Ninth Grade Flaws

Public school is one of the primary sources of education for many children in the United States, therefore it should be the school 's sole purpose to teach them the essential elements they need to succeed in life. This means more than teaching math, science, history, and English. A school, primarily high school, must provide courses that focus on a student 's future career plans, courses that challenge a student academically, and courses that help a student navigate their life as adults. Without classes that help students expand and delve into their future career choices, they can limit their views of success. An excellent example of this can be found in Jonathan Kozol 's Still Separate, Still Unequal, particularly in his interviews with the students of Fremont High School in Los Angeles.

“It is my belief that all young people have the ability to achieve at high levels, and it is our responsibility to ensure that they do… This includes having high expectations for students to succeed academically, socially, in their college and career pursuits, and in life” –Antwan Wilson Superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District Community To Be Served For every seven students that earn a diploma from the Oakland Unified School District, three of their peers will never make it to graduation day. In a school district that educates more than 37,000 students, a graduation rate of 67% means that more than 12,000 will drop out before graduating from high school. A disproportionate number of these students are minorities and students

In this text Jonathan Kozol went to a school that is really not a school because of what they do to there students just to get them to graduate. The students that Jonathan interviews tell him what they go through everyday just to graduate. They explain to him that the school system really doesn’t care about these students not even the teachers, if the teachers where ever there to see these students. Some students wanted to take AP classes so that they have an idea of what college will be like but never get in the class because “it fills up”. Even if these students entered these classes they had a probability that they wouldn’t have a teacher for that course.

By placing heavy weight instead on middle school grades, state assessment results, and attendance, Townsend Harris feels it ends up with students who have demonstrated the capacity to be serious and successful, not just good test takers. All students are required to be in the 90th percentile or above on math and reading standardized tests as well as have a minimum grade point average of 90 in June of 7th grade when being considered for a 9th grade seat. There is no entrance exam, written assessment or formal interview, and while nearly 5000 students apply to THHS each year, 250 seats are available. Students must place THHS as their first choice of high schools, showing ambition and dedication to becoming an “aggressive”

Why give more money to something that is going to be wasted if fifty percent of the freshman class will drop out and only half will see graduation? For most of the schools Kozol visited, the dropout rate ranged from seventy-six to eighty-one percent. Poor performance was also seen as a deterrent (58). Funding was not available to establish pre-K programs to help prepare students for the classroom. As a result, almost all the high school graduates in the lower end schools read at sixth and eighth grade levels.

Every year, over 1.2 million students drop out of high school in the United States - one student every 26 seconds. Florida’s graduation rate has increased since 2012, but still only 78% of students are graduating. Sadly, less than 70% of Polk County 9th graders, enrolled in 2014-2015, are expected to go on to graduate from high school. A recent report from the Alliance for Excellent Education indicates five specific goals for improving education in Florida and across the nation.

In Alfie Kohn’s essay, the argument of grade expectations being too overvalued rests on a chain of assumptions, but can be argued. Alfie Kohn’s essay portrays that he wants students to find a variety of different purposes in school, and questions the idea of grades being too centralized. In detail, Alfie Kohn explains how students go to school not for the right reasons, but for the wrong reasons instead. For example, the author writes, “They’d scan the catalogue for college courses that promised easy A’s, sign up for new extracurricular-activities to round out their resumes, and react with gratitude when a professor told them exactly what they would have to know for the exam so they could ignore everything else” (para. 8).

In Kurt Wiesenfeld’s article “Making the Grade”, he address the issue that students want a higher grade than they deserve. He goes on to prove this be by giving examples of previous students that he has had and what can happen when students get the grades that they want and not what they deserve. In Wiesenfeld’s article he states that about ten percent of students that take his class do not care about their grades until final grades are over. “You might groan and moan, but you accepted it as the outcome of your efforts or lack thereof,” Wiesenfeld stated.

Whereas, women/girls must continue after graduating from high school, because most likely they will not only have to provide for themselves, but also their families. Consequently, Joel Wendland says the outcome of this predicament is “the outcome is that boys have a negative educational experience.” So, even though boys struggle to get the attention needed in high school, in some cases a high school diploma can get them further than a

So all in all, in the process of trying to achieve high grades, student neglect relationships, moralities, and happiness. In essence, the notion that high grades lead to a successful life compels students to primarily focus on grades and sacrifice sleep, family, religious beliefs, and other necessities to

For example “a student who failed a Chinese dictation exam leaped to his death from his high-rise apartment. He was seven” and that there was a “114 percent spike in suicide rates among fifteen-to-nineteen-year-olds between 1980 and 2002.” This powerful story about the seven year old shows that stress in school is appearing earlier and even young kids are pressured to be their best. The competiveness of school at an early age, therefore gives students an overachiever mentality during childhood which prohibits failing of any kind. Robbins uses the statistic of the 114% spike in order to convey that high school is getting harder and students are under more stress and they cannot handle this pressure.

English 6 CRT persuasive essay It is compelling to say that all high school students should be required to pass an exit exam like the other 24 states that require it but I will be telling you why that is not the best thing to do for the schools and the students. Graduation tests do not promote the knowledge, skills and habits needed for success in college or the real world. According to college professors and employers, high school graduates must be able to analyze conflicting explanations, support arguments with evidence, solve complex problems that have no obvious answer, reach conclusions, conduct research, and engage in the give-and-take of ideas.

You are failing a class in school. Were you not prepared for the quiz? Did your parents not help you? Or do you have an awful teacher? Whose fault is it if a student is failing a few classes in school; the parent, the teacher, or the student?

Have you ever wondered how grades actually do help students throughout their career in school? Yes, many do believe grades do not help, can cause stress to students overall making them perform at a lesser level and sometimes some believe that school isn’t even needed at all in a child’s life. Grades can affect a student’s learning and constant low grades can bring them down and their mindset of just being a below average student. However, grades do help students by showing the student’s progress in school whether they are doing good or bad and grades give a goal to get a better grade by trying harder to get that grade a student wants. First, grades show progress to everyone besides just the student.

(Co) In fact, it is also correct that grades have negative effects on students’ mental condition. Illnesses such as depression, cancer, etc, have a cause on the outcome of students’ grades due to absences. (Horton) If sickness is the cause of low grades, grades are inaccurate to measure their ability to learn. Grades can dramatically drop because 26% of Americans, 14 years old and older, experience mental disabilities such as anxiety and major depression (Ramirez).