<p>Both of these were factors for my son at different times, and now I have some ideas how it could have been done better. But I’m wondering what other perspectives are out there. How did your child work around the problems?</p>
<p>My daughter attends a public arts high school where schedules are very tightly packed in order to accommodate academics and the almost four hours a day of arts programming. As a result, this year, her lunch hour starts at 8:30 a.m. Nothing we could do about it, other than she obtained permission to eat something quietly during a later academic class.</p>
<p>Well, it’s no longer a problem since my daughter is in college now…but for one year of high school, she was in a district that operated on a block schedule. Block schedules are the worst idea ever—it’s entirely an administrative convenience and cost-saver for the district, with no educational advantage for the students. Doing a year’s worth of work in a semester doesn’t allow enough time for a student to consolidate the material, and it results in discontinuities in key subject areas, e.g., math, languages. After taking math and a language the previous year at a school in a different district, she had to wait through the summer and the first semester before she could take these subjects again. In her first semester in that school, she had to take honors chemistry in a single semester. Due to job changes, we moved from that district after a year.</p>
<p>One that seems to be pretty common for many of those posting here is the requirement that, for students two grades ahead in math, that AP Calculus be spread into two years (one year for AB, then the remaining BC stuff the next year), instead of allowing the student take a one year AP Calculus BC course that a student good enough in math to be two grades ahead should be able to handle easily.</p>
<p>Some have said that it allows high schools to inflate the “number of students taking AP courses and AP tests”, or that they think that a lot of students are pushed two grades ahead in math when they really should not be.</p>
<p>The lack of Period 7 or Period 0 classes (other than a very few) that forces kids to choose between academics and EC-type courses, a very weak science program in the 12th grade program, when the school includes a science magnet, occasionally double-scheduling two courses that many students would like to access.</p>
<p>I’ve left my high school, but my siblings are being subjected to:</p>
<p>1) The alternative high school (for kids who have been expelled) is being closed and placed into the high school for a year. (Many of these students were expelled for hurting students still there)
2) Only the minimum number of credits can be taken for graduation. ie You cannot take more than four math, four history, four english, and three science classes.
3) Most AP and honors classes will be gone.
4)A school was built five years ago for the ninth grade to relieve overcrowding, the ninth grade is going back into the high school. So there will be almost three thousand people in the school.
5) Teachers will be fired, so class sizes will be even bigger.</p>
<p>Not sure if this is a curriculum flaw or more of a basic teaching flaw, but both kids have a lot homework that is graded on completion only and not graded on correctness. While I realize that this makes things easier for the teachers, not grading homework for correctness doesn’t make the students work hard enough to understand the material (which is when the learning happens IMO).</p>
<p>The HS is moving to a trimester system next year. Not sure I like that too much either but I’ll have to see…</p>
<p>At my kid’s high school, the biggest problem was that the foreign language classes did not use any tracking. There was no “honors” level. That means the kids who really wanted to learn were mixed in with the kids who were one day away from dropping out.</p>
<p>Now, the biggest problem is that our Governor in Pennsylvania is slashing funding to urban public high schools, and there are massive layoffs of teachers and large-scale elimination of courses.</p>
<p>A few years ago, the district started a math track that would put a handful of students 2 years ahead in math. The highest math class offered in Calc I (we don’t have AP). So, a kid gets to Calc I as a junior, then senior year . . . </p>
<p>The district also noticed with the handful of TAG kids in this math track that this level of acceleration was too much, too soon and will be discontinuing it. But, that still leaves about 4 years of kids who need a math beyond Calc I. I don’t know what we’ll do. D2 will schedule a full load (no free periods), so it’s not like she’ have time to leave and drive across town to one of the colleges to take math. Not a big fan of online courses. </p>
<p>Only foreign language is Spanish. </p>
<p>This isn’t really a curricular or schedule issue, but I think one of my school’s flaws is the funding of sports over anything else. The band gets nothing, and I pay a bucketload of fees. In track? $50 uniform fee, returned when the uniform is turned back in.</p>
<p>to ginab591:</p>
<p>Oh my gosh. That is terrible ! And yet that sounds like exactly what a lot of “school critics” seem to want for everyone.</p>
<p>For son. Conflicts with unpopular courses that only had one class time- forced choices of courses. Therefore Honors Junior Lit to take French 4 instead of being able to take 2 AP Lit courses. Meant taking another lit course in college (a good thing) while fulfilling BA degree college reqs if he wanted that instead of a BS. Filled a sophomore first semester slot with AP Music instead of a computer class. At least his HS was the one when they had combined two HS orchestras and they had enough students for the most AP classes so no next class time lost in transportation.</p>
