<p>It would be a disservice to your son to transfer him without finding out the issues. Meet with the math teacher and GC before you do anything.</p>
<p>Yes, we thought he may not be the “math type” because of his low freshman and sophomore grades in math. However, once we saw his SAT scores at the end of sophomore year, we quickly realized that his low math grades did not reflect a failure to understand mathematics.</p>
<p>Pretty common, actually. He has the aptitude, but he’s not doing the work.</p>
<p>
Erin’s Dad - You have 8000+ posts, so maybe it’s a new feature and you just don’t know about it - but you can adjust the number of posts per page. Your post is on the first page for me. 
And this post is the third on the second page.</p>
<p>If the kid is the uncommunicative type, it’s not surprising to me that all of this is coming as a revelation to the parent. I had one son with organizational and communicative challenges - he did poorly in his first two years at high school despite high test grades. It seems that the lack of exchange of information with the parents is mirrored by a lack of substantial communication with friends and classmates. It can take a while to identify this as a problem and formulate new strategies.
It’s not helicopter-parenting to dig deeper and find the reason for poor grades. Schools and parents combine to give the best education for the kids, and part of the PARENT’s job is to find the weaknesses in the school system and supplement them to their best ability. A few sessions with a math tutor could have clued you in early on.
As it is, there is hope - a junior will have some senior friends who are going into the college admissions process, and that is a huge eye-opener for underperforming kids. Ask your son about his friends and what schools thay are looking at, what grades they need to get into those longed-for schools. He is in a position to turn his grade around, but not unless you help him develop a workable strategy for doing so.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If he is having difficulty with the math work, why is he taking this very difficult course list? ALL of the courses on this list are challenging ones. Why?</p>
<p>So this is the OP’s son’s third year in this district? I had to go back and reread the first post to be sure. I don’t quite buy the story that in two years in a district the OP or the student never, ever was told about teacher’s online sites, or grading policies, or that the OP never went to any “Back to School Night”, or scheduled a conference with a teacher, or spoke to any other parents or students. In our district all of the above are offered every year, along with freshman orientation sessions for both students and parents, along with similar sessions for transfer families. You would have to deliberately decide not to understand why your child doesn’t seem to be working up to his potential after two years in one high school. </p>
<p>I believe the OP needs to schedule a conference with the teacher, and attend it with a very open mind. Chances are very good that your child hasn’t done the homework. Or he did it but didn’t turn it in. Or he did it and turned it in but didn’t show his work. Or he does well on his homework but bombs the tests. Or…</p>
<p>I know a fair number of kids who also have done well on SATs but whose grades don’t reflect those scores. They are smart kids who don’t pay attention in class, or blow off homework, or hate projects, or are disorganized, or don’t care, or have ADD.(I don’t buy the argument that “he’s bored”. It may happen, but rarely as often as parents like to think.)</p>
<p>I agree with posters who caution against assuming the problem is with the teacher, or the school.</p>
<p>Pardon me if this has been mentioned, but the first night’s required homework for each class for each of my kids all through high school was getting the syllabus and grading policy signed by your parent and returned. It is then available again at back to school night, also available on each teacher’s website. There is no excuse for going this long with a student or parent not knowing why are grade is what it is. If you are confused your student asks the teacher, THEN you step in, THEN you go to the administration. No SAT needed in this equation (for validation that is). As others pointed out, it’s a different skill set on a single day and not an equal comparison (thus colleges look at GPA, rigor, and SATs, to get a fuller picture of the students ability and potential).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think that’s a wonderful policy.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s the norm (at least not with any of the four HS districts I’ve had kids in over the years).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, the short answer is fewer APs. There is no AP Computer Science II course at the other district. Son, (who is getting an A) will drop it and get a study hall as an elective. We do not think it will look bad dropping out of an AP class in which he is holding an A average. Next semester he can pick another non AP elective. In addition, he might be able to swap out of APUSH and AP English Lang. and pick up academic. This will free up time to focus on the rest of his AP classes. However, I was not sure about the impact on his GPA, I will find out from other school on monday. </p>
