The context of my post was the student who can handle it while still sleeping a lot. Not just handle it in general. And I am talking about my school. I have written many times over the years about the workload and have reported that when my kids were up very late, their friends in the same classes were up also, commiserating. It takes surviving on little sleep to be in the top 1-3% at our school.
That does not suprise me. It takes that to be top 10% here.
I think it can be done without cheating, without burn out, with sports (and a few other activities). My daughter did it. Because of a move right before her freshman year (and another in the middle of sophomore) she was not in advanced math and science levels, so just took the honors (or college prep) versions, and then the AP class as a senior. She played varsity lacrosse all 4 years. She is not very strong in English and is s-l-o-w in reading, so didn’t do very well on standardized test. She got a few Bs in high school, was not in the top 10%, she did get quite a few honors. And yet, she’s still alive and, I think, successful.
Her high school ran from 9:15 to 4, so her schedule was a little different than OP’s daughter, and her school did not have study halls (and only a 20 minute lunch), so all the homework was homework. She often got up early to do an hour of math. On Sunday mornings I’d find her up doing chemistry or math. As others have said, it was often her ‘general’ or ‘honors’ level classes that required more time than the APs, because the generals always had group projects, my daughter would work with her friends, and daughter would do all the work because the friends were not good students. As far as I know, there was no cheating. I did help her with papers, but often she wouldn’t ask me because she knew I’d mark it all up and make her re-write it. I was a harder critic than her teachers.
She doesn’t go to Harvard or Princeton, but is majoring in engineering, does have merit and athletic scholarships that pay her tuition and then some, and is at the perfect school for her. She had a great time in high school but sometimes told her friends (the non-studious ones) that she had to study and couldn’t go out for French fries or froyo. She didn’t skip school like they did (and over which we had a few fights), she made sacrifices. She took 4 hours to do her homework, but she’d take calls and texts and listen to music, so if she’d wanted to she could have cut that time way down.
OP, what is your goal? If it is for her to learn a lot in high school, have a well rounded experience, enjoy her time, I think she’s doing it. If the goal is only to get A’s, then she’ll need to select her classes carefully. I think my DD described above took 4 or 5 APs total, and didn’t get any college credits for them, which was fine with me.
Personally, I would discourage our kids from putting in 12 hour days. I put in plenty of them growing up on a farm. Unfortunately, our kids don’t really like school for the most part. They don’t dislike it to the extent I did, but they get by on brain power rather than work. They will work when motivated, but in school that doesn’t happen that often. My wife liked school, but I don’t think she put in the hours a lot of kids do now.
At our children’s California high school, the students who wanted to have AP classes were required to fulfill a series of steps.
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First, a yearly Spring mandatory parent and student meeting where attendance was taken. If neither the student nor parent showed, then the AP course was taken off of the class request form. No AP courses for freshman allowed. At that meeting, all of the AP teachers presented the course subjects and indicated the realistic amount of work required. They included how ECs would be impacted by the workload. They spoke of the upcoming summer assignments.
Second, the summer assignments and texts were distributed, 2 weeks before school ended for the summer break. Summer assignments were due first day of school or earlier. No late work was acceptable. They explained this rational at the Spring meeting.
Third, the first two weeks of school, the AP teachers gave surprise essays and quizzes, based on the summer readings and essays. What they wanted to see was how quickly the students could think on their feet, as well as how efficiently the time was used. Sometimes, the quizzes were card games, logic puzzles, fill in the blanks, etc.
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Lastly, counselors scheduled the “over-requested” AP classes, based on a rubric of teacher recommendations, summer assignment tasks and scores. Yes, we had parents complaining about their kids not “getting in” to the AP classes, and they could ask for a review, but both parent and student was made aware of the the expected work load and risks.
There were a large number of “naturally gifted” children who performed extremely well. They managed their time and studies well and had 5 APs, Tri-sport athletes, etc.
Those students who weren’t the “gifted students” had to work twice as hard as the “Easy A” AP students. They knew that they couldn’t overload their ECs and had to be selective. A lot of these students strove to just maintain and make A and B grades. If they could get a 90, then nothing else mattered.
It’s really a choice that the child has to make.