<p>Minor- possibly good- overlaps with sports and music/honor society events in the evening. One way to get out of some “required” EC events. Another district HS NHS required the presence at meetings for a student out of town during the week for college courses (through state- HS program) while a senior in HS. Son’s sports/music/academic ECs seemed to work schedule wise- don’t recall his needing to choose competitions that conflicted. He was able to miss performing for a sports event, NHS and another honor inductions and manning a concessions booth because of his sports and once I rushed him home for a music event from the furthest out of town CC meet for a music event (not a major concert). </p>
<p>I was pleasantly surprised at how well things worked for a gifted child. The school was able to make exceptions for several students to accomodate their needs. Blue collar city public school- but in a state known for good education. However, not enough highly gifted kids exist except in huge cities to offer the most for gifted education. I would say that any factors leading him to where he is today were of his making- his choices in getting grades and applying to colleges.</p>
<p>When I was a senior in HS four years ago, they had an ecology class and an advanced ecology class-- the two were taught simultaneously learning the same info, but the advanced class had additional projects that the regular class didn’t do. Because of this set up, if you took ecology in the fall you could only take advanced ecology in the spring-- so you weren’t relearning the same material over again. But my school messed up and put me in advanced ecology in the Spring even though I’d already taken regular ecology for the spring, and they “fixed” it by overriding the rules and letting me take spring advanced ecology. So I took the same class twice for credit.</p>
<p>We also used to have “collaboration” days where the students got to come in at like 9 instead of at 7am like usual, every other Tuesday, so that the teachers could get together and “collaborate.” Classes were shortened for those days to accommodate this. They did away with it eventually because the teachers were open about the fact that it was useless, and because students were constantly late because the buses still came at 7 so you had to drive if you didnt want to be locked in the cafeteria for two hours and traffic was a nightmare. Unfortunately, it was clear that the STUDENTS did much better being able to start school at 9 instead of at 7am, but administratively it was a disaster so we had to go back to early morning class.</p>
<p>The above days of late starts is funny/strange because since my son graduated the district instituted some late start days for teachers to get together aside from inservices.</p>
<p>@mimk: Same. My HS was not too big on 7th periods (we only had one: (non-AP) Bio. They preferred 0 periods. However, I really don’t concentrate as well at 7 AM than I do at 2 PM.</p>
<p>My highschool makes you take mandatory joke classes when you could be taking real ones. The teacher’s also make so many grading errors last year I ended up with B’s because I didn’t go back to them all to get stuff changed because its my responsibility. Worst of all instead of being in 6 ap classes im in 3 because they dont know how to use the scheduling system</p>
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<p>This made me laugh, because I actually loved the block system back when I was in high school! It was nice only having to worry about four homeworks a night instead of seven-eight, and I felt having an hour and a half every day for half the year really let me learn the material in my AP classes better than people I knew in college with a traditional scheduling system.</p>
<p>It irritated me that Latin didn’t have honors until year 4, while others had it in year 3 and possibly in year 2. It meant anyone who took Latin got a small ding on their GPA and one that no one told them about in middle school when the choice is made. </p>
<p>My biggest beef is that the classes sizes are large and so history and literature teachers probably don’t assign as many papers as they should.</p>
<p>What they did right was let gifted kids accelerate pretty much as fast as they felt comfortable with. 180 degree difference in attitude from middle school or elementary school.</p>
<p>A huge number of AP courses were offered, but there were often scheduling issues when my kids tried to take them. I don’t really blame them, though they might have been better off having more sections of fewer courses.</p>
<p>Limited number of electives.
Limited number of sections of an AP course so some students cannot take the AP classes they want, they have to pick/choose some APs over others due to when the classes are offered.
Huge difference between regular course, honors and AP. Workloads for Honors and Ap can be exponential, yet weighting doesn’t reflect real differences.
Required Life Skills course…not state mandated, it’s school mandated and doesn’t count in GPA</p>
<p>At my kid’s HS, true “extra-curricular” activities other than sports are not offered. Anything like debate, theater, yearbook, newspaper are scheduled classes offered during the day and actually require “try-outs” to be enrolled. </p>
<p>And so, my child is just sticking to sports, summer jobs, and lots of volunteer hours and church activities for ec’s.</p>
<p>At our school, there’s no Calc BC.</p>