<p>Longhaul,
My D. went to the same type of school with less APs offered than yours. Yes, it is worthwhile, she was prepared for college better in her Honors classes than others in their AP’s. School matter more than number of AP’s and colleges are aware of some schools like that also. Do not worry, your struggle will pay off. We paid more for HS than we are paying for college currently including living expenses.</p>
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<p>And here, fundamentally, is the disagreement. If a teacher gives only one student an extra credit assignment because it was asked for, IMO that is also unethical and is absolutely my business as a fellow student who was not granted the same opportunity. In your worldview, nothing is deserved unless one asks; I deeply disagree. And this debate has been running in circles for quite a while.</p>
<p>Independent Study, if offered in the handbook, HAS been offered to everyone–a student need only read the handbook to know that the possibility exists. So yes, it is entirely different from being placed into a higher course that was not offered as a possibility to everyone.</p>
<p>marite - I’m not sure if you’re speaking to me, but I will address the concerns you’ve brought up. I am absolutely in favor of acceleration–but that acceleration must be offered to everyone who qualifies, or else only “privileged” smart kids will receive the opportunity. Worse, the acceleration will “exist,” so the school has much less incentive to help the kids who are still left behind (since, by their logic, they are already helping the kids who “ask”).</p>
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<p>If this is the case (and I do not doubt that this could be the case in some school districts) do you agree that every kid who needs acceleration be offered it? I am in favor of acceleration but only if it can be offered in an equitable manner to anyone who needs it, not just anyone who needs it AND asks for it.</p>
<p>Keilexandra:</p>
<p>No, I was not speaking to you. I agree that if acceleration is offered to one, it must be made available to others. I am not sure how much publicity should be accorded to this option. In a certain sense, I agree with you about the issue of fairness. I am not sold on the idea that kids must be their own advocates, if only because intellectual development and social maturity are not always in sync. At the same time, I do worry about the arms race. No one was inspired by my S to make their kids jump several grades; they knew their child could not do it and they wisely emphasized getting a solid grasp of the subject. But what about a kid who needed to be accelerated one grade? The competition in many schools to keep up with that kid could be intense and, in my opinion, counter-productive. My SIL’s district had a GATE program, and the stories we heard about it made us glad we did not live in one! Perhaps teachers should be encouraged to bring this option up at parents-teachers conferences; or should they wait until the parents raise the possibility, then make it known that acceleration is possible and lay out the procedures (a test, for instance?) At our ss’ k-8 school, teachers of one grade told the teachers of the grade above of the strengths and weaknesses of each student. And they seemed to know which kids could be pushed the perform at a higher level (there were no grades given). I know that, even without acceleration, my kids were pushed harder than some other of their classmates because the teachers knew what they were capable of. Was it fair? No one complained. </p>
<p>On the issue of Montessori: Friends of ours sent their children to Montessori schools and worked with their school district to accommodate their children who were advanced in comparison with the non-Montessori kids, but in different degrees in different areas. It took quite a bit of work on all sides though it did not cost the district anything since the kids could be accommodated within the school system. I think eventually the kids did have to take some college courses, again at no expense to the district.</p>
<p>VP: Yes. That goes without saying. My kid was not the only one who was accelerated. In his 7/8 math class, there were four students who each was working at his/her own pace, with a different textbook. It was agreed that the teacher would not be responsible for their math learning and he would focus all his attention to teaching the curriculum to the rest of the class. The same kind of accommodation was possible in the high school (high schools are much more flexible than k-8 schools) and a significant number of students took college classes.</p>
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<p>Maybe, but the law didn’t require accelerated math. I’ll bet that hokey GATE pullout that the 7th grade boys refused to attend was enough to satisfy state requirements – it had a GATE teacher (who the boys didn’t like), doing “enrichment” activities. (Puzzles and games that probably seemed rather boring to kids who were masters at the array of strategy games, computer games & video games that were readily available to them outside of school). </p>