<p>did I mention how the freshman counselor put my son in AP Computer Science as an elective? who in their right mind puts a high school freshman into AP Computer Science as an elective, then forgets to tell the child or the parents sitting infront of them, this is a very difficult college level course drop it and come back if you have a hard time? If I were the counselor I would remind them of the date by which the course had to be dropped. I would probably have given them a list of other courses they could take. Instead, her last words to us, as we were leaving the room were, I hope I do not have to see you during the rest of the year! I could go on and on.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>most of the kids at the new high school will be the same kids with whom he went to elementary and middle school. We brought him to this high school in another district, at the end of middle school, thinking it would have better teachers, because it is a richer community. Did not figure it would feel this cold and uncommunicative.</p>
<p>Like I said to Pizzagirl, " did I mention how the freshman counselor put my son in AP Computer Science as an elective? who in their right mind puts a high school freshman into AP Computer Science as an elective, then forgets to tell the child or the parents sitting infront of them, this is a very difficult college level course drop it and come back if you have a hard time? If I were the counselor I would remind them of the date by which the course had to be dropped. I would probably have given them a list of other courses they could take. Instead, her last words to us, as we were leaving the room were, I hope I do not have to see you during the rest of the year! I could go on and on"</p>
<p>Our high school has the same first night homework policy as blueiguana’s. No excuses not to know about teacher policy, web sites, grading policy, etc. Our district also sends home a rather huge catalogue of courses, including course descriptions and prerequisites every January, and parent and teacher signatures are required when signing up for the next years’s classes.</p>
<p>OP, you seem to be determined to blame the teacher, the guidance counselor and the high school for the fact that you see a disconnect between the results of a single, standardized test and your child’s grades, which, as several posters have pointed put, have very little to do with one another. </p>
<p>Are you looking for a reason to pull your child out of this school, or are you looking for advice on why that disconnect might exist? The posters on this thread have given you some great advice, but you keep firing back with reasons you are unhappy with the school. Nobody on this forum can tell you why your child has earned the grades he has, or why his grades seem disconnected from his SAT score. But your child’s teacher can certainly tell you why your child is earning the grades he is earning.</p>
<p>Cold and uncommunicative? Sorry for this: I thought you were describing a situation in which you were not fully communicating with the school. And, maybe not fully with your son. We usually ask our kids about their actual schedules once a semester starts, how they like their classes and are doing, about early test/homework grades, mid-semester reports- and later, plans for the next semester, etc. We learned about online support, office hours, peer tutoring and how homework/timeliness, etc, was expected to be handled- at Back to School night or by speaking with the teacher. Not helicoptering, but communicating. Sorry. </p>
<p>Apparently, he did well enough in AP CS (freshman?) that the GC thought it was logical to continue. Or, is there confusion here? You said geom and alg 2 were freshman and soph problems so is he now in AP CS II? </p>
<p>How does your son feel about changing? Is he part of the decision?<br>
Yes, adcoms will notice. There will also be an expectation of little or no change in his EC patterns. You may want to learn if he can move into similar roles in similar clubs, sports, performances, whatever, at the new school, before deciding.</p>
<p>I am not sure what the real story is here.</p>
<p>Some of your concerns with the school sound legitimate. Parents need to educate themselves and be advocates for their kids these days. However, if you do not investigate as to why your son is earning the grades that he is, the same thing may well happen at the new school. I urge you to meet with the math teacher to discuss his grades. It may be a very enlightening exchange.</p>
