The graduation rate in Des Moines Public Schools has gone from 72.68 percent to 81.16 percent between 2011- 2016. Although this may seem that students are improving this is very misleading. The graduation rate is improving but kids learning is not improving

. Students have not become more dedicated to school over the years the standards have just dropped. Years ago the district actually held kids accountable for their school work, now the district requires students to do the bare minimum to graduate.

SRG is not the problem in DMPS schools, the actual problem is that the schools do not hold kids accountable for their school work. If a kid stops going to class or fails a class the teacher gets in trouble just because they didn’t “do enough”. High Schoolers are old enough to know they need to go to class. Maybe if they had consequences they might start going to class regularly.    

If kids don’t pass a class within the semester the school places them in a credit recovery class to get the credit in a couple of weeks. This is not fair to all the students who go to class everyday and work hard all semester.

“I think it is so unfair that some of us actually try hard to get good grades and we go to class everyday for teachers just to give free A’s to people who do  not deserve it and their work is actual trash,” junior Cinthia Amaro said.

In a majority of my classes there are kids who come in half way through the class almost everyday and they stil

l are able to pass. Some kids don’t even show up to class on most days and miss multiple tests and still pass.

This is one of the main reasons why teachers are so stressed during the last week of the semester. During the last week of the semester all the students who barely showed up to class come in and make up a semester worth of work in a couple days. And the teachers have to accept this because there are no deadlines with SRG.

Students from other school districts transfer to metro high schools because they know it’s easy to pass a class with an A. To pass a class all students have to do is show up and be able to breathe. It’s harder to fail a class because you actually have to try to fail.With SRG students have no deadlines and can retake a test as many times as they want. This does not help students prepare for college.

Transfer students usually realize that they already learned everything that we are learning in class. It’s basically just a review for them, other districts learn what Des Moines Public Schools students learn in a whole school year within a semester. Stude

nts should have the same opportunities as other students in the surrounding districts. If a metro student were to transfer to a different school district they would suffer and have a hard time adjusting.

“I think if I were to transfer it would really push me. The courses at their school seems a lot more challenging than ours. Not saying DMPS has terrible courses, but I do think that it is easier to get decent grades on top of SRG,” junior Daren Nguyen said.

DMPS students should be learning the same amount of content as other school districts.

The district loves to say that they are preparing their students for college and life after high school but  in reality they really aren’t.

“High school definitely do

es not prepare us for college and even some teachers think that, too. I’m probably going to fail my first semester in college because I won’t be able to handle things because I was never taught what it would be like,” Amaro said.

The only way students can actually prepare themselves f

or college is by taking as many AP classes as they can. Students who don’t take AP classes in high school will have a hard time going from no homework to mountains of homework.

This should not be acceptable and the district needs to start holding students accountable and stop blaming teachers for students failure. Teachers provide students the resources they need to be successful in their class its not their fault, it’s the student’s. The district needs to go back to the old ways and have deadlines for work and drop students after missing a certain amount of classes. This will stop students from skipping class just because they feel like it.