<p>When my daughter came up the GATE activities were all done after-school – again, I think it was games – and d. had dance or gymnastics classes every day after school, so no time to hang around.</p>
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<p>I think this is naive. It cost zero in my son’s case, because a spot in a class was found for him at a school within walking distance, AND the school schedule was such that the class was first period of the day. (I think there would have been a lot more hoops to jump through if the arrangement had required my son to LEAVE the K-8 mid-day on his own, rather than simply arrive late on alternate days – the schools have liability for students and are not supposed to let them leave campus during school hours, but of course that liability doesn’t kick in until after the kids arrive). </p>
<p>I’d note that the liability thing CAN cost – I know that in other districts the practice of kids attending some classes at neighboring schools has been discontinued after some kid got injured or in some other sort of trouble during transit and the parents sued.</p>
<p>If there had not been a spot available in the high school algebra class – then there would not have been a cost-free option. State law and local district standards puts limits on how many students should be in a class – even if it doesn’t cost extra dollars on a balance sheet it’s not fair to a teacher to tell her she’s got to make room for an extra student when she already is at the max. </p>
<p>I agree that schools should work with families and utilized acceleration to meet an individual student’s needs when circumstances warrant, and the logistics fall into place to make it workable – but I also agree with the GFG that legally and ethically the school is required to provide the state-mandated curriculum and no more. Again, there are differences between rights and privileges, and the “privilege” part really is going to change from one year to the next based on simple numbers and logistics.</p>
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<p>I’m sorry, I don’t get it. If my kid has a B in a class, and another kid asks for extra credit an gets an A… how has my kid been hurt? I’m not talking about a situation where my kid also asked and was turned down arbitrarily – I’m saying kid #2 asked and did the the extra work entailed, my kid didn’t. </p>
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<p>I have a really hard time believing that any kid who has attended public school doesn’t know that it is possible to ask a teacher for extra credit or to argue about a grade. Maybe it would take a while for an immigrant kid to get the knack of how American schools work, but its obvious enough to anyone else. Kids are explicitly taught in kindergarten that if they want something they are supposed to raise their hand before asking – and even the hand-raising rule is observed in the breach (just as often kids blurt out their questions). </p>
<p>Many teachers do write out their policies about extra credit in any case. </p>
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There was nothing in any written materials that I ever saw that precluded placement in a higher course. Everything that isn’t expressly forbidden is “a possibility.” I’m pretty sure that most parents and students know this – they certainly act like they do. (I’m sure that teachers and school administrators alike will tell you that they have no shortage of parents and students asking for all sorts of outlandish stuff).</p>
<p>Why is it naive to report the actual situation?</p>
<p>I don’t care what happens at your school. I reported what happened at mine. You must have long-distance sight to be able to know what happens on the other side of the continent!
Posts like yours is what made me want to withdraw, but I succumbed to Keilexandra’s courteously worded post and responded.</p>
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Acceleration is an option, not a “need”. Many times students who are capable do not want acceleration – there were times for both of my kids that they expressly turned down the option when offered. </p>
<p>I think it’s pretty reasonable to expect that if someone wants to deviate from the standard path, that it is their responsibility to request the exception or deviation that they want. </p>
<p>When I go to Starbucks if I want nonfat milk in my latte I have to tell them. If I don’t tell them, then I get the default latte made with whole milk. At age 5 my daughter knew to tell the folks at McDonalds to “hold the pickles” if she wanted a pickle-free happy meal burger, and my son understood that he had to specify a crust-free peanut butter sandwich if that’s what he wanted from whoever was making the sandwiches. If you want something outside the norm… you have to ask. That IS “the rule” and in my entire lifetime I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have that part figured out. (Afraid to ask? Embarrassed to ask? sure. But not understanding that if you want something different, you have to ask for it? I find that hard to fathom).</p>
