While many school districts across the state and country have seen a surge in failing grades, Portland Public Schools hasn’t, according to figures district officials provided to The Oregonian/OregonLive.
That appears to be primarily because Oregon’s largest district doesn’t give a failing grade to students who complete too little work to judge their performance in a course. It issues those students a grade of incomplete or, more typically, no grade at all.
Nearly 4% of the district’s approximately 12,700 high schoolers received an incomplete in the first quarter of the 2020-21 school year, Chief of Schools Shawn Bird said. Another 18% received at least one “no grade” for the term.
In terms of effect, earning no grade is largely akin to earning an F: If the course is required for graduation, the student must retake it or make up all essential missed work and earn a passing grade.
Nearly 3% of Portland Public Schools’ high schoolers earned an F in one or more classes in the first quarter of the 2020-21 academic year. All told, 1 in 4 high schoolers either failed a course or received a mark of incomplete or no grade in the first quarter of the year, which ended Nov. 5.
That’s a jump of about 5 percentage points over last year’s proportion of students in the same boat by the end of the first semester. Portland Public Schools spokesperson Karen Werstein said the district’s adjusted high school schedule for fall means students this year took a full semester’s worth of a class in one quarter, known as a four-by-four schedule.
Among students from historically underserved populations, which include Black, Indigenous and other students of color in addition to those who qualify for free and reduced lunch, the proportion of students who either failed or received no grade was higher: nearly 1 in 3.
Nearly 40% of Black high schoolers received an F or an incomplete in the first quarter of this year compared to 36% by the end of the first semester last year.
Among Latino students, the percentage rose to 41% from 36%.
By contrast, 15% of the district’s white high schoolers received an F or incomplete in the first quarter of this year compared to 12% by the end of the first semester last year.
Among Asian students, the percentage rose to 15% from 13%.
But a much smaller share of Portland Public Schools’ high schoolers failed than in other districts in the state and across the country. In early November, the Salem-Keizer district reported more than half of its high schoolers were on track to fail at least one class.
At McNary High School alone, about 38% of students were failing in late October compared to the 8% typically on that trajectory, Principal Erik Jespersen told The Washington Post.
Bird said this year’s share of Portland students failing at least one class is about what officials expect in a typical year and that both an incomplete and “no grade” are functionally the same in terms of “what happens next for students.”
“What this means is that our teachers overwhelmingly chose to give students who have not completed all of the required work chose to assign a NG mark instead of failing students in order to give them more time to complete their assignments,” he told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
District policy for incompletes is that students have until the end of the next academic year to make up the coursework. That means students who earned an incomplete or no grade this fall have until August 2022 to earn a letter grade.
As of Dec. 11, about 1,400 students had incompletes in one or more classes, 3,500 in all.
With some courses, such as English, a student can receive an incomplete or even a failing grade in the first part of the sequence and, if they pass the second class, make it up.
“If you’re in English 1 the first semester and you get a failing grade but then pass the second semester, that validates it,” Bird said.
The original non-passing or incomplete grade from the first class in the sequence becomes a passing grade that doesn’t affect the student’s grade point average.
Portland Public Schools ended the 2019-20 school year with about 4,000 incompletes. Students have until August 2021 to turn in outstanding work and receive a letter grade for those courses.
Since June, district officials have mounted efforts to help students with incompletes get back on track.
Portland Public Schools hired substitute teachers this fall to lead credit recovery classes that students can take on top of their normal class load.
Counselors and social workers have conducted socially distanced home visits to check on students who don’t engage in distance learning. Sometimes they might also tag along with a bus driver during meal drops to check in on families.
“There are triggers in the system,” Bird said. “If a student doesn’t log in for two or three days, we go looking for them.”
In October, Roosevelt High Principal KD Parman suggested offering on-site tech help for families who were having trouble with their district-issued Chromebooks or needed someone to walk them through the login process for Canvas or Google Classroom.
District officials greenlit Parman’s proposal. And when families visited the North Portland high school for technology troubleshooting, educators asked whether students engaged with their coursework and if they needed help in a given class.
“It started as a sort of tech help thing but evolved over time to meet other student needs,” Bird said.
He also said the district is fielding proposals from other principals, which may lead to similar services rolling out elsewhere in the district.
Portland Public Schools has also been offering in-person special education and kindergarten literacy assessments at Martin Luther King Jr. and Pioneer schools.
--Eder Campuzano | 503-221-4344 | @edercampuzano | Eder on Facebook
Eder is The Oregonian’s education reporter. Do you have a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email ecampuzano@oregonian.com.
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