^^
^^^That is certainly nothing new. I had a teacher tell me about one of my kids that was under-achieving at the time. She said that she knew he understood the material as well as any kid in the class, but could only grade him on the work he produced. If he made sloppy mistakes or didn’t turn in homework with work shown, she had to grade him down, even though his answers in class showed he had mastered the material. Some kids “get it” without doing 20 problems of the same type. That being said, some kids think they have it and may do well on a test, but flounder in the next section or the next course. But grades are what counts and by high school kids (and parents) certainly understand that.
@MiamiDAP, no offense intended at all, but I am not surprised you don’t understand my comment about deep thinkers. I know you are a person who likes to stay busy all the time, dreads retirement and “down time”, and (I think) doesn’t engage much in creative pursuits or philosophical meandering thought. Not everyone is like you in that respect, though. I think for most people, it is hard for them to really know themselves when they never have any time to themselves. I also think that some of the most interesting and creative ideas we have are when we aren’t focused directly on something, but are letting it ferment while doing other less intellectually intense things. Being totally programmed all the time isn’t the best way to develop curious, interested, interestING human beings.
I do agree that swimmers are like runners, and have plenty of time to just think.
That doesn’t work for most sports, though. There’s a reason for the expression “Get your head in the game.” If you’re not constantly thinking on the field in most sports you’ll be in trouble.
I’m a big fan of athletics. Multiple studies have shown that strenuous exercise is great for cognition. I’m also a big fan of down time. I remember reading about a study done years ago (wish I could remember where so I could link it here) that looked at the traits of highly successful people, and in particular at environmental factors. They looked at all sorts of things-education, parental backgrounds, birth order, etc. but the one factor that united these successful people was the unusually large amount of time they had spent in free, unstructured play as a child. They reported having spent a lot of time doing things like exploring in the woods, throwing a ball against the garage, writing their own plays or just hanging out in the back yard wondering about things.
OP here, I have read every single comment here. As a long time reader and poster, I have never received so many responses to a question I posed. Guess we aren’t alone in this challenge! Just FYI, we did a lot of thinking about the posts above, and have elected to set a unbreakable bedtime of 10PM to preserve health, and gave her 6 different suggestions on how to reduce her schedule. If she doesn’t figure it out, we will make the choice, which (with her doctor’s support) will be to inform the coach that she needs to cut her practices and pe to 3x a week to get her health issues under control before track season starts. One think I have learned (again) is the importance of well informed allies. Her doctor was amazing… Turns out he is a long distance runner, and did an awesome job explaining why this would be a good choice. Our other choices (drop an AP class, switch to a less demanding Honors English teacher, switch to pe instead of track second season) were more onerous than a simple reduction in practice. Sports are supposed to be FUN… Not grueling. She doesn’t like that choice because of the social aspect and her feeling that running is stress reducing, so has elected to look for ways to be a good time manager. And isn’t that the best choice of all??? So… Thanks again for weighing in… I know other lurkers will benefit as well.
While that as a solution may work for you and your daughter, others in your situation may not have that as an option. Interscholastic athletics at most schools are an all-or-nothing proposition. If you don’t practice that week, you don’t compete. Miss too many practices, you’re off the team. Anyway, best of luck to you and your D.
I have come to believe from watching my 2 kids that 90% of social studies homework are time wasting exercises, especially the project based ones.
Wasn’t the XC team counting as PE? The coach may not have so much flexibility in scheduling to make 3x week practices count as a semester of PE.
We have the cable modem in the house set to shut down every night at 9:30, and it doesn’t come back up until 6 am the next day. We effectively go full Luddite all night long (our phones get terrible reception in the house), and it’s worked really well to get the kids to not stay up all night working on homework that they used to not start until 9 at night.
I’m kicking myself that I didn’t think to do this when they were back in middle school, because now they get home around 5, eat dinner, and start homework, because they know they have to have it done by 9:30. I don’t know if this is an option for you, but it certainly makes it easier to get them to sleep here.
Re: deep thinker, I think some people are doers/talkers, others are thinkers. I have one of each. The doer likes to stay busy and talks non-stop, the thinker likes time to himself so he can be creative, and he is very creative. I think all kids should have a chance to be bored. It is from boredom that some find creative ways to entertain themselves.
As far as hours of sleep, I think that also depends on the kid. In senior high I never got more than 4 to 6 hours of sleep, and I had no problem staying awake and enjoying school.
There are quite a few recent studies showing that not getting enough sleep is more detrimental to your health than we used to realize. Just because past generations (and many adults today) get by on too little sleep is no reason future generations should continue doing it. Everyone used to smoke, too.
If the point of AP classes is to mimic a college class, then we should be asking: why all the busy work? Why the handwritten notes and outlines? Why all the projects? Why all the available options to help boost test grades? Or do colleges now offer these options?
If these classes are to truly mimic college conditions: show up for class, listen to the lecture, take 2-3 tests and a final exam = final grade. Granted, my upper level major oriented classes were not like that at all, but all of my history/econ/etc. classes were pretty much like I described.