It sounds like the school essentially makes the choice for students. I can’t speak to what happens in other towns, but every time this topic comes up there are always those who directly or indirectly imply that the truly gifted kids can carry the load just fine, still engage in time-consuming EC’s, get plenty of sleep, and still get into top schools. The secondary implication is therefore that if a student can’t handle it well, then s/he is not gifted and either the kid or the parent are trying to unnaturally force something. Or, the kid is not managing his time well, eg. by procrastinating or wasting time on social media. This does a disservice to those parents whose kids truly are in environments where even gifted kids taking advanced classes don’t sleep much. Even a genius speed-reader still needs to actually read the book and write the five essays on it. Many assignments take a lot of time no matter who is doing it. Intelligence will, for example, only reduce a small fraction of the hours needed to make a realistic, edible model of a cell.
"And I will say that it is very possible to teach an AP class without the piles of homework that so many teachers think it necessary. " Yes, it is. My daughter took a total of 12 APs, scored 5 on all the exams she took (skipped a few, but not because she thought she’d do poorly), and got 8+ hours of sleep in 7/8 of her hs semesters. Yes, she had to work very hard and with a lot of discipline, especially while doing sports or comparable, but there were no all nighters or 4 hours of sleep or anything like that.
I think part of the problem is when you have weaker students taking the AP classes, the teachers feel they need to ramp up the assignments. We do have teachers who get 100% pass rates, or very close to it. Usually they are also the more demanding teachers.
@TheGFG, I understand what you are saying, but there is still the fact that some students are more gifted or more efficient and are going to get through the work faster than others. When these students are working pretty hard, the slower students, who may not be as bright, or may be slower readers, or may be more perfectionist, whatever the issue, are going to be struggling. There will always be a range of student performance and it’s not realistic to think that every honor student will be able to take a full load of honor/AP classes and get A’s with comparable effort. Seeing my second child go through the exact same classes her sister did, even with the same teachers, has been eye opening. She is finding calculus easier than her mathy sister did and hardly studies at all! Who would have guessed. And yet, she is struggling much more with the workload of AP World, which I think is pretty crushing at every school. Slow reading and perfectionism are problems her sister did not have, and it shows in the amount of time being spent.
I don’t disagree with you, but have found during the 11 years so far of having kids in the advanced classes of the high school, that the teachers consistently underestimate the time needed to do their assignments. This seems to have happened in the OP’s case. So then if a parent reports her child needs a longer time than the expected, the teacher assumes that he must not be suited for the class. Therefore, only a few naive, first-time parents dare to complain because the result is the child will be seen as deficient at best, and advised to drop the class at worst. Competitive students and their parents do not want that, knowing their children need to take a rigorous schedule, so they suck it up. Besides, after a while they have conferred with one another and have figured out that it’s not just their “dumb” kid who needed 5 hours to do the bio lab report.
I had a dumb kid in foreign language. Just not the way his brain was wired. He was working pretty much to his capacity in honors and getting B-/C+ sorts of grades. We told him that we supported whatever decision he made- but staying up all hours to do homework, getting frustrated on his test performance, running on a sub-optimal amount of sleep, etc. for what seemed to be marginal progress wasn’t something we enjoyed watching. And that dropping down a level seemed to be a good option.
Why does the validation from other parents that their kids are equally stressed out lead to the conclusion that you’re keeping your kid in the higher, more stressful class? To me that would be a clear sign that it’s time to dial it back. We had a little family party the day he came home to tell us that he’d met with his teacher and his guidance counselor and was moving down a level.
No shame in a kid learning that they can be king of the hill in one subject but dragging down the class average in another. Good lesson for adulthood. And it certainly restored a sense of normalcy at home when the straw that was about to break the camel’s back went away…
Yes, if your teachers are assigning silly make-work projects like edible cells (this is an AP class?) then I can see it being a time sink. My kids skipped a lot of the extra credit projects, though I think they were less silly than that.
But I’m not sure we know that the classmates of the OP’s child are spending nearly as much time as she is, do we? We also don’t know where the OP’s child stands in relation to her classmates–it sounds to me like a case of a borderline A student struggling to remain an A student now that the coursework has become more demanding. Certainly the AP classes are going to be work for everyone, but is latin2 or honors algebra2 really a lot of work for a 10th? grade honors student? My daughter completed the equivalent of those two classes last year and I doubt she spent half an hour per night on the two put together.
@thegfg “but every time this topic comes up there are always those who directly or indirectly imply that the truly gifted kids can carry the load just fine, still engage in time-consuming EC’s, get plenty of sleep,”
Well, the teachers and counsellors who say that aren’t up with the student at 2am, so they may say that, but they really don’t know.
I think copying happens more with the middle tier of students. The top students don’t have anyone to copy from.