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This is not allowed at D’s highschool. I’m sorry if you don’t get it. Extra credit has to be announced to everybody so that whoever wants to get the extra credit can participate regardless of who does the asking.</p>
<p>Marite, you didn’t say, “at my school, it costs nothing” – you just made a general statement, “it costs nothing.” If you don’t qualify your statements, it is assumed that you are making a generalization intended to apply to others.</p>
<p>To be fair, my Starbucks has a sign advertising that nonfat milk, soy milk, sugar-free syrups, etc. are available. I might not ask if there were no sign. If an institution cares about delivering the best service to its customers, it will make sure the customers know what is available in order to facilitate requests.</p>
<p>^^^: Lots of coffee shops won’t have sign for decaffeinated coffee but if someone ask and got it and since you looked for sign and didn’t get it then it is neither the mistake of the person who got it nor the shopkeeper as it might not be the prevalent choice of the majority of that shops customers.</p>
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I don’t think an exception or deviation fits within “available”. </p>
<p>On the contrary, one REASON that question is asked is to help the ad coms understand why something might be missing. For example, if a kid does not have any math on their transcript senior year – it might help to know that is because that particular kid completed the highest math available at their school during their junior year. </p>
<p>But again – elite colleges like to see kids who show initiative and find ways to challenge themselves outside and beyond the curriculum when appropriate. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. That doesn’t mean that the kid who has 12 AP’s has to go out and find extra to do – but it does mean that if there is a small high school that doesn’t offer any AP’s, the college ad com will be more impressed by the kid who found a way to get advanced courses at a nearby community college than the kid who simply accepted the limitations of his school and spent his free time playing videogames. </p>
<p>And in that respect, college ad coms also like to see independent, proactive kids. They like the kid who advocated for a change at his school, or worked to create something new, or found a way to fill a gap on his own. They like the kids who think to ask the questions that no one else thought of – they want to admit the students who will be the movers and shakers of the future.</p>
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<p>Well, I’ve never seen a sign at McDonald’s advertising the availability of pickle-free burgers… and yet, somehow, my little girl was able to figure out that she didn’t like pickles. Or onions. It did take some effort on her part to properly train me, but I eventually learned to place an order specifying the exact condiments that were to be left off of every burger I ordered on her behalf.</p>
<p>I have two things to add to this discussion. </p>
<p>The best thing I have read on college admissions is “Confessions of a Prep School Counselor” by Caitlin Flanigan, a teacher and college counselor at the Harvard Westlake School in Los Angeles. You can find the article on the web site of the Atlantic Magazine. </p>
<p>[Confessions</a> of a Prep School College Counselor - The Atlantic (September 2001)](<a href=“http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200109/flanagan]Confessions”>Confessions of a Prep School College Counselor - The Atlantic)</p>
<p>In the article Ms. Flanigan writes:</p>
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<p>She also says:</p>
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<p>I’ve had four kids go through the college application process all w/ varying degrees of “admissabilty” and when ever I wondered why one of them seemed more interested in reading Clive Cussler novels than studying for his french exam, I’d pull Ms. Flanigan’s article out and reread it. I highly recommend it.</p>
<p>Finally, I have a good friend who is professor of biology at an Ivy university. He teaches undergraduate courses and he thinks AP courses in science are insane. He thinks that forcing kids into college level science courses while they are 16 is beating the love of science out of a lot of kids. Why he asks do they need to learn this in high school? We can teach it to them here he says.</p>
<p>Civilization progress because people ask questions and think out of the box.</p>
<p>No school will ever list all the opportunities available to a child at the school. It is not possible. Even the private prep DD attended doesn’t do that. I’ve met lots of 10th, 11th grader parent asking, once told that they should have thought about this in 7th grade, that is it too late now?</p>
<p>If you have not thought of it but some one else then you can’t blame them or the school.
