My daughter is a rising junior and hasn’t been very happy in high school. It’s really not the school’s fault, just the nature of things. I decided this summer that a good solution would be for my daughter to take three classes through dual enrollment and two classes at the high school.
I quickly found out that was a no-go. I was told that Juniors are required to take a minimum of five classes at the high school and seven in total, no exceptions. Since a college class is equal to two high school classes, students who dual enroll are taking the equivalent of nine classes, not to mention the commuting time. Is this a normal rule, and if so, why do schools feel the need to have complete and total control over the lives of the students? Are all high schools like this?
I think we may just pull my daughter out of school and enroll her in an online high school, where she will take the remainder of her classes through dual enrollment (so none online). She only needs five classes to graduate. Of course, if she qualifies as a NMSF this fall and then graduates a year early, that will cause another set of problems.
I just don’t understand the school’s need to exercise control over the students. (They quit letting parents take lunches to their students a couple of years ago, which is control-freakish as heck). I am the parent, and I certainly know what is best for my child. If I have a child who is able to take mostly college classes, the school administration should be thrilled. Instead they see this as a terrible threat that must be tamped down. Vent, vent.
Sure, why not just do dual enrollment if she is ready to move on from that school? In some states, you can attend a university for the entire school day.
But were you really delivering your student’s lunch to school?
There may be school funding formulae or other rules applicable in your state or local area which make it disadvantageous for the high school to allow students to take lots of college courses while in high school.
Yes, in many cases where college and high school courses cover similar material, the college course covers material twice as fast. For example, year long AP courses like calculus AB, statistics, psychology, chemistry, etc. may cover material that is ordinarily covered in a one semester college course.
Because the school (school district, state) is the one issuing the diploma and they can set the rules. I don’t think it is unusual to have a minimum number of courses required on campus, or to limit the number of courses taken in dual enrollment. Our school didn’t have, or allow, studyhalls. The students had to find something to do, somewhere to be for every period.
We weren’t allowed to take our children lunches (especially fast food) in grade school. The school didn’t want 400 parents a day bringing lunches to students who forgot theirs, and didn’t want fast food brought at all (or soda, or a few other things that were banned). Why is this controlling your kids? Adults don’t belong at school. I don’t particularly want adults who haven’t been vetted hanging around the high school.
The “I know what is best” is an empty argument. What if you know that it is best your child have aspirin or another drug in her backpack and that’s against the rules? Of if you think her wearing a crop top is cute and good for her ego, should the school allow that? What if you think she doesn’t need to take PE or chemistry or a foreign language but it is required? Should she get excused? You do have a choice to send her to that public school, but once you decide to do that you give up some of your control, so of the ‘I know what is right for my child’ decisions.
My sister is a teacher and last year a parent decided to homeschool her child for just math (4th grade). She’d come and get him every day at 3. The teachers couldn’t switch math time around, and the mother had a fit if her child was excluded from anything (a class party, a birthday) because she’d picked him up and then something fun happened at the end of the day. Really, why couldn’t the mother just home school him after school let out?
It would never in a million years have occurred to me to bring my child a lunch at school. They carry a lunch box. Seems like a waste of time to deliver it later in the day and my kids would be mortified if I showed up at lunch every day while they were with their friends. And can’t you see this would be a security issue at the school if many parents took it into their heads that a high school age kid needs a lunch hand delivered? I wouldn’t want adults streaming into the school at lunch time. We have enough lock downs, evacuations, weapons threats, bomb threats, etc as it is. There were certainly no parents visiting the hs cafeteria in my own school either.
Our high school doesn’t give credit for classes taken off site or from other online providers. So there are only a few dual enrollment classes for which students can earn credit. I don’t know whether juniors are allowed to take classes off campus. I had to sign special paperwork to get my senior permission to be off campus for 2 periods. I had the impression at the time that this was the most allowable. Your school’s rules are generous.
@mathyone @twoinanddone It was a longstanding practice for parents to take their children lunch. They would put the child’s name on the sacks and they would be placed on a large multi-media type stand (the kind that has three shelves). I certainly didn’t take my kids something every day, but it was nice to be able to from time to time, and parents would take turns taking kids pizza. It wasn’t a security issue since they were left at the entrance to the school. Kids just enjoy a good, high quality hamburger, chicken sandwich, taco, or whatever for lunch, which our school doesn’t provide.
@ucbalumnus It’s not a funding issue, since by state law the school gets the money if a student is dual enrolled, based on the Carnegie units. So three dual enrollment classes would equal six high school classes. I might add that the state law says that students are supposed to be allowed to take as many dual enrollment classes as they wish, but our school district has never been very interested in obeying the law.
Regarding the NMSF, didn’t she have to declare a graduation date at the time she took the PSAT? I don’t believe this can be changed retroactively if she gets a qualifying score as a sophomore.
