In [another thread](Parents aligning expectations and reality - #124 by Cheeringsection - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums), it was mentioned that a high school’s calculus AB course had 3 hours of homework per night. Added to an hour of class time every day, that is 20 hours per week over a year. The material covered is generally covered in college 4 credit calculus 1 courses with a work expectation of 12 hours per week over a semester. The workload-to-credit equivalency of 3 hours of work per credit over a semester means that the high school calculus AB course in question is like two 6.66 credit courses, or 13.33 credits total of workload-equivalent.
Obviously, the high school in question has a busywork problem, since it should not take students that much work to learn calculus 1, especially since high school calculus AB students are supposed to be more advanced and better students in math than those taking calculus 1 in college.
Is it common for high schools to have excessive busywork relative to the material learned (for both regular and advanced (e.g. AP, IB, etc.) courses)?
I do not remember such excessive workload when I was in high school decades ago, including in the few AP courses that I took.
My older son took BC calculus with no homework requirement at all. The teacher suggested problems, but basically said this is a college level course, I expect you to figure out how much practice you need to feel you have mastered the material. For my older son that was very little. He went on to take more advanced calculus with no issues and got a 5 on the AP, so this method was great for him.
By and large I thought the AP classes my kids took had a reasonable amount of work. History courses had a couple of term papers and some shorter writing pieces and a midterm and final. They didn’t do silly things like outline the text book that I’ve heard of from other posters.
AP calculus is a high workload class in our school but nothing like what you described. It’s been a while since my daughter took some of these, but I would guess maybe 5-6 hours of homework per week. However, note that we have AB followed by BC. APUSH and AP world are probably the highest workload, and outlining is required. Roughly 8 hours per week. Some other high workload APs in our school are AP chem, AP bio, AP CS. The English APs are not nearly as high workload, but that’s because they don’t require as much writing as they should. My impression in general is that our humanities/history classes are easier than most schools because the teachers don’t want to grade papers and focus more on those 5 paragraph essays.
I will say that the outlining, while tedious, is actually helpful in learning the large amount of material required by those history classes. Some kids just copy their outlines and they don’t do too well.
If you mean that AB and (the rest of) BC are each one year, then that still seems like excessive work for the amount of material learned. 5 hours of homework means 10 total hours per week including class time, or about equivalent in college to 3.33 credit courses over four semesters, or a total of 13.33 credits. The college calculus 1 and 2 courses that high school calculus BC approximates are typically 4 credits over two semesters, or a total of 8 credits.
AP US history tries to cover the whole span of US history, which introductory level college courses take two semesters of 4 credit courses to cover for a total of 8 credits. So the 8 hours of homework plus 5 hours in class per week means 13 hours per week, or the equivalent of 4.33 credit courses over two semesters, or a total of 8.66 credits of workload, so that is not too far off, unlike the AP calculus courses.
The time it takes a student to do the work depends on the student. The time a student spends doing the work also varies. My son was able to master his AP calculus with relatively little outside work- good teaching and his ability plus not needing to turn in homework. He got A’s, the AP 5 and an Honors math degree in college. AP statistics required homework to be turned in so he got B’s- zeroes on all homework and 100% on all quizzes/tests and the AP exam 5. Our son is gifted and not typical for most students taking the top courses available in HS. I tend to think in terms of material covered not time when I studied as well.
While I do believe there are teachers out there who give a lot of busy work, the amount time a student spends on homework depends on the student, their ability with the subject and how efficient they are doing their work.
AB calc should not be taking 3 hours at all. I have no idea if it is common or not. D. did her AB calc homework at school, I never see her doing any math at home. She only did her AP English Lit. and college History (took during HS) at home. These were in fact very very time consuming. But they were time consuming for HER, I do not know about other kids in her class. History is her hardest class and she wanted to make sure that she will not need to take it at college (accomplished!) and English had to be a perfect paper, she was rewriting her papers forever, basically until I would scream that enough is enough. She did the rest of her homework during study hall at school, so I never saw her doing other classes. She had sport practice 3 hrs every day, many competitions, many out of town. and she was in numerous other un-related to each other activities.
We have a lot of demand for AP classes at our high school and not enough teachers willing to teach, so the number of sections is limited and one must apply and be accepted into the class. There are GPA and teacher rec. requirements. One must also pay for the privilege of taking an AP, and no, I don’t mean to take the AP exam but to take the course itself.
