Putting the 'F' in 'Freshman'
By Emily Alpert/Voice of San Diego
Friends told Jessica Valencia that grades didn't matter during freshman year. So she messed around at La Jolla High, racking up a report card of Ds and Fs. She didn't realize how bad it was until later. "You're on your own," said Valencia, now a junior at an alternative school called Twain. There is plenty of school lore about senioritis, but freshmen are actually much more likely to get bad grades than other high schoolers, leaving them scrambling to catch up just a year into high school. Eleven percent of San Diego Unified freshmen got a D average or less, which means they likely failed at least one class, according to a voiceofsandiego.org analysis of school district data. Half as many sophomores and only a sliver of juniors were in the same boat. (more...)