I do think there are some students that can handle the super intense AP workload just fine. On the other hand, there are some that can’t. I could’ve if I had better self-discipline, but I didn’t. I was easily distracted and didn’t prioritize school and/or ECs all the time. I have zero regrets about that.
If cheating was widespread among my AP class friends, I didn’t know about it. There was the occasional copying of homework or something but most of the time, homework wasn’t even checked by the time we got to AP classes.
IMO, it’s about knowing your own limits and being OK with those. I’ve, personally, never found the rat race appealing but I’m kind of an outlier on CC most times. It’s all about individual personality.
The AP and honors teachers now routinely prohibit what they call “collusion,” since they have been made aware of the form of copying that the top students do. They typically meet together after school in the public library and divide up the homework. Let’s say the assignment is to look up brief biographical data on 30 leaders of the American Revolution. OK, you do 1-15 and I’ll do 16-30 and then we’ll swap files. This sort of collusion carries very little risk of being caught and entails minimal cheating oneself out of learning, since the kids are mostly just sharing the grunt work of looking it up and copying down the facts. (My S would have never wanted to do that even if it wasn’t forbidden because he enjoyed reading about history beyond what was required.) The students may do the same with problem sets, though that could hurt them a little more unless they’re the gifted sort who can do half the math problems and still be fine. In a time pinch though, it works for them. They can always go back to the problems later on the weekend and work them themselves. Now with the internet and the ability to send phone pics of handwritten work, this kind of thing is now easy to do without even being in the same room.
@thumper1, so glad you said what you said in post #73.
D1 at Carnegie Mellon, D2 at Cornell. They long for the days of high school homework! I don’t see anything unusual either about the course work and hours in high school.That is normal for these types of classes. Both of my kids were all honors and AP too and they were also busy after school. D1, cellist, had private lessons, ensembles, music competition, and played in a nationally recognized Youth Symphony Orchestra which was extremely time consuming as well as other HS stuff. D2 is a state champion debate/speech team. That season is September through February.
It’s all just a matter of choice.
Back in post #133 Romanigypsyeyes wrote: “So, I guess it works out. If I could do it over again, I wouldn’t have taken such a rigorous schedule my junior year and I’d bet I’d still be in the exact same place.”
This is the absolute truth, but nearly impossible to see clearly when your child is smack in the middle of the high school craziness of the “highest rigor” race.
My three are college grads or in college now, and while cleaning out files this summer I was amused, bemused, and suprised at how much unnecessary (in terms of college acceptances and future success) stuff they did in high school that we were sure (at the time) were absolutely necessary, but really weren’t.
And we were open to making changes, making smart scheduling choices, and saying “No” to ridiculous time committments to some ECs. But our kids still got sucked into more unnecessary stuff than they really needed.
We insisted our youngest drop down from “GT” math track to “Honors” math track … In middle school … because we could see that, while she could keep up, it was consuming her soul to do so. Best decision we ever made, and it was something she fought us over at the time. It was a matter of pride for her to be in at class. Last year she wrote a college app essay about that experience.
None of ours took a single AP History class. Those classes are terrific, but only if you love the subjects and the enormous amounts of time involved.
We have said “No” to some outside travel club teams, and "No"to some recruiting tournaments. And yet the two who were interested in college sports were recruited anyway, and one has gone on to play D3 in college.
So much of what we all are convinced is necessary in high school (based on what other people say and on what other kids are doing) really isn’t.
“I think copying happens more with the middle tier of students. The top students don’t have anyone to copy from.”
This hasn’t been our experience-there is a lot of cheating going on at the higher levels, and we’ve had discussions about it with the girls. The way there is cheating where we live is the older siblings will pretend to be the younger siblings and take the SAT’s and other achievement tests for them (presumably because they look similar to the siblings and our school is so humongous that the teachers don’t recognize the kids). There is abuse of adderall (I am not sure I spelled that correctly), and a lot of caffeine pills and energy drinks.
Older D struggled one year because the teacher didn’t want to create new tests or homework for pre-calc, so she never had any material she created and had graded that could be brought home to study from. And it was so stupid because some kids would photograph the test the minute the teacher put it on their desks and turned her back, and send it out to ALL the kids in the later classes. While this may seem to inordinately benefit the later classes, it evened out because there were always classes where you were the later group.
