<p>Our agenda for the 3-day weekend includes a serious discussion of D’s priorities for next summer. Some of the stuff my D might want to do opens for registration next week, and I expect it will fill up right away!</p>
<p>In a way I wish we had some type of deadline like that, mihcal.</p>
<p>OK, I need some advice. D just came home, happy with her AP USGov test score because it’s in the 80s and the average was mid-60s. Similar story for AP EngLit. She is scoring above average, but often that does not mean an “A”. These teachers do not curve and are grading already as though the kids were taking the AP test. It’s going to hurt her GPA, no doubt. Would any of you do anything? I’m not one to intervene, but this is frustrating.</p>
<p>My middle son’s teacher did that with AP Lit - scored the weekly writing prompts like the AP tests and gave everyone low grades. Is there anything else to balance out the grade - other assignments, etc. We didn’t do anything about it except I do believe I came to CC and vented. 
I know your D is sometimes too demanding of herself, so I wouldn’t be inclined to talk her out of feeling good about it. Has she asked the teacher if there will be other assignments that may bring the grade up?</p>
<p>suzy - I don’t like to intervene with teachers but if I were in your shoes, I probably ask for a meeting for two reasons - 1) ask them and find out what you/your D can do to improve; and 2) it lets the teacher know you are “watching” and you are concerned. It’s middle of October already and your D may soon run out of time to recover. </p>
<p>Just need to be careful you don’t come across as you are “blaming” the teacher which, I am sure, you are not.</p>
<p>I am actually giving her kudos for the grade, but I admit I am railing against the teacher at the same time. The English teacher does seem to give more assignments and she is slowly clawing her way up out of the hole that was the very early grading. It’s not clear what the USGov’s teacher’s m.o. will be. I’ll suggest she talk to him to see what can be done to pull it up.</p>
<p>(Also, my D is the sorta lazy one, not the too hard on herself one. )</p>
<p>“Just need to be careful you don’t come across as you are “blaming” the teacher which, I am sure, you are not.” But I AM blaming the teacher! LOL! Truly, if the average is in the 60s and there is no curve, then I think that’s crazy. These kids are not slackers.</p>
<p>“Truly, if the average is in the 60s and there is no curve, then I think that’s crazy.”</p>
<p>If ^ is true, then yes you do have right to blame the teacher. 
But ^ can’t be right, can it? How can you have class avg in 60s with no curve? I must be not understanding something b/c I am not getting the math here…</p>
<p>Does your school report quarter grades on the official transcripts or only the semester grades? Our school reports only the latter, and I’ve seen some of our AP teachers use the first quarter as sort of a “shake down cruise” to set expectations on standards and work habits under the apparent theory that B, A, and then A on the semester exam results in no harm/no foul on the transcript. You might want to approach the teacher to see what the philosophy is on where the kids should be (and the grade distribution) at the end of the semester.</p>
<p>suzy100, I’d be dropping a casual email to the teacher asking if you should be concerned about the grade – with no reference to any other students but your own.</p>
<p>I agree with SomeOldGuy. It’s not uncommon here for teachers, especially the AP or tough teachers to send home Bs as part of the first quarter report. The quarter grades are not part of the official transcript and they don’t seem to affect the semester grade. The teachers use them to signal how tough they are and/or how tough the class is. The grades always seem to move upward as the semester progresses. It sounds like your D is way at the top so it’s hard to imagine that she won’t end up with a good grade in each class.</p>
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<p>We started that convo yesterday! There are a lot of academic summer programs she is interested in doing, some that were not available to her before this summer as she’s a late birthday, only 16 this summer (lab stuff all seemed to be 16+).</p>
<p>Maximizing summer options means getting into writing essays asap so she can hit “submit” in January before $$$ runs out for the programs that offer scholarships. Hmm…good practice for next year, I suppose…</p>
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<p>AP Gov and AP English Lang this year have been similar. D has B’s in both so far. S took both 3 years before and says everyone has low grades at the beginning and most everyone “gets it” and does much better later (both are yearlong courses here). At our HS other than being college semester courses spread out over a year, college level work is expected. In these two particular APs, 4s and 5s are the norm for past classes, so they’re doing something right.</p>
<p>I did meet with this Gov teacher when S had the class, alarmed at his grades, but he got it together.</p>
