Some children are born into different families than others which can end up deciding if you are a honor roll student or a “Un-teachable” child, what this means is some kids are born into families who have a lot of gang relations in their family so there pretty much set up for failure while some families come from nicer neighborhood where they are expected to excel and try their best in school to achieve the best possible education and it doesn't help when school admins and teachers are putting them down because they're supposed to fail as if it is their job to fail so the school is pretty much a babysitter.
Children who are set up to fail and are discouraged are usually the ones who are born into families with very strong gang relations; Eva, in Freedom Writers, is a perfect example of this. She shows us that kids raised in gangs are usually treated differently and the school doesn't try to work with them to help them learn and when they don't it usually discourages the kids and makes them think school is unimportant and they are unimportant to the school.
The children who usually succeed in school are the ones born into a fair family and they usually succeed because they are treated as if they can succeed if they try unlike some of the other kids who are discouraged they are encouraged to try and pass and the school works with them to help them pass and graduate.
Discouragement relates to freedom writers because in the movie it shows that the kids from nicer neighborhoods and non gang related children are all in honors while the rest of the “unteachable” kids are put into a class where they don't have to do anything and when a teacher argues that they can be teached they just need something that relates them to school and interests them but some of the higher school board members think it's completely dumb to try to