A record number of freshman students at San Francisco’s elite Lowell High School earned D and F grades this past fall – the first semester after the school board eliminated merit-based admissions that were deemed “racist” by former SF Board of Education Commissioner, Alison Collins – who was ousted along with two other school board members in a February recall over the admissions debate and other issues – including a series of 2016 tweets by Collins targeting Asian Americans.
Of the 620 freshman students at Lowell, 24.4% received at least one D or F during the fall semester, which compared with just 7.9% of first-year students in fall 2020 and 7.7% in fall 2019, according to internal SF Unified School District figures obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle. Overall, the number of 9th graders at Lowell with a D or F tripled from 51 in 2020 to 152 in 2021 – bringing the figures closer to those at other high schools in the city.
