@happy1 I agree and I know all of my math teachers would speak highly on my behalf (I got my college recommendation from one of them!), but I really hope that my score on the SAT Math 1 Subject Test can count as a criteria for proof of my independent study. I have a notebook of notes and completed every test in the Barron’s book I used. It might be wishful but I’m very hopeful!!
Also, once again, thank you @austinmshauri for raising my attention to this!! You’ve already done more for me than my administration ever has! I’ll definitely update you tomorrow when I get home from my meeting.
@oneundecided Perhaps! I think if they don’t go for my independent study option I will ask them if that is an option.
@austinmshauri I met with my principal and a district representative today. They said they doubt I will qualify for an independent study since it did not take me the required number of hours to complete and the majority of the course was below Algebra 2, so it did not fulfill the state requirements still.
We talked through my options and after a pretty heated fight, (the principal basically refusing to take responsibility) we settled on this:
The school ordered me a print Calculus course to work through. One of the math teachers will sit down with me once or twice a week to help me work through it. When I’m finished, I will send it back to the company and they will give me a pass/fail grade. However, the issue is that the course is not designed to be taken within the time frame I have (until May 15th) and the representative for the company we called advised against it. So that potentially puts me in a position where either 1. it gets close to the deadline and I have to jeopardize my other grades to complete this course or 2. after everything I receive my score back and I have failed, so I would be forced into summer school. So, to make sure I will 100% definitely graduate:
I am going to take an online Algebra 3 course. The format is setup so that if I pass certain subjects on a pretest, I can be exempt and be able to completely finish the course within a week or so. However, this could appear on my transcript, so (I believe) I’d have to notify my schools and it could drop my GPA.
The way we see it is the option to take a college course is over, the enrollment dates have passed and there’s nothing we can do about that. At least in this scenario, I am taking the course that meets my level and even if I don’t complete the course or don’t pass, I am benefiting from the amount of Calculus education I do receive. Of course this isn’t completely ideal (because really, ideally I would have been informed of this before February of my senior year), but it’s not a total loss. But I really cannot believe how incompetent the school is. My meeting was an hour and a half long with both my parents and my sister and when I listen back to the audio (that I probably was recording illegally? I don’t know if that’s allowed but oh well!), my parents and the principal just wanted to comply and didn’t think I had grounds to be angry. After about 40 minutes of her trying to blame me, my parents, my teachers (aka anyone except her), I was truthful with them and said, obviously I am going to do whatever I have to do to graduate and I will take an Algebra 3 course if I absolutely have to, but I will not leave this room happy. When people ask me how this meeting went and how the school handled the situation, I will not be speaking favorably on your behalf. My dad was mad at me for saying this, but clearly it worked because all of the sudden there were these other options presented to me.
I know this is a lot to read but once again, thank you for helping me out! Honestly, if it weren’t for you guys my parents and the principal would have been more than happy to just let me take a joke course that would be an embarrassment to my high school transcript. Hopefully I can move through the calculus printout easily enough and will receive a calculus passing grade on my transcript, but at least by the end of next week I’ll know for sure that I will be graduating!
@coolchic8000, Good for you for advocating so strongly for yourself. You’ll need that skill to be successful in college. Although your option isn’t your favorite, I’m happy it’s one you had a part in creating.
If you have 16 weeks left in your school year, I’d suggest planning out the Algebra 3 course over the next 12 weeks. If you get it done in 10, great, if you need a little more time then you have a cushion. Before you do a pretest, find a place online to review the material. [Aleks.com[/url] offers a lot of math levels. It costs $20/month, but you may find it helpful. My son’s college uses it to assess math placement levels. [url=<a href=“https://www.khanacademy.org/%5DKhan”>https://www.khanacademy.org/]Khan Academy](ALEKS Course Products) is a free site that may have topics that would be helpful for you to review. You can use a [math calculator](Algebra Calculator - MathPapa) to make sure you understand how to do problems correctly. You’re essentially doing an independent study, so I’d learn the material using whatever resources are available to you and use the pretests as an assessment. If you need further study after that you’ll have time to do it, but if you review the material first you may not need more practice.
I would focus on learning the material. If the course drops your GPA a little, I don’t think it will harm you. The colleges you applied to want to see you challenge yourself. I think that taking this course over a time filler course that wouldn’t have taught you anything was a wise decision. Good luck.
@austinmshauri Thank you for your advice and I will be checking out those links this weekend! I hope I can test out of a lot of the Algebra 3 and then focus all of my attention on calculus, but at least I will be graduating on time!