Olivia Sanchez
The Hechinger Report
- Many students whose last years of high school were disrupted by the pandemic are struggling in crucial college courses.
- One math major says she found out her grandfather died of COVID while taking her 12th grade math class over Zoom.
- Pandemic rules that allowed students to take courses pass-fail meant many students “passed” without knowing material.
- A leading math professor says he doesn’t remind students they failed. He tells them they will figure this out, and they will be leaders.
Andrea Hernandez studied the multiplication table nearly every day during the summer between her third and fourth grade years. Sitting at her family’s kitchen table in Dallas, she printed the arithmetic over and over in a yellow, spiral-bound notebook.
When she started at a new school that fall, she breezed through the timed math tests. From then until the coronavirus hit, when she was a 16-year-old precalculus student, Hernandez shined in the classroom.
