouble, but by the end of the year, at least half have recovered.
Kansas City Public School officials are not oblivious to problems COVID-19 presented for students.
“We certainly realize that remote, online learning is not the best format of instruction for every student,” said Lloyd Jackson, assistant superintendent of school leadership. Last year, no student, regardless of grades, was put on academic probation, he said. But going into this school year parents and students were told, “We are going to do school like school,” and there would be expectations and accountability.
All the same, Superintendent Mark Bedell told The Star in November said he was 100% certain that school closures and extended online-only classes could put the trajectory of some students’ futures into a nosedive.
Didn’t teachers know before now that their students weren’t cutting it as they Zoomed in? Jackson says they should have and they also should have been reaching out to students and parents letting them know and offering ways to help. “If a student is not seeing success that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone,” Jackson said.
And even if it is the student’s fault for not showing up and doing the work even after they’ve learned their grades have dropped, “where’s the grace for these kids?” one parent asked.
Because she didn’t want to embarrass her 16-year-old son who missed the 2.5 threshold, she asked not to be named. She’s doubtful her son will be able to make up the work necessary to save himself from being kicked out of Lincoln.
She said her son, a sophomore, tried working remotely, and she pushed him as much as she could, given that she had to work. But “I think he just got so tired of looking at a screen,” she said. “I think that he is so intimidated now that he doesn’t even try any more. He is being brushed off.” She hasn’t told her son yet that “he is going to be let go from Lincoln because he didn’t make the cut. It’s frustrating.”
Pandemic made for unusual learning challenges
We get that Lincoln’s reputation for turning out high performing students may be at stake and that putting students who don’t maintain the 2.5 or better on academic probation is normal practice, but this has not been an ordinary year.
Is it fair to expect students to perform as well as they might have ordinarily? And giving students only a few months to make up a year’s worth of lost education just doesn’t seem fair, either.
Instead of penalizing all low performing students, it seems wiser for the school to judge students on a case-by-case basis. Talk to the child and parents to find out what problems they might have had during the pandemic that kept the student from either connecting to class online or keeping up with lessons.
School officials said they offered grace last year when they admitted students in the fall who had the necessary grade point average and behavior records without asking them to test into the school, which is how students are normally admitted to Lincoln.
And they said the school is hiring additional counselors this spring to work with students who are struggling. The goal is to help these students make up the work they’ve missed, catch up grade-wise and stay on track to graduate on time.
Yet if that doesn’t work, “They will be asked to leave Lincoln,” said Kelly Wachel, district spokeswoman. “It’s tough but this is a signature school.” She said students and parents were aware of the expectations for Lincoln students when they enrolled.
Were they also aware that this would be a year like no other? Of course not.
The punishment for not making the grade at Lincoln is students have to go to some other district school, or perhaps transfer to a charter school — if they can get in, because the best ones have wait lists. Going to another district high school should not mean students have to compromise their education. But it does.
Even though Jackson said that this 2.5-GPA-or-go policy has more to do with student success than school reputation, there’s no denying that those low grade averages could bring down the school’s overall performance numbers. Basically, it would make Lincoln look bad. Lincoln, which for years has ranked among the best high schools in the region — fourth best in Missouri last year.
Yes, you have to hold up the standards and you don’t want students to get too far behind, but under the circumstances, isn’t clemency warranted? COVID-19 has knocked us all for a loop.