Teachers knew this was going on and some did (and continue to do) nothing to combat it (like making different tests!!!) Luckily her AP calc teacher this year does let them bring home all their tests/homework etc, and creates different tests each time, and she’s doing much better and likes the class. I love that teacher for doing the work to benefit the kids.
We don’t hear a lot about the parents or tutors doing the work for the kids, because most of it is so high level that the parents don’t have the time or the ability to do it, and most of the tutors, if they’re at that level, are already making 80-100/hr just to teach them, not to cheat for them.
It’s so easy to cheat, and it’s so endemic, that our position as parents to our kids was that if you want to go through life cheating to get to where you want to be, that’s a moral choice you have to live with-knowing that it was never really your work that got you there, but a lie.
I went back to re-read OP. If I am interpreting this correctly, her D is not doing any of this specifically to get into colleges, but because she is truly excited by the content of the classes and the rewards of the EC.This is what makes it difficult for her D to decide what if anything to drop.
Also, she might have to accept that in these classes and with this schedule, she cannot be a straight A student even if she is working at full throttle and there is no indication that any particular class isn’t “her thing” or that other students are successful with the same schedules because they are getting tutoring that is not freely available to everyone. That is one reason why high schools weight grades. (When my kids did take regular classes, they noticed that the regular classes had many fewer requirements and that even projects were usually done in class.)
If this is a complaint that several students have, there is a possibility that a group of parents could approach a guidance counselor or administrator directly, particularly if they have concrete suggestions such as staggering due dates or quiz dates, giving alternatives to open-ended arts and crafts projects, or reducing numbers of assignments.
Collusion (a different issue from cooperation)is another issue entirely. I have to wonder (from another thread) if serious exit exams that actually counted for something would be a disincentive to this.
@MotherOfDragons presumably this will not work as well today because the SAT/ACT admission ticket has a photo to the student on it. And it probably would mean that the sibling is taking the test at a facility that is not their local HS so there would be no chance of being recognized. Unless you are implying that monitors are not clearly comparing the ticket to the test taker.
Not all APs are equal. They need to be carefully scoped out before signing up for them.
My D1 was a top performer. Even she didn’t try to take AP Bio with an AP history class. In our school AP Bio was like a factor of 3 more work than honors Bio. For her the history class would have been AP US History, which is like 1.5 times the work of Honors US History. It just wasn’t doable. Period. Others took APUSH and honors Bio. She wasn’t an athlete - academics were her forte. She ended up with 10 5’s on AP exams. APUSH wasn’t one of them though. She went to a top college that was hard like her HS. AP Bio was the only class she didn’t get an A or A+ in her entire HS career. She got an A-. It was healthy for her to do so. It was healthy for us to be around her the first time she didn’t get an A. When it happened in college it was no big deal. She even got (dare I say) some Bs. She didn’t melt down I think because she got it out of her system on AP Bio.
For D2, AP Bio junior year was her downfall. The workload was excessive. She just couldn’t be starting assignments at midnight. She was also an athlete who suffered a terrible neck injury potentially from sleep deprivation. It could have ended really badly. Fortunately it was just a severe sprain but she was disabled for weeks. She ended up with a C in AP Bio but a 5 on the AP exam. She refused to drop the class midway. She goes to a good, not elite, college that seems to have filtered out the HYP types where she is excelling in ChemE and now she feels like a superstar whereas in HS she felt like a slacker. I think this is a positive outcome, though she has developed some serious chronic health issues that we wonder if the sleep deprivation was a contributing factor. We didn’t know how to MAKE a 17 year old kid go to sleep since we were asleep before she was.
HS is way too hard these days for most kids.
@TiggyB62 – Comments from my freshman son at CMU
1.) The schedule and achievements of your children are par for the course.
2.) His HS did not prepare him for the rigor of CMU. Rough first month. Settled in now and getting B’s, but had to relearn how to study and be disciplined for what CMU requires. He didn’t need to study in HS as everything came easy. He understands now how easy he had it at home and wishes he would have pushed the envelop a little more.
3.) He was prepared in reasoning, writing and reading skills. These helped him overcome the 1st months shortfall.
4.) At the end of the day, the high achievers (i.e. 99%) and the regular kids like my son got in on their own merits.
5.) It’s tough as a parent to watch our son’s struggle, as my son did, because he was not prepared for the pace and rigor of college. Apparently, everything my son learned in Calc 3 in HS was taught during the 1st month at CMU. But, it is also reassuring to see him work through the transitions and difficulties to feel comfortable with the workload and understanding the subjects.