Diane Ravich Failing The Wrong Grades Summary

The public high school system is a faulty system that alone is responsible for the failing students who attend, this accusation is flawed in several ways. High schools have to deal with substance abuse, depression, and fights among some of its students which sometimes leads to students’ scores dropping and the blame further being placed on the high school system alone. This blame is wrongly placed given that, a clear majority of the problems causing performance in high schools to drop can be found in the grades leading up to high school. These lower grades which are meant to build a foundation for everything the kids will come to learn as they progress, are also responsible for failing to offer a quality education. High schools already have

a lot to deal with and when they receive ill prepared students it does not make their jobs any easier.
After reading Diane Ravitch’s article “Failing the Wrong Grades” it is evident that she is discussing the issue with the misplaced criticism that high schools receive for the vast number of failing students and dropouts.

She explains that there are many people who want to issue reforms for the American public high school system because these next generations are the ones who will one day run the country and they need to be well prepared to so that. She gives a variety of reasons as to why the incoming high school students are usually ill-prepared academically and lack the motivation to strive for success during their high school careers. Of course, though, Ravitch concedes her argument by acknowledging some of the faults that the high schools themselves have and then goes on to state some of the ways that high schools are very beneficial to their students. Overall, she wants people to realize that while the high school system is not perfect it is not the only reason that all these kids are preforming so

poorly.
Over the past decades American’s academic performance has tended to fall way behind that of some of the other countries in the world. Due to this many feel it is imperative that our current generations begin working harder to bring us back to the high-performance standards we once held globally. This of course will be difficult, since the students that are entering high schools today are not being fully prepared in lower grades for what they will be expected to know in high school. According to Diane Ravitch, in her article Failing the Wrong Grades most of the time, “when American students arrive as freshmen, nearly 70 percent are reading below grade level” (Paragraph 5). Students enter high school expected to be able to comprehend everything that they will be taught, but if in middle school for example: the necessary reading skills were not mastered, comprehension levels fell below grade level expectations leaving students at an academic disadvantage. In turn, high schools get the blame for student’s poor performance. High school’s teachers can only do so much to help disadvantaged students and properly teach the curriculum at hand.
Many American parents nowadays do not stress the importance of academic education. This lack of concern that some parents demonstrate for their child’s education does not go on to help with the low-performances high schools receive from some of their students. If these kids all lives never had anyone express to them the major effects that the choices they choose to make during their school careers can have on them in the future, then why would those kids bother caring about how they do? In Ravitch’s article she states it bluntly saying, “Sorry to say, we have a long history of reforms by pedagogues to de-emphasize academic achievement and make schools more ‘relevant’, ‘fun’ and like ‘real life’ ”(Paragraph 8). Many people complain that schools do not offer a ‘real’ enough experience, that real life is not as easy as school would make it seem. For instance, most of the time in day to day life people are not rewarded for all the great things they do, so why should they be at school. The whole idea is to prepare the students for real life, but it would much more beneficial for the students if the teachers would congratulate them for their achievements especially in academics. This praise for their achievements would go a long way towards re-enforcing the importance of education and really motivating students to do their best, even if they are doing it for reward alone. By having the students be motivated in this way, they would learn the rewards of hard work, which is an important life skill, because it would teach them that if they put in the effort then in some way they would be rewarded for it. If high schools do not receive the support of parents who are willing to stress their child’s education to them, then how can high schools be expected to send out a quality future workforce.
High schools are faced with so much criticism for the failing of students, but in reality there are many reasons as to why those kids are failing. One such being that when the kids are in lower grades their teachers are less qualified to be teaching them. In Ravitch’s article “Failing the Wrong Grades”, she points out that “ in the lower grades, most teachers are likely to have majored in education, not mathematics or science or history; some even have both a major and minor in pedagogy, yet end up teaching core academic subjects” (Paragraph 9). With the way the school systems are structured the lower grades are meant for kids to learn the basic fundamentals of the subjects, and then build off them as they progress through the grades. On the other hand, if the teachers are in capable of delivering and teaching the information in those lower grades adequately, then the kids have a weaker understanding of those core fundamental skills needed to progress. When these kids reach high school, they begin to struggle and can even become frustrated to the point where they want to give up because everything is harder, and they do not have the motivation to try to better themselves academically. Altogether this does not help high school because these frustrated kids either fail or dropout because they were never motivated and the education system failed to provide them with a quality instructor.
The current school system is full of loop holes that allow instructors to pass kids even if the student should not be moving on.

This practice of just promoting kids to higher grades when they truly are not prepared to move on is despicable, because it only hurts the student. Diane Ravitch in her article defines it as “social promotion – the endemic practice of moving students up to the next grade whether they have earned it or not—” (Paragraph 7). The kids that have been treated this way reach high school extremely ill- prepared and disadvantaged academically to their peers. This leads to students struggling and is one of the main reasons kid’s dropout of high school. These poor kids treated like packages on a conveyer belt are so far behind their peers that they truly struggle to keep up, and the teachers can only do so much to help them. It only becomes harder for the teachers if these kids do go to them and ask for help or special tutoring. High schools cannot be expected to have low drop out percentages if this is how the system feels towards

kids.
The future workforce that will be one day produced by the public-school system needs to be well educated and motivated to improve society. If those who are worried about the country’s education just focus on fixing high schools, they will never truly fix the system and everything will likely stay the same. The people wanting to issue reforms to high school should also be looking at all the other grades, because lots of the problems high schools face stem from the lower grades. It is important to fix the public education system because the people being produced from it are one day going to be responsible for running the country.