<p>I’ve heard that two weeks after joining in a top BS often mentioned on this forum, a faimily pulled their kid out because the school wouldn’t let the kid take the advanced classes he wanted and felt qualified to take. Putting the contraversy over whether the student is actually qualified to take those classes aside, it seems that with the budget cut that’s imposed in many schools there are more and more restrictions on what classes a student can take. Some popular classes are only available to seniors while most juniors do have fulfilled the prerequisites, and students’ attempt to move up or even move down in classes is encoutering more and more resistance from the school. The old “as long as there are 3 students registering there will be a class…” scenario is becoming a fantasy. Any experience or opinions to share?</p>
<p>I have not seen this problem at my son’s school (NMH). He has been allowed to freely change upwards/downwards and has done so on more than one occasion.</p>
<p>We haven’t encountered this problem, but our child is a freshman. I’d think such problems would be more likely to occur for older students?</p>
<p>My son was placed in honors calculus, but within the first week of the school year his advisor and the head of the math department consulted with him and us about moving to regular calculus. He’s a freshman and the school was concerned that, combined with his other demanding curricula, he would be overloaded with homework during the first year. We appreciate that the school was being so mindful and looking after his best interests. It was a collaborative decision. </p>
<p>During parents’ weekend we walked by several upper level classes that had a small number of kids, although none as few as 3. The freshman classes seemed to have 8 to 12 kids in each. Humanities class size was a bit larger, but there were 2 teachers, English and history.</p>
<p>One thing I am wondering about is if it’s common that some classes are marked to be open to seniors (or juniors and seniors) only instead of specifiying the actual prerequisites to be fulfilled. If you have fulfilled the prerequisites of the course, you want to take the class, and you can fit it in your schedule, how does your being a senior or a freshman matter?</p>
<p>It’s just good old seniority. There are not enough spots and the school knows it so there has to be some way to choose. Everyone will have their opportunity, but sometimes later than they want.</p>
<p>I think that freshman may have the prerequisites, but still may not be as qualified as a senior. I think this is true of social science, humanities, and English courses where three additional years of instruction in writing and analysis matter. The workload might be harder for a freshman just because they haven’t experienced it before. The exclusively senior courses I took had a different feel to them than my other courses. They required more independence than and time management than a freshman might have.</p>
<p>
But I still don’t get the “open to seniors only” classes. Many juniors have developed research abilities just as strong as seniors’. To exclude them just because they are a year lower is unreasonable. Isn’t “not enough spots” a good reason for opening another section of the class? Some people would argue that this is exactly the point of going to a private school, where you can take advanced courses “ahead of time” instead of waiting in the line no matter how ready you are, like in your old public school.</p>
<p>The problem is you can’t just open another section. You have to find someone to teach it. With the budget cuts that’s getting more and more difficult. Hiring someone to teach half full classes would have made sense before, but it doesn’t anymore. </p>
<p>I don’t think keeping juniors out is a good policy, but I don’t see anything wrong with upperclassmen only classes in certain subjects. It doesn’t make as much sense as it does with social sciences and humanities. I think most schools will accommodate a junior who has a good reason to get into a senior class. If the majority of advanced classes were senior only I think that would be a problem, but I’m fine if it’s only a few courses.</p>
<p>One concern I’ve had about students entering a school after 9th grade is, how do you satisfy prerequisites? A few years back, a friend had to debate with her son’s school the proper placement for a class. In the end, she was satisfied with his placement, but it can be tricky.</p>
<p>Benley, I think there is a good reason to carefully gauge a student’s readiness, and refuse acceleration when it isn’t warranted. Many (most?) of the top preps do not rank their students, to control students’s and parents’s anxiety about academics. Placing a child in an upper level course at a young age can be seen as an attempt to increase that child’s academic profile, at the expense of the others. Even if that isn’t what’s going on, it’s bound to increase the pressure from other students and parents, to allow them to access upper level courses.</p>
<p>I still believe it’s a school budget issue. Opening up more advanced classes means hiring more qualified teachers and those students coming out of an advanced class would seek other advanced classes or independent research opportunities with the faculty, which may ask for more hiring or workload increase of the current faculty. This is a fundamental issue of private education as to have that flexibility and opportunities not available in public schools is a major reason to many to attend boarding schools (some of them boast hundreds of course offerings) in the first place. That said, despite the story I overheard, I don’t see it’s an issue drawing widespread concern/criticism yet. If some day it is, then the value of a boarding school education would be and should be re-evaluated.</p>
<p>Looking back at the first post, the word “classes” (plural) stood out at me. </p>
<p>I could understand where there is a single section of AP xyz class that has 15 kids in it where adding a 16th kid would make the class size outside of the school parameters or require an additional section where yes, a budget issue could be argued.</p>
<p>However, when I see that the kid was denied several high level classes, this to me says that the school and parents saw the student’s academic level very differently. And many parents think that because Johnny got straight A+ grades at his wealthy suburban private day school, he is automatically entitled to the top classes at HADES or the like. WRONG. That just gets you in the door to the schoolhouse. The majority of kids at these schools can say the very same thing. Welcome to being average.</p>
<p>While the school may be wrong about this particular Johnny, they work with the application data sent to them about student achievement. And trust me, these applications have every possible good thing to say about every applicant. The schools have got to wade through this pile of credentials and decide which are the brightest of the bright and which are not. Most of the time they are right because they have plenty of experience doing just this.</p>
<p>Not buying it.</p>
<p>I admit this “particular Johnny” was a special case and the outcome was an even more rare extreme case. I used it to “lead into” the discussion. Now, what I am more interested in is whether you have noticed a change in policies and practice, e.g. many students trying to register in a class but the class cannot be offered? Students trying to be in a class but are told the class is full? A class that used to be open to students of lower grades are not any more? etc.</p>
<p>If a school has a problem not having enough sections of a class available to the students who are qualified to take it, generally it is not because of budget cuts, but that they did a poor job of planning their course catalog.</p>
<p>Generally, returning students are asked to submit their course request for the following year during the spring term with an advisor. Add in some new students in the grade (generally less than 10% of the class except for PG seniors at some schools). From this, a school knows that it needs to have X number of Geometry sections divided into Honors and Regular, Y number of Algebra 2, etc. based upon the numbers requesting that section. They have an average number of students per class they want to meet (for budgetary reasons on the minimum side and advertising reasons on the maximum side) as well as a cap on the maximum number of student in a section. Let’s say the target is a 12 average and 16 cap.</p>
<p>When you get 17 kids applying for lots of classes, it does present a problem, but not unfixable. What you do is find a class that everyone has to take (like health in some states) where you may have 120 kids take a term. You simply put 15 kids in each section and you’ve gone from using 10 teacher hours to using 8 teacher hours, freeing up 2 teacher hours to address those 17 kid classes.</p>
<p>So when a school gets in a bind where it cannot split those 17 kids into classes of 8 and 9, it is more likely that they have diversified the course catalog too much for the size of their student population without having enough “common” classes where they can boost the enrollment to offset the specialty classes.</p>
<p>When you go to college, you will find exactly the same problem. All those wonderful specialty courses you dream about taking when you read the course catalog, come at the expense of overcrowded sections of general ed requirments, frustrating you when can’t take the prereq because of overcrowding, thus denying you the opportunity to take the class you really want. And then professors complain when they have to cancel their prize class when there are enough enrolled.</p>
<p>Good info. Thanks!</p>