AP summer homework is massive so as to act as a deterrent to all but the truly dedicated, and the workload during the year is also excessive, IMO–likely for the same reason. That said, I don’t think Calc per se was that bad. S had only one math teacher (Algebra 2) who allowed the students to do the homework each person felt necessary and never graded it. For all other math classes, however, my kids have been required to do large numbers of problems and were graded for completion. It’s ridiculous to make a kid do 100 problems when he can learn it just fine after the first 20. A student who needs to do more can always do so. BUT, in this way teachers are probably trying to ensure student success of standardized testing for the lower levels, and top AP scores for the AP’s, since this is part of how they are evaluated. It’s probably economic.
Kids in D’s HS were allowed only 3 AP classes / year and only starting with Junior year. That actually means absolutely nothing. If teacher chooses so, he may teach his class at the higher level than AP and never call it AP. Which actually was the case with some classes which was evident D. started college.
In any class lots would seem to depend on the efficiency of the student, the skills they bring to the table, and how they are evaluated. Some teachers are also more effective than others and students are learning more in class, with less need to rush to online instruction or tutors. Plus, content of an AP calc class can vary from one school to the next, sometimes going way beyond what is needed to get a 5 on the AP exam.
Mandatory homework that needs to be submitted for a grade certainly adds to busywork for students who can demonstrate proficiency without having to complete the work, and I can understand how this can get out of hand.
Some of our best students are actually spending lots of time on homework because they want to learn more than is needed to get an A in the class. Teachers can and do provide opportunities for students in STEM classes to work on bonus problems or provide extra reading suggestions in other classes.
@TheGFG - I am appalled to learn that a public school would charge students extra for taking an AP class and surprised that this hasn’t been challenged.
I have heard that the reason is that the teachers demanded extra pay to compensate them for the supposed extra work load/expertise needed to teach an AP. Seems to me that by the same logic, special ed parents, esp. those with kids in self-contained classes, should have to pay more too, and I say that as the parent of a kid who was in self-contained.
I teach AP US history and AP European History as my primary class load. My school uses block schedule- so it’s a semester long class. Reading is our only real “HW” and it happens every day (class joke, if the sun came up, so did your reading assignment). About 12 pages per night of a college level text (the big heavy kind) Kids take notes on text (which they can use on daily reading quiz - 5 questions from released college board MC) or not- their choice- just like college. At beginning of AP class it is not uncommon for kids to spend 2+ hours reading/taking notes b/c they are “recopying” the book- by the end of the semester most are under an hour a night
In our high school AP sciences and math are ok . What is a killer is any AP in humanities because of the endless, time consuming projects. It is NOT just the material. For example in APUSH the students are assigned for every single frigging week to find an article from the paper or online news that somehow relates to the material taught that week and write an essay about it. It gets tiring after the third week, I am telling you. And that is on top of reading, hw and other essays you need to write. For AP English you need to make videos, design sets for plays and the list just goes on and on. It is ok if you only take one AP but if you take a couple is just a killer. Kids complain to teachers but the answer is always: This is an AP class and I told you ahead there will be a lot of work. If you did not like it you should not have taken it.
^This! When I first joined CC years ago, I would get so frustrated when self-righteous parent posters bragged that THEIR children were taking 6 AP’s and still were in bed by 10:00 PM, and then implied that if other people’s kids were staying up after midnight and spending longs hours every night doing homework, then they were either inefficient, were wasting time on FB or the cell phone (one poster just said this very thing today), or were not smart enough to be in those classes. People, there is a lot of variation from one high school to another in how AP’s are taught.
True, but high school students taking AP courses are supposed to be the more advanced (i.e. stronger) students than college frosh taking college courses covering similar material. So if the high school AP courses are much more time consuming on average than the college courses covering similar material, something may be off.
Perhaps it may be that too many high school students enter AP courses before they are ready for that level of material (perhaps under tiger parent pressure), so they need much more time to learn it.
In college, neither of my kids had to make crafts, like a painting of Beowulf, their own “scarlet letter,” a 3-D representation of a scene from a Steinbeck novel, an edible model of a cell, a mobile made of artistic items with balanced mass, an i-movie of students re-enacting a battle, etc. Skill level in the material has nothing to do with true busy work, except maybe artistic skill.
This is just the epitome of busywork, and certainly not something I would expect to find in a college course outside of the visual/dramatic arts departments.
AP Enviro is a year-long course in search of a year-long curriculum. Thus, it can have a LOT of busy work in HS (relative to the requisite studying to achieve a 5 on the test).
Utterly ridiculous. In general, these are the “best” kids to teach. IMO, those that deserve extra (combat) pay are the teachers that have the unruly students.