Irvington High School will no longer offer contracts starting this school year. Instead, students receiving a 60%-69.99% grade will receive a D on their transcript.
Contracts were a requirement in previous years for students with any D grade. They used to be additional assignments arranged between a teacher and a student. If the contract was completed, students could change their grades to a C-. However, if incomplete, students would receive an incomplete grade without credit.
The removal of contracts was enacted through a mutual agreement by faculty and administration last year, upturning nearly 30 years of precedent. Irvington High School enacted contracts in the 90s to help underserved students get on the graduation track. Students could attend Fremont Adult School and make up the credits during the school year. Irvington High School principal Hicks said, “There were originally different avenues for students to make up for different deficiencies, but as funding and other things dried up, contracts no longer served their intended purpose.”
Nowadays, instead of going to Fremont Adult School during the evening to make up a class, teachers give students under contract additional work. For some teachers, it may just include making up a few tests, but for others, contracts may be busy work. In any case, the additional workload throughout the school year causes additional stress. According to Ms. Chung, “some of her students with a contract during the first semester just disappeared for a few months” instead of completing the contract.
This is not an isolated incident. According to Mr. Hicks, Irvington had “450 individual classes that required contracts for the 2021-2022 school year. However, over 60% of those courses had incomplete contracts by the end of the year.” While those students could have received credit for the course with a D grade, their failure to complete the contracts caused them to receive an incomplete grade and no credit. Students then had to take summer school or APEX Learning, an online learning platform where students can retake courses, to retrieve their grades.
The benefit of receiving a D is receiving credit for the course. Receiving credit would help students get on track to graduate without taking summer school or Fremont Adult School after graduation. However, students looking to continue to a 4-year university must still take summer school to receive a C, as UCs and CSUs both do not accept Ds.
Additionally, teachers’ workload is significantly lessened as they do not have to create new material for students to make up their grades. Counselors also don’t have to track down students and teachers to remind them to complete contracts or change grades.
Overall, counselor Ms. Mintey hopes “[the removal of contracts] will push students to shoot towards a C” during the school year. In any way, removing contracts aligns Irvington with the rest of the Fremont Unified School District, helping students get back on track for graduation. It’s only a matter of whether or not Irvington students are motivated enough to work further.
