by KYW's Dr. Marciene Mattleman
More kids fail 9th grade than any other year, discipline and absentee rates are high and the dropout rate soars between 9th and 10th grade.
So, after 20 years of teaching the smartest kids at South Grand Prairie High School, when Billie Donegan’s principal asked that he switch to “regular freshmen,” he tried to get out of it. But she insisted.
Donegan reports in an interesting article in Educational Leadership that the switch changed his life. In his words, “If you want to reshape high school, start by changing 9th grade.”
Donegan brings to light that the best teachers get the best assignments (he was one of them) and new teachers, those least experienced, teach 9th grade.
He suggests analyzing data that might indicate a relationship between class size and student failure, that freshmen be permitted to defer a required course and take something they’d enjoy and that interdisciplinary teams teach small groups of 9th graders.
With so many kids not completing high school, these suggestions seem worthy of careful consideration.
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