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<p>I second this, the meetings for the parents of rising 9th graders are this week for us. Call the HS guidance department ASAP. </p>
<p>There is some very good advice here. Insist that your child get involved in one (or more) activities of his choosing.</p>
<p>I have known several students who came into the public HS after private school (or homeschool) and they have done well both socially and academically.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about your S taking 9th grade courses that are not especially challenging. The social, scheduling and cultural transition to h.s. can be a big enough challenge to many kids. Taking a lighter load will give him more breathing room to find the ECs he likes, and finishing 9th grade with all A’s would be a fantastic way to start his high school career.</p>
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<p>I also wonder this. If a chold has been in private school from Pk-8, it seems strange (unless finances have changed) to move to a public school for their HS years. I realize some privates only go to 8th grade, but there should be private HS’s in the area. You are really losing some of the best part of private school education and in particular college guidance by not attending in the HS years</p>
<p>Why are you moving the child to a public school?
Because we lost our jobs and have heard very good things about local public. Also, the district at first told us all the things we wanted to hear, but now they are changing their tune and we are now starting to regret not at least looking into a less expensive private school. However, the deadlines have passed, so it’s too late.
Thank you for advice on contacting the GC, turns out they do expect us to pick the classes next week, so I’ll be in touch with her today.</p>
<p>My kids also went from private school to public school. One was in 9th grade, the other in 11th. There were a variety of reasons, some of which didn’t apply to the 9th grader at all. Anyway, it worked out really well for him – he had a great experience, and was ultimately happy that he had changed schools, although both kids kept their friends from the private school.</p>
<p>It WAS important to get him tested so that he qualified for his new school’s “Mentally Gifted” program. The program itself was no great shakes beyond 9th grade, but it offered some opportunities in 9th grade that made his transition much more successful. A friend of ours whose kid did the same thing the next year didn’t bother with MG qualification, and it only took a couple weeks of school for both our friend and her child to realize that they had made a mistake on that.</p>
<p>If the MS Bio class was High school level Bio, why should the student want to be in Honors Bio (which does not exist in the public high school)? I would have thought that the student would want to be in AP-Bio, and that would satisfy the graduation requirement.</p>
<p>Our very good public HS does not have freshman “honors bio.” For the more capable students, they have Honors Foundations of Science, linked to an advanced math class, which leads directly into AP sciences. (Or perhaps Honors for some.) Other students take “CP” Foundations of Science which usually leads into either Honors or CP sciences. </p>
<p>So not having freshman honors bio is not necessarily a red flag. You need to find out what the official and unofficial tracks are, and get your kid into the correct ones. It is probably easier to move between tracks in history than in math/science, due to the nature of the subject matter. Coming prepared with course details from your MS will help. It sounds likely that others from your MS have made this transition. Can you search them out for info?</p>
<p>I also recommend cross country as a place to find nice, high-achieving kids. Track and field usually has the same crowd. Similarly band and orchestra, theater, debate, etc. XC usually starts during the summer, and the coach often has a recommended self-training program and sometimes informal runs. I’d talk to your son about what fall sports he might be interested in, and talk to the coach before the school year ends about what summer activities might be available. Most coaches of no-cut sports are very welcoming. Getting involved in a sport is not only good for kids physically, but helps them find a place in the high school social world.</p>
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<p>This is an interesting option, but it would be prudent to check whether AP Bio does indeed satisfy the graduation requirement. Even if AP Bio does satisfy the requirement, there could be a problem if the school rules require all freshmen to take a science course but the student is not prepared for AP Bio at that time. Often, Chemistry as well as Biology are prerequisites for AP Bio, and Chemistry itself may have a math prerequisite. So it may a while before the student could take AP Bio.</p>
<p>I have not read all, just some of the responses on this thread, but will respond anyway.</p>
<p>I have had 2 of 3 (the 3rd is still too young yet) make the move from private (thru 8th) to public (a school of about 1400). I will say they did very well in private and have always been pretty dedicated and motivated to learn and study.</p>
<p>I’ll speak about my son who is a senior in particular because he made the move to the public pretty much on his own (i.e., other members of his 8th grade class did not move to public). He was a kid who loved sports, but was otherwise fairly quiet and not real social. He joined the soccer team right away. Joined band in 10th grade. I joined the PTO right away so I could learn the “ropes” of public schools and routines and even just get the nitty-gritty parent/school info - THAT helped alot! </p>
<p>The key was getting involved. He has his soccer friends, his band friends, tennis friends, student council friends, calculus study group friends - etc. - you get the picture. This helped him to be well-rounded, have many groups to mix with AND most importantly, to realize that not friends have to be best friends - but all “friends” - even the geeky, goth kid in art class can have a place in your life. </p>
<p>He is now so social I wish he wasn’t quite so social! He was elected Homecoming King in the fall - yes, the kid who knew no one and no one knew. His letters of recommendations from his teachers for college apps/forms had one common denominator that stuck out to me in terms of his personality - “everybody knows S, everybody likes S”. Largely I believe because he had the attitude that “we’re all in this together” and “make the most of what you have before you”. </p>
<p>In a larger school (maybe not just public) you may have to be a little more aggressive in getting info, fighting class scheduling etc. You may not get as much hand holding. Personally, I think that has been a good thing for my kids. They are more assertive for themselves.</p>
<p>Kids who have come to our public high from privates have typically had trouble working autonomously. This may be just a function of the 2 tiny privates in our area where the teacher student ratio is like 1/12 max but when these kids get to the high school they are often passive about getting work done claiming “I didn’t understand what to do” and not getting things done; rather than being proactive and seeking assistance. So just as it is important to take initiative with the GC and support staff it is important that your child be their own advocate in the classroom.</p>
<p>Some high schools, like ours, do not allow freshmen to take AP courses.</p>
<p>Re #48:</p>
<p>I’d be surprised if AP-Bio did not satisfy graduation requirements. But it’s a good point about freshman science classes. My S took AP-Physics and AP-Chemistry before tackling Intro-Bio (the equivalent of AP-Bio); he had had no prior bio class but did very well anywy.