The college board may like to pretend that AP classes are college level but I think most people know better. Plenty of kids score well on the AP exam and then struggle in supposedly the same class in college.
I certainly think the AP classes could be improved, but with respect to the history classes, I think the test grades aren’t that high. It seems most of the AP students are not able to master the material adequately, even with many teachers requiring the outlines. I think there’s a pretty wide consensus that these classes have too much work, so if you add on a few major papers, like you would have to write in college, to the already large task of learning a lot of historical information, parents would be up in arms. I personally don’t have a problem with a survey class that is mostly memorization. I think too many teachers want to teach “in depth” and the kids end up having no idea of the context, meaning, or importance of what they’ve learned. Best to get the big picture before studying in depth.
The test grades have to be boosted somehow. The AP tests vary, but on some you can get a 5 even if you only score 60%. How do you reconcile this with a typical high school grading scale? It wouldn’t be fair to require high school students to get 90%+ if the college board defines the highest exam score as 60%. So you can curve the grades and/or offer lots of opportunities to pad them with easy A’s on homework, participation, etc. I think many teachers do both.
slightly off-topic but brought up earlier in the thread as well as in the media for other reasons so here goes:
This is a misunderstanding of the law. People actually work an average of 39-41 hours a week (more than in Germany, which is often thought of as a “model”, and are more productive to boot). The only exception are people who work in “collectivités locales” (township and commonwealth offices) as well as state employees whose function is at high-school diploma entry level whose work week is indeed 35hours (no overtime allowed).
For everyone else: instead of kicking in at the 40th hour as it did until the 80s, overtime pay kicks in after 35 hours, under the guise of 2 hours “off” per week to be taken together on a day or two half days of your choice (so, essentially, it’s one day off per month) and 2 hours of overtime pay. It’s like everyone got a small raise and an extra day off when the law was passed. In exchange, employees agreed that this would be a yearly average, so that they could work 50 hours when a big order had to be produced/moved or during the Christmas holidays, and not get overtime pay at those times; the average would mean they’d work less at other times and still get paid for 35 hours.
The idea also was that it’d create somemore positions in large companies, which it did - but the “one size fits all” system proved to be a nightmare in hospitals and small businesses, plus for the police who are never paid all their overtime and never get the promised half days off. So, it’s not actually a “short week”, it’s a new scheduling system.
French people do have 5 weeks (25 days) of paid vacation per year, which translated into a boon for the tourist indutry, art festivals, etc, etc. In fact whenever someone wants to cut down on these, the tourist industry, ski resorts, hotels, shopkeepers, etc, etc, etc, scream bloody murder-of-the-economy. (A lot of France’s economy depends on tourism). For instance, ~20% French families take days off during the winter breaks to go ski. (Mostly upper middle class families, obviously). There’s a break around Christmas for the whole country but the next winter break is staggered over 5 weeks in order to ensure maximum occupation of the ski resorts, with the country divided into areas which don’t overlap in terms of where the inhabitants go to ski, so that all mountains are evenly occupied at all times. 
@MYOS1634 , I will continue somewhat OT, but I think after 313+ posts on a topic, that’s to be expected. I have worked for US, Swiss, UK, German, and French banks. A small sample, but over 30+ years, you pick up on things. While I can’t agree that French workers are more productive on average than German ones, I did find that 20% or so of French workers were stunningly productive, whereas in my experience German organizations expect productivity from a broader base (maybe 40-50%).
One anecdote might be of interest. I was on a business trip to Paris, and noticed on the first day that someone was reading the paper and chain smoking in the office. He was at it again the next day. On the third day, I asked a coworker what the story was. The reply, said in a voice that made it sound self-evident, was that the worker was unsatisfied with his position, and as a feature of Mobility, had 60 days to find a more satisfactory position.
ETA: Iirc, my snarky response was to ask where one applied for that job.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Apparently we have a different of “slightly” and “somewhat.” While I have come to expect some stream of consciousness in the parent’s forum, it is generally tangentially related to the original topic; this is not even close. 
I shall assume that if anyone wants to discuss European work life that someone will start a new thread.
Us – “stream of conciousness”?? Never!! On point and on topic with every post! 
I think the most important part is “sleep”. Preserving sleep time is essential for developing minds/developing bodies.
I’m sorry your daughter has to get up so early though.
In addition, she may have to learn to be okay with a B+. She will still be able to get into lots of excellent colleges.
And I agree that most teachers underestimate the amount of time it takes to complete homework, or that the extra “nonfiction reading” tacked onto the English homework for 40mn a day sounds like the teacher may have wanted to include all the required readings by essentially having one English period in class, one English period in the evening!
I’m a swimmer. I’m a junior in hs. KILL ME NOW
Junior year is the absolute worst here @lasyat. Hang in there! It will all be worth it when those acceptance letters start coming senior year. Senior year IS better.