I don’t know the specifics of the school’s and district’s situation, but staffing for other courses (and qualifications, for the AP sections) could have something to do with it. (See also: possible funding issues.)
As a parent in a small school district that does aggressive gatekeeping, I highly encourage you to politely and firmly go for an override of this decision. The caveat of course is that this is what your son wants. If he does, I would first find out the rationale behind the minimum grade and why just two quarters? In our high school, the minimum GPA for honors/AP sciences was ever- changing and tied to 24 lab stations. They’d say that a minimum of 93 was needed for honors bio and surprise, 24 kids had that 93. The next year it might be 90 or even 88 or 95. But it had nothing to do with an actual minimum grade needed to handle the class.
In your son’s case, you’re not being “that” parent who thinks your C student should be in honors - it’s two points.
Of course there are colleges and engineering programs and honors programs where AP classes and SAT subject tests don’t matter, but there are plenty where it does. If your son enjoys science and needs challenge, being weeded out of the advanced track could squash his enthusiasm. A bright science/math kid shouldn’t have his options limited over a couple of points in the 8th grade. I’d take this up the chain as needed.
and I would also mention that getting that “took most challenging schedule possible” tick mark does matter for some of the top schools. So if you are aiming at that, it can matter. RPI is a great school; I honestly don’t know if that tick mark is necessary there, but it’s worth looking into.
Some districts/high schools are stricter than others on these issues. Getting the teacher to recommend that he would do well in the class should help. I would also try to find out if there is really a policy that a student can’t move into honors or AP even if he or she gets an A in a regular class.
One of my kids had an honors chem teacher who did not want to recommend him for AP Bio, not due to his grades, which were good enough, but because he wasn’t sure about his work ethic and thought his sport would take up too much time. He took AP Bio anyway, did very well and bio is now part of his college double major.
What’s wrong with the grade? I would have thought your son was very well placed in gifted Bio if he received an 89 first semester.
My son took many AP courses throughout his HS career. He did not like English or history very much but he wanted to be in class with his friends and they were all in this track. He didn’t care if he got a B.
It was important for me as a parent to have him hanging with this group of kids in high school. In general they were better behaved and the teacher had more time to actually teach. They did some cool stuff.
Daughter was not in this track and really received a much different education than my son in the same school system.
I agree with those who are recommending that you do everything you can to appeal your child’s placement. I always just went along with what the school said, until I noticed that the squeaky wheel got lots of attention in our district, and I realize now that I could have advocated harder for my kids.
That said, I have no doubt that your student can do well and get into a good engineering program without being on the honors science track - assuming, of course, that that is what he wants to do when the time comes. My daughter was not on the honors math track at her high school even though she was pretty good at math (certainly better than some of her classmates who were admitted to the honors track). But her 8th grade teacher didn’t recommend her, and I didn’t know to raise a fuss. Somehow, even without being on the honors math track in HS, my daughter managed to get a full scholarship to her university, will graduate in several weeks as a math/finance/quantitative econ triple major with honors, and will go on to a masters program in applied statistics. I guess 8th grade math teachers aren’t omniscient.
I think it’s a supply/demand problem of qualified teachers in math/science. In my NJ district of above average kiddos, the honors/AP math/physical science courses are extremely difficult. This ensures that the number of Ap Calc BC and AP Chem/Ap physics sections stay small. And did I mention that the math and science teachers are available for private tutoring during the spring/summer to prepare interested child for the very difficult courses?
No such issues for language , history honors/AP. They are rigorous, but are not known for successive filtering like the math /science courses.
We also have the issue of not enough space in the AP classes. While our high school offers a lot of APs on paper, the fact is that there is only one or two sections of most of them in a school of 1600 students. The school seems to look for reasons to keep people out of AP courses simply because they don’t have enough room.
Is your NJ district one of those “extra work just to have extra work” districts like that described in other threads? AP calculus BC should not be a super-difficult course – after all, students who are non-advanced in math often have to take a similar course for their majors once they get to college, so students who are good and advanced in math should not find it to be too difficult.
In any case, shouldn’t a math teacher who presumably has a bachelor’s degree in math plus a teaching credential appropriate for your state be able to teach any high school math course up to calculus?
If there is such high demand from students who are capable of doing well in the courses, why not reduce the lower level courses (that those students have to take instead of advanced courses that they cannot get into) and reassign teachers for additional advanced courses in the same subject area (e.g. AP US history instead of regular US history)?
I think the high demand for AP classes needs to be balanced with who is making the demand. My daughter had a friend who should not have been in any AP classes, yet got into a few by just 'demanding’them, but really just signing up for them. Art History was one. Why should an AP teacher have to deal with a student who never went to class and who didn’t do the homework just because she wanted to be in Art History? Why should the other kids in chemistry or calc have to wait while those who shouldn’t be in a class move quickly through the material? Schools have reasons for the cut offs for honors or AP classes. I don’t agree with them all, but I’m not running the school either. Almost all of the students took APUSH. Are there really that many more qualified students who want to take AP history than AP something else? Is half the grade level really advanced?
I have moved my kids a lot and thus dealt with a few different school districts. I have had to go to bat for my kids and I have never regretted it.
First, I’d echo others with make sure what your son really wants and not just based on his imagined future. Not doing an advanced track might shut him out of the most elite schools but doesn’t close all doors, not by a long shot.
Does he want to work harder and be more organized?
Does he do better in a class with more pressure to excel and brighter students or does he do better when he can shine high above his classmates?
In short, are you convinced he really wants and can handle an accelerated track?
