<p>Youdon’tsay, I agree there are cases where it’s a reality - but it’s not the reality for most students. In your son’s case, perhaps he (and anyone else choosing not to take the exam) should request that the teachers run the class as a study hall, so they can study, rather than show movies.</p>
<p>As a taxpayer, I think it’s a shame that schools waste the final month. The teachers are paid to teach, and that’s what they should be doing. They wonder why so many kids return to school in the fall unprepared to jump back in, yet they don’t teach the final month? Sounds like a mixed message to me. Our schools teach until the very end - and yes, it’s sometimes difficult to engage the kids up to the last day, but that’s their job!</p>
<p>My sophomore D is taking her first AP exam today. We “stayed home” from the school honors assembly last night because of the exam. As apparently most of the girls (all girls school) taking this test did as well. They had a last afterschool study session with the AP teacher afterschool till 4:30 and the honors assembly was at 6:30. D wanted to be able to complete her other homework and destress instead of increase stress the evening before the test. Plus she wasn’t feeling the best and she wanted the extra rest.</p>
<p>As much as I wanted to go to the honors assembly, I couldn’t deny that she was making a mature, sound decision. It was more important for her to attend the study session, complete her other academic homework and REST (get to bed at a decent hour) instead of sitting for an hour and a half waiting for her name to be called and to receive a certificate. </p>
<p>These are the types of decisions they will make in college - go sit in the dull lecture class where they can get the powerpoint online or use that 90 mins to hone a class presentation? We do these things as adults in our everyday life at home and at work all the time - one day isn’t going to make or break you.</p>
<p>I called my senior out today so that he could get his tux for prom as opposed to sitting through 4 study halls in a row. There is a senior sign out sheet that they can fill out at the beginning of the school year so they can leave or come in late if they have study halls, but there is no option at this time of year if you didn’t fill it out then. An unexcused (the definition of which is murky) absence now, even from a study hall results in having to take any finals from which they are exempt. </p>
<p>There have been two or three times in high school that I offered to let him stay home to finish something or study, but he always declined. It did have the effect of making him feel that I do understand the pressure high school students can feel at times. So win, win.</p>
<p>I think some of this has to do with scheduling. In NYC, school doesn’t end until the last week of June, but the AP tests are in early May, so classes are finished even before that which leaves a lot of time to do absolutely nothing for seniors. It makes a certain amount of sense to take a day if necessary to get everything finished and all cleaned up by that point. Some younger kids also have Regents exams that they have to take, so scheduling can be complicated between AP exams, finals, Regents and possibly SATs.</p>
<p>I remember back when I was doing APs. Most of us were taking a couple of them (often not the same), so you’d have a bunch of students missing each class due to being in another exam. Some students would be staying home to try and spend the whole day studying (or, in the case of one of my friends, having a Tuesday at the beach to relax before a few exams later in the week). The rest of us would be there in class, generally without much to do. Some classes the teacher ran as study sessions, sort of like the final recitations I hold now when I TA a class. I remember my Calc teacher had us just take old exam after old exam to prep us for the AP test.</p>
<p>Our school was also a little weird, in that we were on the block schedule system, so there’s a chance you might not have finished your AP class in late January, so a day of heavy last minute studying might well be worth it.</p>
<p>All of our AP classes were still required to continue teaching after the exam. I remember doing organic chemistry, optics, relativity, differential equations, and our class helping the CS teacher test-drive the Java curriculum for the next year (we were the last year of C++).</p>
<p>I never really understood why AP exams were when they are in May. I know years we lost a few days due to snow, or had state exams (11th grade in PA, if I recall correctly) it made cramming in all that stuff for the AP exam pretty difficult.</p>
<p>We in the northeast, with our Sept to June school calendar are at the mercy of the schools that start in August, and finish in May. AP exams are that early because some schools are out by the end of May, and they also need time to score them and send them to colleges, before they start in the fall.</p>
<p>I too recall learning once the exams were done. The time leading up to the exam was used to cover topics that were on the exam. The 5 or 6 weeks following the exams were spent on related topics that would not be on the exam. Our schools will end on June 28 this year, and I heard the schools where I grew up may end up attending on July 1st!</p>
<p>AP exams in the context of that type of block scheduling don’t make the most sense to me. Either you finish your class in January, and wait several months before the exam, or you don’t have a full term to learn the material. I can understand wanting a chance to review, but I fault the schools for teaching that way. I guess it’s another way the system is broken.</p>
<p>In ds’s school’s defense, some classes are still going at it, but it’s not stuff that’s so AP related. In fact, ds just got an e-mail from his English teacher reminding them of a LOT of work due next week – lots of personal reflection-type pieces. Then the last two weeks are spent sharing that work in class. There is a final, but lots of kids are exempt based on various things (high average, taking the AP exam, etc.).</p>
<p>I think students have different study techiques that work for them. If a day of cramming and/or reviewing timelines, or names and dates is helpful to a student then by all means allow them to have that day off. </p>
<p>Not much bothers me on CC but that whole post on teachers, administration and other students believing those sudents that take a day to study are “dim” and don’t belong in the school really bothers me. I woke up thinking about it.</p>
<p>when my daughters took the aps they found an extra day helpful for studying, it reenforced they knew the material and relaxed them or gave them time to go over math formulas or chem data</p>
<p>i don’t get all the hate for letting kids have a day off sometimes, for whatever reason. i know my kids needed them. not very many, maybe three a year, but those days helped</p>
<p>i actually pulled them from school when their dad got his citizenship and we went to the ceremony and had a family lunch, we told the school exactly why they were not there and the school was thrilled!! to make up for missing the day, they each wrote a short paper on the day for a class that was appropriate, language for one, and history for the other</p>
<p>another time my daughter had so much work, and a major art project she took a day off to get everything caught up, it made for better work</p>
<p>cromette-
Out of curiosity, how does the AP work as the final in that class when the score isn’t released until July? Each school has any number of ways of handling finals (or exemptions for them) so please don’t think I care/am judging. I’m simply curious how a grade is assigned.</p>
<p>This is obviously a cost:benefit ratio as it would apply to attending a HS class.
