On one of the portals of a school my child is applying, I know see a required request for “math syllabus” from the math teacher. I could swear this was not there before, but maybe I overlooked it…?
Getting the math rec was a hurdle, now asking for another thing from the same teacher is not going to be easy.
Am I crazy, or is this new?
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I haven’t seen this before, but if your child is coming from a private school, the syllabus should have been provided at the beginning of the year. It should be on the class website as well.
It has to be sent from the teacher directly. We are coming from public school and the syllabus is on the class page, but it has to be “official”, sent from the school.
You can also cc the principal and guidance counselor, if there is one on the request.
When my child was applying to private school from a public school, the teachers’ union had it in their contract that they would absolutely not provide references. So, kiddo’s teacher did not reply at all to my emails. I had to go through the principal for everything.
I noticed that as well and it was not there last year when my other kiddo applied.
Do you have any idea if they have to sign up for an account like they do on Gateway or can they just email the syllabus? I’m not familiar with how things work through the portals.
They can probably send it directly. If you are at all worried or might need it again, you might ask if they could send a copy to you as well which you can upload (noting original was sent directly. )
This has become a more common request from schools, btw. The approach to math varies wildly from school to school. Even in our sending district for LPS, schools had significantly different paths resulting in significantly different placement for 9th grade!
Interesting, I thought they just did placement tests before school started to get the class levels right. Hopefully his syllabus meets expectations!
I’m going to try requesting again from the math teacher and if she doesn’t send, I will let the school know I am having an issue. The AOs must deal with other public schools who are difficult to get records from. There is a copy on his student account that I could send them if it comes to that.
Kids coming from private schools have no idea how easy they have it when getting all the application materials together, at least the school portions.
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@maybeboardingmom , our experience was that they use placement tests too. When you’ve enrolled.
But at this point, I think this also helps make sense of test results (when used) as well as where a kid is in a TO scenario. A kid who has done well in math with a limited curriculum may not do so well on the SSAT because of lack of knowledge, for example.
And yes! As a parent of a public school kid, this was hard! I can only imagine what those rec letters looked like…
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