Lower grades trending during pandemic

Officials in area school districts say distance learning negatively impacted many students

Editor’s note: This story is part of the annual Mosaic Journalism Workshop for Bay Area high school students, a two-week intensive course in journalism. Students in the program report and photograph real stories under the guidance of professional journalists.

Rachel Fletcher, a rising senior at Homestead High School in Cupertino, used to be organized and on top of her work. Then she lost motivation to complete assignments due to distance learning during the pandemic.

“It was a struggle for me to get through some of my classes,” Fletcher said, adding that while she’s typically a straight A and B student, she uncharacteristically got a C in her math class.

Fletcher is not alone, as trends of overall poorer performance were seen in high schools across the country.

At Homestead, data presented to the school board in October showed an across-the-board increase in the number of D’s and F’s on the first progress report of the 2020-21 school year.

According to the nonprofit news site EdSource, the number of students at Sequoia Union High School District in San Mateo County receiving more than one failed grade increased by 9% from the fall of 2019 to the fall of 2020. At Mount Diablo Unified School District in Contra Costa

County, the percentage of students receiving more than one failed grade increased from 19% to 31% over the past two school years. In Los Angeles, the number of D’s and F’s in high school increased by 8.7% this fall over the previous one.

Even if a student didn’t fail, they may have seen their grade drop, as Fletcher did. Rising junior Esha Nag from Santa Clara