<p>Havent read the whole thread, but surely someone has brought up that if he is performing well academically, it is unlikely his school will allow him to repeat the grade.
The National Association of School Psychologists came out with a position statement against grade retention in 2011 <a href=“http://www.nasponline.org/about_nasp/positionpapers/GradeRetentionandSocialPromotion.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nasponline.org/about_nasp/positionpapers/GradeRetentionandSocialPromotion.pdf</a></p>
<p>ucbalumnus, in theory he can take honors track courses, but my experience from having two kids in high school is that the second the kid takes something off the beaten track it can really mess up schedules. For example since it’s mostly freshmen in honors chem they’ll schedule it to synch with the freshman English classes not the sophomore ones. All though we no longer officially have tracking - we have de facto tracking because the cohort of kids taking the most advanced courses have those courses scheduled so there are no conflicts. </p>
<p>I think being with your the honors cohort in your grade level has some benefits. I also think the SAT score suggests someone with a lot of aptitude in math. </p>
<p>As far as taking BC Calc as a junior - I think our high school is probably much more typical. There were 5 or 6 kids in a class of 600.</p>
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<p>When I was in high school, the school scheduled all of the honors English courses in a specific period, and all of the honors math courses in a specific (different) period, so that a student taking honors in both would not have a conflict, regardless of what level of math s/he was in. Other honors courses like foreign languages were also scheduled in specific periods (different from English and math).</p>
<p>Your school does not do this?</p>
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<p>However, it is expected that some students will be at a different level in some subjects, particularly in math and foreign language, rather than everyone being in lock step with everyone else.</p>
<p>Not as far as I know. Kids take classes in the same order. Advanced freshmen are all in honors chem and there are several sections, there was only one section of a mostly sophomore honors chem (one son ended up in it because of conflicts with Latin). Advanced sophomores all took AP Physics B. Most advanced juniors took AP Biology (though a handful took the science APs in a different order.) Only juniors take APUSH and AP Lang. Only seniors take AP Lit. Most language APs are classes with only seniors (though that might not be true of Spanish). My kids took Latin which only had one or two sections and it constantly caused conflicts. I don’t know how scheduling worked - my older son had to go in every year and play with the scheduling program because his counselor could never figure out how to get him what he needed. (This had the added benefit that she remembered who he was!)</p>
<p>If the kid is a math kid (there’s at least some evidence that he might be 
), he’s probably better off with the other math/science kids in his grade and it may make his scheduling in general easier, or it may not, if there’s one thing I’ve learned on CC is that every high school is unique.</p>
<p>“I think being with your the honors cohort in your grade level has some benefits. I also think the SAT score suggests someone with a lot of aptitude in math.” Exactly.</p>
<p>@ucb alumnus, that’s absolutely not how our school schedules things. Think about it. If you only run honors geometry in one block, then you need lots of teachers who can teach honors geometry. One section of it. They all have to prep that. Then you ask them next block to teach honors algebra2? All of them? It’s a lot harder to prep for multiple different classes than to teach several sections of the same thing. I think most core academic teachers in our school teach 2-3 actual different classes, but they teach 6 sections. I think there’s probably something written into the contract about it. This is why, although we have very competent physics teachers, we do not have physics C. It’s easier to teach two sections of physics B than to teach both physics B and physics C.</p>
<p>Agree also with mathmom that schedules are made for the majority, and being in a track that isn’t usual for your grade can cause problems. Because my daughter was ahead in her math track, she could not get into a single one of the electives she wanted her freshman year. There were ways it could have been accomplished, but the other classes she would have needed to do this (eg. English 9) were full because they were scheduled to synch with what the other 9th graders were doing.</p>
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<p>Even when I was in high school, students in foreign language courses were not expected to be in lock step as far as which level they were in. Some started level 1 in 9th grade, while some started level 1 in middle school. And then there were heritage speakers who were more advanced than that.</p>
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<p>In those few honors courses where there was more than one section when I was in high school, there was a second designated period for those courses (taught by the same teacher).</p>