If he really wants it and is ready to work for it my experience is that you have to be patient, persistent, and polite. Don’t take no for an answer. Assure teachers and the administration that you are fine with your child receiving low grades if that is what he earns (and you do have to mean this thus the questions above). Schedule meeting after meeting. Go slowly up the chain and show respect to everyone at every step of the way. Don’t burn your bridges.
This can be reflected back with another question: Is it more important to provide an AP experience to all those who want it, or is it more important to provide a quality AP experience to some of those who want it?
Really, it isn’t a simple matter of shifting resources around. Teachers aren’t all omniskilled chess pieces to be moved around at whim—as human beings, they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. Some teachers may be excellent at teaching regular US history, but wouldn’t function as well in an AP classroom; others may be the exact opposite. There may be a number of teachers in a school who are certified to teach AP biology, but really aren’t that great at teaching the life sciences, but would be simply amazing at teaching an AP physics course. And so on.
Principals and school districts have to work with the skillsets their teachers have when scheduling and filling classes. And yes, they should also provide opportunities for teachers to increase their skillsets, but (a) that takes years to bear fruit and (b) it may not take with some individuals, anyway.
“If there is such high demand from students who are capable of doing well in the courses, why not reduce the lower level courses (that those students have to take instead of advanced courses that they cannot get into) and reassign teachers for additional advanced courses in the same subject area (e.g. AP US history instead of regular US history)?”
That’s the common sense approach and one that I have been advocating in our district for years. However, when you have a smaller school, I concede that it can be challenging to allocate classes and teachers. I’m not speaking about the OP’s son, who was just two points off of the cut off and regularly gets high As on tests, but sometimes, in order to fill that second section of the honors class that was taken away from the regular version, you might have to put in kids who truly aren’t qualified. That cuts down on the effectiveness of the advanced class for the really academic kids. However, in our school, I’ve regularly observed gatekeeping when there are plenty of good students who could fill up more honors/AP classes and I do not understand what drives it.
The OP’s son was 2 points away, but we don’t know if there were 30 other kids who were 1 point away, or who even have interest in honors bio.
When I was in 9th grade, I was put in biology. There were 20 of us at our school (9th grade was still at the jr high) and 20 at the other jr high. No one asked why, no one asked to join the class if they weren’t put in it… That was my assigned science class. Our high school had no AP classes at that time and even today only has 5-6 and it is one of the biggest high schools in the state. There was a perfectly good University down the street and the thought was if you wanted to take a college level class, there were plenty. One guy in my class was not in my special bio class because they’d already moved him as a 8th grader, so he advanced to the high school for science and math and returned to the jr. high for everything else. By senior year in high school, he was taking half his courses at the university. It all seemed so normal to us.
That is why I wrote “who are capable of doing well in the courses” previously. There is a difference between putting an entry barrier based on likelihood of doing well in the course versus one set much higher for some other gatekeeping reason. Do we want to force middle schoolers into the hypercompetitive mindset commonly associated with pre-meds and other college students who must compete for the few spaces into medical school or their intended majors (due to capacity limitations), even though a larger number of them would be capable of successfully doing the work?
Also, when the middle and high schools only have downward mobility between the tracks with no upward mobility, that may encourage the hypercompetitive mindset further.
This is such a such a difficult situation for you and for the school with so many issues surrounding the pros and cons…I never am sure which side of the fence I am on. There has to be a line drawn somewhere but these are kids and things can change a lot in 6 months, so maybe it shouldn’t be a hard line? I would politely push…but also agree that it is probably not going to be the kiss of death for his collegiate hopes and dreams if he doesn’t.
In our school district, the students take an Iowa aptitude test in the 7th grade to see if they qualify for 8th grade Algebra which then is the gateway to subsequent honors math and science classes in high school. Both of my kids did not meet the minimum score to receive the recommendation to take Algebra. We elected to override the recommendation (which had the caveat that the kid could not withdrawal until after the first grading period and had to remain in the class if they had better than a 75). Both kids escaped 8th grade honor Algebra with a low A/high B and haven’t looked back. D16 is currently pulling a 92 in AP Calc AB and D18 has a 96 in Honors Algebra II. Neither got an A in Honor Geometry in fact they brought home mid Bs, sometimes they received A’s sometime B’s in their science classes.
Sure we probably did not play “the game” correctly. If D16 had taken the regular classes and not the honors she might have pulled As where she had B’s in her honors/AP classes and her GPA may have been higher and that may have put her in the top 10% of her class not her current top 17%. In Texas (where we live) that makes a huge difference. Who knows. I do know D16 has been accepted at all 12 of the colleges she applied to (although not Ivies) even with her occasional Bs. So keep pushing if you think your kid is capable. There are all kinds of paths to reach the goal. If they don’t let him in be flexible enough to make the path he is on lead you to the goal.
Squeaky Wheel, Squeaky Wheel, Keep at it!!!
My D12 has ADHD and boy did meds help and very structured at home is helping. We had lost things a lot in elementary school. She would always do great homework but loose it at school before she turned it in.
In our school district, the parent has the right to override the teachers recommendation. That being said, if the parent does request an override , if the child begins having difficulty in the class, the parent forfeits the right to request withdrawal of the child from the class. I would check the actual policy before I requested an override. Intellect is only one part of being successful in school. Problem solving, attention to detail, time management are equally as important. HS moves at a faster pace than middle school. I’d want to be sure that he has those organizational skills to succeed before I made a request to place him in a class he’s not ready for organizationally and negatively affect his GPA . I know that’s not the popular opinion on this thread, but I think it at least needs to be assessed.