<p>SOG, they just report semester grades, so you may be right. I just don’t know how kids can recover from a really low first quarter grade, though. I hate to be so focused on grades but this is such an important year and we’ve never encountered this so it’s a little scary.</p>
<p>FromMD, I don’t get it either. I recognize that D may be exaggerating or really not have a good picture of what’s really going on, but she said that the teacher handed out the tests and sort of scolded everyone and told them that was the average. I’m going to encourage her to see the teacher and ask how she can do better. This quarter ends next week so not much to be done in the time left, but she can tackle next quarter hopefully.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the APGov is just a semester course. The grades are calculated as follows: 40% each quarter and 20% for the final exam. So a bad first quarter can be meaningful.</p>
<p>I appreciate everyone’s advice here - truly. Now carry on, I don’t want to hijack this thread!</p>
<p>No wonder it’s so hard!! That really IS like a college course, then. Can’t hurt to set up a meeting, then? Good luck suzy!</p>
<p>hope it works out for your D. Good luck!</p>
<p>Suzy, if you can have an informal, friendly conversation with the teacher, unless your school is grade-deflated, I bet you will come away feeling very reassured. The teachers generally engage in some very creative accounting to make the grades come out “right.” Either they add more assignments, weight later assignments much more heavily than the early ones, or drop the lowest grade.</p>
<p>To those of you already planning next summer, I am very impressed and also very daunted.</p>
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<p>It seems like if we don’t give it a little thought now, options disappear. </p>
<p>For example if she wanted to play on a club lacrosse team next summer, to improve her game, be recruited, whatever, she’d have to try out in less than two weeks and commit soon after. (She’s not doing that.)</p>
<p>The academic summer program apps generally open in January but for her, a kid who will need some scholarship money to do one, waiting for the April-ish deadlines won’t work. </p>
<p>Of course there are options that don’t require action now…getting a summer job, volunteering somewhere, visiting family, just hanging out. But she loves to be able to get out of the state for at least a couple of weeks, if not a month+, to try new things, so she is motivated to do some work on it.</p>
<p>Do any other 2015 kids do academic summer programs? D did a neuroscience course at Brown two summers ago and LOVED it, did an engineering program at Temple last summer and was OK with it.</p>
<p>Suzy I would speak to the teacher about this- I think you will feel better. My daughter is in AP Spanish where everyone ( reportedly) does poorly at first on the AP type tests and very very well on the non-AP type tests, and most kids end up doing well and getting 4 and 5 on the AP test. This teacher also gives a lot of " extras" to pick up grades. Same with physics- there is a quarterly test that is on a regular level and is optional. It takes the place of AP level tests and works as a grade booster ( lowest grade gets dropped). The final exam is 20% of their final grade and it is the Regents. Perhaps your daughter’s teacher does something similar and you are not aware. I hope I make sense- it’s been a long week.</p>
<p>My daughter has the tutor soon, followed by a game tomorrow. My H and I will go out to dinner later, where I may just order a glass of wine!! My kid will be in all weekend ( except for her tutor and game) doing work. She will do her SAT hw and ACT science test as promised. I am not sure if I will try and lure her into taking the PSAT practice test that was sent home because she is doing SAT work and that will cover her. I may go through it myself and see what the vocabulary is like, but maybe not LOL.</p>
<p>I’m still impressed. I’m sure D has missed out on some summer opportunities because I am not organized enough to steer her in the right direction early enough and she hasn’t been with it enough or motivated enough to figure out what she wants to do or even how to find what she might want to do. This is definitely a weakness of hers and I admire it very much in other kids. </p>
<p>D’s school provides some funding for summer study abroad and applications open in January. I don’t know how much funding they actually provide and I don’t know what the proposal entails. She missed out on this last year because she didn’t know about it. She lucked out in finding Girls Who Code at the last minute though and it was free. </p>
<p>D came home today flying high because she got an A on her APUSH test even though she didn’t finish the essay and the teacher had warned the class that most of them did not do well. She has her first AP Comp Sci exam on Monday so the nice restful weekend she’d envisioned has evaporated.</p>
<p>Keepmecrusin: that’s me.</p>
<p>90066’s dad told me about CC. Casa 3’sdad should be so lucky as to have the DD matriculate to where 90066’s DD is playing.</p>