Yes, looking at their info, she had to declare her graduation year in order to enter. Unless she told them she was graduating this year at the time she took the PSAT, she didn’t enter the competition.
@mathyone She took the PSAT as practice as a 10th grader and made a 209, with a 750 verbal. It’s quite difficult to get her to knuckle down and work on her math, but as you can see, a very little work is likely to put her over the top. She will take the PSAT again in October, and she will be a junior. Assuming she completes English III in the fall, she will become a senior in January, which leaves her qualified for National Merit, however, once she starts a school, she can only receive that school’s award, or at least that is my understanding.
My daughter’s grades are not stellar; she has C’s in math, and I think it quite possible that she will be the one in 16 who does not advance to Finalist. There are some Semifinalist scholarships that she could claim immediately, or she could make her choice and hope for the best. Of course, this is getting the horse before the cart, as she will need to improve her score by about four points to make the cutoff.
That is kind of an odd tradition, taking lunch to kids on purpose every day (different story if the kid forgot their lunch and maybe had allergies or something, or the school won’t allow a kid with no money to buy lunch if they have a lunch program, or if there is no other way to get lunch at all). But bringing lunches in daily just because you can… I haven’t seen that at any other schools.
But anyway… my experience with kids who are ready to be “done” with high school is that it probably won’t do them long term damage to stay in their HS classes for another year. I had one who really wasn’t a great fit at her HS, and it was really junior year when it hit hard. We thought hard about changing her schooling situation for senior year (in fact, looked at it over winter break of junior year). We decided to have her stick it out (did get a minor adjustment to her schedule from the school, practically climbing over the principal’s body to get to the person who could make the schedule change happen – but it did happen). In retrospect, I think we are glad we didn’t totally disrupt things for the last year and half of HS. Soon enough they are on to college.
@intparent I cannot describe to you how miserable my child has been in high school. It’s just been terrible. There have been days where she has just refused to go. She truly hates it beyond words. I gave some real thought to buying a cottage in my hometown, which is 30 miles north of where we live, and staying up there with her during the week so she could attend the small private school from which I graduated. The tuition would be about $7,000 and she would be in a class of about 18 students; the educational quality is not that great. “Sticking it out” simply is not an option.
Then it sounds like homeschooling or virtual school would work, and be more important than NM (although why can’t she be homeschooled and still be NM?).
Just do it. You will be less angry and she’ll be happier too. You want to make the decisions for your child, so take control back.
I pulled my younger child out during middle school “for just a year” and homeschooled (we use a homeschool charter in CA) and that one year has now turned into all of high school. So if your child is miserable, why not look up the homeschool laws in your state and just take her out of school. Double check on the community college rules for high school students - they may have their own rules - and go from there.
@twoinanddone @LKnomad For the record, we absolutely aren’t going to “homeschool.” As parents we aren’t stern enough, and our daughter doesn’t have the gumption to do online or self-paced courses. Although she will be enrolled in an “online” high school, all, or almost all, of her classes will be taken in a college classroom.
I’m sorry your D is so unhappy in her situation.
I wonder if this practice of bringing lunches to kids during the school day is a regional / southern thing? I’ve never heard of it, either growing up on the east coast or raising my kids in the midwest. Like mathyone, it seems like a waste of time to deliver it when they could just bring it themselves in the morning, and the logistics of having all those parents around seems unnecessary. It would be interesting to know if that’s the case – that it’s a regional thing.
@Pizzagirl I’ve never heard of it before and I live in the South. We didn’t do it in the Mid Atlantic states either. I think that it’s an isolated situation.
@EarlVanDorn Could your daughter’s “lack of gumption” to do online work or self paced work possibly be a symptom of immaturity or lack of executive functioning skills. Isn’t ability to self regulate and motivate important in attending college , especially one away from home? Not a criticism , just an observation.
Have you asked the school to show you the regulation that allows them to make students take 5 courses at the high school? If you can locate your state reg that says it’s not required, that may help. Sometimes districts do things because that’s the way they’ve always been done and they assume it’s required by state regulations.
What state are you in? In NYS, homeschooling parents can send their high school aged teens to the local community college for classes. Many do the last 2 years of high school as dual enrolled college students. They can earn their high school equivalency, get an associate’s degree, and still apply to colleges as a freshman. You should read your state homeschool regulations to see what your options are.
It sounds like the school needed to change an unhealthy cultural practice, so that’s why they banned the parents from bringing lunches.
As noted above…the school district is issuing THEIR diploma…so,they get to set the rules regarding courses.
You won’t homeschool, right?
So…is there another private school that IS close to where you live where she could complete her junior and senior years of HS?
RE: lunches at school. If a parent “knows what is best for their kid for lunch” they should pack a lunch for the kid every day. That’s what we did.
And why not let parents bring lunch all the time? Many schools changed policies regarding unnecessary access to the building for security reasons.
Austinmshauri - the OP is in Mississippi.