Some caveats:
I think you can cram for tests as has been done since the world began.
You might not do better given enough time but it does dredge up the material from the recesses of your brain and put them upfront.
Most HS classes could be shortened anyway if true focus were given to a subject.
WWYD:
What are you missing vs. Benefit of free time to study
Attitude is important. I grew up with “attendance awards”. Not sure why that was so special. That assumes nobody ever got sick or that was something special.
AP classes for a LOT of students count as college credit and I don’t see anything wrong with that. A good AP class can have as much rigor as some college classes I’ve seen. It lessens the academic and monetary load later on for many. Why would you NOT put the emphasis there instead of “you need to attend a class just because you’re supposed to” ? Sounds like a good decision to me.</p>
<p>I actually really liked the block scheduling system. It was nice only having to ever deal with four classes at a time. I also liked how a lot of my classes worked by the system of a 45 minute lecture followed by 45 minutes of assisted work time. It allowed the teacher to actually be around for when you got stuck on a problem, and let actual learning take place in the classroom.</p>
<p>The school also made it so some of the AP classes ran for three quarters. I remember Chemistry being that way, as well as Calculus. Chem went from the beginning of the year through third term. Calc started second quarter and ran through the end of the year. I can’t even imagine what some peoples’ friends would think when they found out we actually took AB followed by BC the following year instead of just jumping to BC with that generous schedule, too. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>My kids never stayed home for a full day to study for an AP test, but D1 did go in late on a day when she had an AP test in the afternoon. I just told them she would only be in for the AP test - I didn’t think she needed to go through the mental exhaustion of a morning of classes immediately prior to the test. If she was taking an entire day off to study, I would just tell the school she wouldn’t be in - they don’t require that a reason be given.</p>
<p>And FWIW, my D was busy right through the end of the year her senior year. Even in AP classes they had to take final exams in addition to the AP test. There were no exam exemptions in other classes, either. Homework assignments were given up until the end - there are a number of juniors in classes with seniors, and classes don’t just grind to a halt for them because the seniors have graduation looming. Our seniors did finish a week before the rest of the school (and took their finals a week earlier), but that was it.</p>
<p>While my junior high school classes stopped teaching new material or having much work within the last three weeks, that wasn’t the case at my NYC SHS. Classes, especially those conducted by old-school teachers continued to cover material, homework/papers continued, and sometimes complete another exam. As seniors, the last month was also a good time to finish up the mandatory 20 page English senior thesis we all had to do on top of our workloads…whether we were AP students or not. </p>
<p>Some of us did have senioritus, but if taken too far…colleges were notified and I personally knew some classmates who ended up having their admissions rescinded because they slacked off too much in their last semester or worse, ended up finding out they had to spend another semester/year because they flunked/failed to complete all the high school’s requirements.*</p>
<ul>
<li>I personally knew of a STEM-oriented student who had to spend an extra semester/year making up for all the English classes he somehow exempted himself from because he knew how to work the antiquated computer system which created class schedules and felt English lit classes “were a waste of his time”. Last week, another classmate mentioned on FB how another classmate did the same self-exemptions for Gym and ended up having to spend an extra semester taking nothing but Gym classes to fulfill HS/NYC DOE requirements.</li>
</ul>
<p>“cromette-
Out of curiosity, how does the AP work as the final in that class when the score isn’t released until July? Each school has any number of ways of handling finals (or exemptions for them) so please don’t think I care/am judging. I’m simply curious how a grade is assigned.”</p>
<p>If you sit for the final in most AP classes at our school, you get a pass on the final. If you do not, you have to take the final. If your grade was suffering and you wanted the chance to bring it up, you could do both. But if you take the AP test, you are automatically exempt.</p>
<p>At our school, there are three levels of absences, unexcused, excused and exempt.</p>
<p>Exempt:</p>
<p>activities related to parent on military leave or deployment (up to five)
Religious holy days
Required court appearances
Activities related to obtaining United States citizenship
Service as an election clerk
Documented health-care appointments
Junior or Senior college visitation days (2 per year)</p>
<p>Excused:
For illness with a note from a parent. 3 days or more requires doctor’s note.</p>
<p>I think it’s amazing that people are making judgements and assumptions about the OP’s child when they know nothing about him/her other than the one question she posted. sheesh.</p>
<p>My daughter has one unexcused absence. No biggie. I wrote a note:</p>
<p>“Please excuse D3’s absence from classes yesterday. We kept her at home because she needed extra study time and some rest.”</p>
<p>We knew the school would not excuse it, but we wanted them to know that we KNEW she was out, and we had reasons WE felt warranted her staying at home. It’s not something we normally do, but she needed it in this instance.</p>
<p>I never felt like I had to provide a reason for an absence. IMO it was enough that it was ok with me, and really it’s none of the school’s business as to exactly why.</p>
<p>So my notes were always just “Please excuse DD’s absence yesterday.”</p>