<p>It amazes me how you can see all the ways by which this school failed you and yet see no role for yourself or any sort of responsibility. I’m wondering why you didn’t ask questions, go to meetings, seek change, try to understand what is going on for your son in all the ordinary ways that parents will do when they care as much as you obviously care right now. You seem to have waited a crazy long time in the dark and your solution to uncovering the problem was to give your child an SAT test (either at the end of sophomore year according to this thread or on Oct 1 of this year as a junior, according to your other threads). It just doesn’t add up. Nor do the other things you describe. They seem made up after the fact. </p>
<p>Not to mention, I now see elsewhere he took the PSAT, not the SAT, and his scores were different, as was his GPA and you were interested in MIT. So what are you really telling us?: “In middle school he was State recognized in the Duke University TIP program for his critical reading skills in 2008. Even though his Math scores were average (50 percentile rank)… His math scores are improving. He took the PSAT as a sophomore and got an 88 percentile rank in math. His GPA reflects this weakness. He has a 4.0 weighted average.”</p>
<p>I understand some parents do not care enough, and some are unable or to proactive enough (for a variety of reasons), but they aren’t usually giving their kids SAT tests early or posting on CC sounding like a really concerned parent (as you do now). </p>
<p>I’m getting hyper-reactive about trolls on CC lately, so forgive me, but your posts on this thread sounds more like a frustrated teenager (and not like the parents of one).</p>
<p>AP Comp Sci can be easy or hard depending on the kid. It only covers one semester of a typical course in college. My son took it as a freshman.</p>
<p>The school is not to blame. Your son’s grades are most likely the result of mediocre performance in the classroom, which is not the exclusive domain of people with lower test scores. I scored 770 on the math section of the SAT, yet I never received a single A in math throughout high school. My grades were a solid string of Cs and Bs. Why? I never studied, or turned in homework assignments, or cared about my grades. I was fine with getting Cs and Bs, and my teachers were fine with handing them out. I found math supremely uninteresting.</p>
<p>It sounds to me like your son has fed you a load of BS in an attempt to placate you, but really. The student is the only one responsible for his grades.</p>
<p>If he doesn’t want to study or can’t be bothered to look for the teacher’s website (and you’re deluding yourself if you think the other students in his class never mentioned it in his presence), that’s his prerogative. Stop hovering and making excuses for him. His school is not obligated to bump up the grades of people who get above-average SAT scores.</p>
<p>Oh, and by the way. 690 is not as impressive a score as you seem to think it is.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>For a HS sophomore, it’s impressive. Not world class, perhaps, but impressive.</p>
<p>* For example, he worked on an assignment all day, then forgot to take it in. *</p>
<p>If this was an assignment that could fit in his backpack, then encourage your child to get into the habit of immediately putting finished assignments into his backpack, instead of setting it aside to deal with later (same for textbooks/calculators/etc). If this was an assignment that is large (like a poster), then he should get in the habit of putting the finished product right next to his backpack.</p>
<p>the motto needs to be, homework isn’t truly finished until it’s in (or next to) the backpack. After finding a couple of finished assignments in our printer’s output tray or some other forgotten spot, we had to make that rule.</p>
<p>Our school district also has the parent sign the syllabus at the beginning of the year in each class. Even the Ap courses. We also have to sign the course selection sheet which clearly notes the level of each course being taken. BUT, not all of the teachers have websites, unfortunately. And although we do have online grades, the info there is only as good as the teacher is good about putting them in. Some teachers are weeks behind getting grades into the system. Kind of useless at that point. </p>
<p>As for AP CS…I had to fight to get my kid IN AP CS as a freshman. But he had past programming experience.</p>
<p>We had to have the same rule as M2CK…homework in the bag or gathered by the door the night before school. And HW was ALWAYS first thing done after school, no video/tv/gaming or socializing with friends until completed. Homework not being completed was not acceptable in our home, there were no decisions to be made, it was a priority. </p>
<p>We slacked off on the above rules last year. As a junior, we needed him to take more responsibility. After 2 forgotten assignments and frantic calls to home to request delivery, he received warnings that this was not acceptable. The third time it happened, I presented my son with a bill for the time it took me to find and drive his assignment to school. I work from home on billable time, so I just billed for the time I missed. After making him pay me twice, it did not happen again until once in the spring. I let that one slide with a warning.</p>