The Transition to High School: Why Are Today's Freshmen Struggling?
McClain 1
11 October 2013
The Transition to High School: Why Are Today 's Freshmen Struggling? It 's the rock bottom of a student 's educational career: The day a student drops out of high school. From there, the world may seem to go down in a spiral. Today, 16% of dropouts are unemployed and 32% live below the poverty line. Dropouts with jobs earn an average of only $12.75 per hour (Messacar 55). Students who do graduate from high school have an unemployment rate of only 7.6% (Bureau of Labor Statistics). While the graduation rate may be improving, there are still some out there who find it hard to adjust to the high school atmosphere after leaving their cozy little middle school. Sometimes, middle school poorly prepares their students for life in high school. Some students grow very stressed during their freshman year in high school which leads to a lower GPA. Freshman year is seen as the "make or break" year because the freshmen who fail their first year of high school will most likely drop out of high school altogether. To help these students, we can use solutions such as freshman academies, an interdisciplinary curriculum, and communication, which are a few yet effective solutions to ease a student 's transition to high school. Freshman academies are a part of the high school that incorporates only freshman and gives them a more comfortable setting where they can use their freshman year as time to adjust
McClain 2 to high school. Usually, this selects a part of the school for freshman use exclusively, or some go the extra mile to construct an actual freshman academy building. The students receive a teacher to teach their core classes throughout the entire year so they can grow more used to one group of teachers rather than have a new teacher every semester. The reason this solution is so helpful is because it improves the students ' attendance rate (which is another large reason why students start to drop out) and it improves their GPA by a
11 October 2013
The Transition to High School: Why Are Today 's Freshmen Struggling? It 's the rock bottom of a student 's educational career: The day a student drops out of high school. From there, the world may seem to go down in a spiral. Today, 16% of dropouts are unemployed and 32% live below the poverty line. Dropouts with jobs earn an average of only $12.75 per hour (Messacar 55). Students who do graduate from high school have an unemployment rate of only 7.6% (Bureau of Labor Statistics). While the graduation rate may be improving, there are still some out there who find it hard to adjust to the high school atmosphere after leaving their cozy little middle school. Sometimes, middle school poorly prepares their students for life in high school. Some students grow very stressed during their freshman year in high school which leads to a lower GPA. Freshman year is seen as the "make or break" year because the freshmen who fail their first year of high school will most likely drop out of high school altogether. To help these students, we can use solutions such as freshman academies, an interdisciplinary curriculum, and communication, which are a few yet effective solutions to ease a student 's transition to high school. Freshman academies are a part of the high school that incorporates only freshman and gives them a more comfortable setting where they can use their freshman year as time to adjust
McClain 2 to high school. Usually, this selects a part of the school for freshman use exclusively, or some go the extra mile to construct an actual freshman academy building. The students receive a teacher to teach their core classes throughout the entire year so they can grow more used to one group of teachers rather than have a new teacher every semester. The reason this solution is so helpful is because it improves the students ' attendance rate (which is another large reason why students start to drop out) and it improves their GPA by a
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