Every year, a new group of freshman becomes a part of the high school world- well, some ninth graders anyways. Some moved on to their local grades nine through twelve high schools like most counties have their kids do, but in some places it’s different. For some kids, it is not a high school environment, it’s a ninth grade one- only ninth graders. As of the 2005-2006 school years, there were one hundred and eighty-five ninth grade only schools in the United States. These schools have helped dropout rates around the country. A great idea would be for Wayne County School to adopt this. It could help their dropout rates and keep the main high school from being overcrowded, but it would still allow ninth graders to participate in extracurricular activities at the high school.
Around the county, older kids bullying freshman can be a problem. Any given person could walk through Wayne High School and see a situation that could be considered bullying and separating the freshman could fix this problem! It’s critical for ninth grade students to form and develop without the intimidation and sometimes an influence from older tenth, eleventh, and twelfth graders. Kids may want to “fit in” and “be cool” to get older kids to like them, so they try and do bad things that may influence dropping out. Not always, but sometimes “seniority” can enforce dominance and pressure kids to make decisions that can change the person they become. If kids are not faced with bullying that first important year of high school, it can make the transition to the main high school easier. Hopefully, if Wayne Board of Education could make a separate building for freshman it could reduce the effects of bullying, pressure, dominance, and have students would have less of a bad influence.
Also a problem freshman kids complain about is some teachers’ lack of student to teacher communication. There are a lot more freshman than there are teachers and some kids need more than just a few seconds of explaining to grasp the subject. At a ninth-grade-only school, students would get the individual attention they needed because teachers would only be dealing with their freshman classes. If someone doesn’t get the basics right, it’s going to be a lot harder to grasp the class that follows the basic one in their tenth grade year and so on. If Wayne County adapted this, it could help students from becoming frustrated and wanting to just quit school, which could possibly lower the dropout rate.
Dropouts are a main concern across the United States; that includes Wayne County. According to www.localschooldirectory.com, as of 2008, Wayne County, West Virginia had a 5.2 percent dropout rate compared to the national average of 4.4 percent in 2007. It is unknown of how it has either improved or gotten worse sense then, but having a .7 different in percentage is