School resources are there for everyone to use, How you or your child uses it that is up to them? You should not blame the school for not listing all that is possible as it is an impossible task.</p>
<p>“I’ve never seen a sign at McDonald’s advertising the availability of pickle-free burgers”</p>
<p>Since you can pull them off the burgers yourself, it’s not much of a leap to suppose that the cooks can do that, too. The availability of a special dish not on the menu is a completely different matter. What if she’d asked McDonald’s to make her a tofu stir-fry? That’s the equivalent of asking one’s high school for a course in multivariable calc if it isn’t in the catalog.</p>
<p>Now, clearly, some school districts aren’t as interested in others in providing the best possible service to their families. But I’d be pretty irritated to find out that my public school was offering courses I qualify for without letting me know about it. That’s rotten service, and I’d let them know about it.</p>
<p>Hanna - if a course is “offered” - then it is going to be listed somewhere on a schedule. Now maybe it wasn’t on the schedule of suggested courses that the g.c. listed on the outline of recommended courses for entering freshmen – but some kids think to look beyond the first piece of paper they are handed.</p>
<p>People who are vegetarians or who have special dietary needs don’t simply assume that they are limited to menu offerings at restaurants – they ask if their needs can be accommodated. They also apply logic – you don’t ask for tofu stir-fry at McDonalds because there is no reason that McDonald’s would have tofu on hand. But it is reasonable to ask a place that serves hamburgers if they also serve veggie burgers – some do, some don’t, but its a sensible question. </p>
<p>I’ve just had an unsuccessful experience this week going into multiple local stores asking if they sell Chanuka candles. None do… so it looks like I’m going to have to drive out of town to get what I want. But I did ask.</p>
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As such, I called it a fundamental disagreement–because you don’t get it, and I don’t get why you don’t get it. And probably I don’t get the flip side that is so obvious to you. The question is not “has my kid been hurt?”–the question is, “has my kid been treated equally?”</p>
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Check your privilege at the door, please. (If the previous sentence doesn’t make sense to you, ignore it.) Once again, two points: </p>
<p>1) the teacher should not be granting extra credit unless a) the policy was clearly spelled out in the syllabus beforehand, which is NOT always the case, or b) the opportunity for extra credit is offered to all students including those who did not ask.
2) So what if it’s “obvious” that you can argue a grade with a teacher? (In many cases it is NOT obvious, but that’s not a supportable opinion either way.) If a student is naturally shy, does that make him/her less bright? Does one’s level of comfort with being singled out or singling oneself out, for whatever purpose, correlate directly with one’s intelligence and readiness for a challenging curriculum?</p>
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Indeed, a possibility that you may inquire into. However, when that “possibility” becomes reality for even one student, then ethically it is now also an opportunity that should be offered to all.</p>
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The hypothetical student isn’t unaware that you have to ask for something different. That would be absurd. Rather, the student is unaware that you should ask for something different if you want it. Both cultural and personal (family values/personality trait) differences can lead to a student dismissing individual desires for the greater good and function of the societal norm.</p>
<p>Acceleration is both an option and a need, in different senses. It is an option because it can be turned down or accepted. It is a need in the same way that financial aid calculates family EFC and then the remaining “need”–the family can, of course, decide to avoid the “need” entirely by not going to college, thus eliminating their inability to pay for college.</p>
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This is exactly the problem that I wish didn’t exist. Private schools like yours, of course, can do however they wish. But public schools have a public duty to provide equal access to equal opportunity. Why blame the child for what his parents didn’t think of in 7th grade? Just because YOU thought of it then, does not mean that the child who didn’t have YOU as a parent is somehow inferior to your child.</p>
<p>Schools have no need to list all possible iterations of resource use. They can simply wait for savvy parents to “ask,” and when a request is granted, make the new possibility->opportunity available to all.</p>
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What if the course is listed on the community college schedule? What if the course is listed in the high school catalog, and the kid is in middle school? What if the course is indeed listed in the catalog, but has prerequisites that the child has not fulfilled? E.g. At my school, the prerequisite for any AP science class is the honors version of that class. Outside credits are never transferrable, yet one can fulfill the honors prerequisite by taking–at one’s own expense–a university-level college course in that area. The policy is not specified anywhere in the handbook or the catalog, both of which I have read front-to-back every year (not for this purpose, as I have zero interest in accelerating science).</p>
<p>It is reasonable to ask a place that serves hamburgers if they also serve veggie burgers, yes. It is also reasonable NOT to ask such a question. Most vegetarians I know, when forced to eat at a hamburger place, will simply order lots of fries. Others might ask for veggie burgers. Both options are acceptable, but both categories “need” vegetarian food and would probably have the same desire for veggie burgers if the option was made available to them. If I were running said hamburger place, and I sold veggie burgers, I’d certainly put it on the menu–it sells more burgers, after all.</p>
<p>Note that the situation is different in education because educators are too often more motivated by their best-case scenario rather than the child’s best-case scenario.</p>