The difference between junior high and high school may be greater than you realize. Sure, the homework increases dramatically as you transition from middle school to high school but the way the curriculum is set up is much different as well.

In high school, when a student fails out of a class there are two options, that student can join a class of underclassmen and completely retake it or move on to the next year’s curriculum and simultaneously retake the previous class on a software called Edgenuity. Whichever option is taken, the importance of each student understanding the material is enforced in high school. So it is surprising that junior high does not provide or enforce these helpful options.

Regardless of whether the student passed that class or not, they will move onto the next grade. Therefore, many students are unprepared to come to the high school which causes those whose grades were not great to struggle with the higher level material. If a student can retain 80 percent of the information taught to them, they are considered to have “mastered” the subject. This is not the case for many students and even without understanding some material taught to them, the students graduate that year of school. Since the pace and intensity increases throughout high school, it is crucial that all students are prepared for the subjects that are to come. This ideology is applied at the high school, so it would be beneficial to do the same in the preceding grades.