If 9th graders are required to take a science class and the student does not wish to take non-Honors Bio and cannot take AP-Bio, would he be allowed to take Chemistry? Or do all freshmen have to take a general sciences class? (this was introduced for a year or two in our high school, then abandoned because it was too unchallenging for many students).</p>
<p>Re: #51. Exceptions can always be made if proof of readiness is provided.
I would have been very surprised if our hs had forbidden S to take AP classes as a freshman considering he had already taken two APs as an 8th grader (auditing one in the high school and studying on his own for the other–scored 5s on both).</p>
<p>Our school doesn’t have freshman honors bio either because they have this weird idea that 9th graders should not be tracked in any way. But kids who took biology in middle school (accelerated) then get put in chemistry in 9th grade. That can be honors because it’s officially a 10th grade level course even though hundreds of freshmen take it. Same story for math. And in history and English they seem to have secret tracking where a high preponderance of good students are in certain sections, but it’s not marked as honors on the transcript.</p>
<p>Anyway the take home lesson is to find out what the system is at your school and try to work with it in a way that makes sense. Despite many quirks we found our high school extremely accommodating - especially with our oldest who had SAT scores from middle school that were above the 90th percentile for graduating seniors.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to speak for OP, but she did say that her S’s grades are average and that he is lazy. I’m not sure why she would want to put him in AP Bio even if she could.</p>
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<p>This is very common. Many kids want a different high school experience (more competitive sports, drill team, marching band etc) than the private schools might offer. Often it is a financial consideration and the families believe enough of a foundation was gotten K-8 for the student to succeed at the public high school. In Dallas, I knew of several families that moved for 9th grade to get into a desirable public school. The start of high school is when the reality of what college might cost sets in, and a choice is often made to go with the public high school. I saw a lot more families move in the private to public direction for high school than the other way around. Some private schools end at 6th or 8th grade and the competition for the private high schools can be pretty tough.</p>
<p>I was not being clear. There is no reason to take AP-Bio as a freshman. However, to repeat what has already been learned in middle school is, in my experience, a recipe for disaster, in particular for a student who is “lazy.” Lazy students need to be challenged, to be brought out of their comfort zone, to be forced to make an effort to obtain even “average grades.” My suggestion would be for the student to be in a chemistry class, whether Honors or not. At a later time, the student can take AP-Bio.</p>
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<p>Perhaps for some, but not in my S’s case. His private school 8th grade teacher recommended that he repeat Algebra I in h.s., because his grades were a C+ and B- in the course. He was smart, but very unmotivated. In 9th grade, he breezed through the course, earning a solid A and 100% on nearly every test. Was it a year wasted? I don’t think so. He finally got to feel the thrill of being one the top students in a class, earned the respect of his classmates, learned that he could earn As, and now has a solid foundation in algebra. I think some kids can benefit from being given a little more time to mature as students.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m a victim of grade inflation, but Cs and B-s are not “average grades.” If my child had received such grades, I probably would have gone along with repeating. If a student is struggling, then it makes sense to repeat and reinforce, fill in the gaps in the knowledge that should have been acquired but was not. If what ails the student is laziness, then “breezing through” makes for and underachiever.
Of course, we speak for personal experiences; mine has been that my son thrived in classes where he was challenged and blew off those classes that were too easy. We and he actually had to advocate so that he could be given more difficult (above grade-level) assignments in classes that were too easy for him (but that he had to take because of requirements and scheduling issues). Once he was given those more difficult assignments, he was fully engaged in the materials.</p>
<p>Bay, OP said the “average grades” didn’t indicate the student’s understanding of the subject matter. </p>
<p>If you restate, don’t forget to also bring down the context offered. I’m always careful with brand new posters to realize someone takes a risk, even on an anonymous forum, to ask for help, giving us enough info to get helpful help.</p>
<p>Also, OP, I wanted to state that as a family who has chosen private ed for K-8, then public high school, we have known/been aware of MANY kids who have made switches in high school because one didn’t work out.</p>
<p>Either graduated private K-8 to go a private HS and then ended up transferring to a public because the private HS wasn’t a good fit (this has happened ALOT!)</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>Graduated from private K-8, gone to public HS and ended up transferring back to private (some, but not too often).</p>