<p>Wow, it really, really, really makes no sense for a student who has completed BC calculus to be required to take another year of math in order to graduate from high school. This could not be a state requirement, could it - it must be something local? Have you seen this in requirement in writing?</p>
<p>This is so frustrating as a parent - when you come across rules that just do not make sense...</p>
<p>I suppose the director of math has a degree in education with some sort of math certification. Doesn't sound like someone with a math degree.</p>
<p>AP Stats is not by any means a worthless class. I don't mean to knock it. It is just that if the student wants to next take a semester of multivariate calculus followed by a semester of linear algebra and has a way to do it, that is so clearly a better next step.</p>
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D joked that she wants to just register for Geometry again as the 4th math in protest since she doesn't see how they can have it both ways.
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<p>Maybe she is on to something there. If she is required to take the fourth math class during school hours, take the absolutely easiest math offered so there isn’t any more home work time than necessary. I would suggest the bottom level or remedial freshman math. One of mine did this in a different subject senior year of high school, because he had already maxed out of appropriate classes in the subject but had to take four credits in the subject for graduation. They wouldn’t count college courses during the summer or school year for one of the basic graduation requirements. He took the easiest course available to leave as much time as possible for his college course work which, by the way, was arranged through an on going program between HS and college. Yes, it was absurd. And yes, it did impact GPA since it was the only non-weighted class he had on his transcript. The trade off was getting some excellent college courses.</p>
<p>One thing you may run into is if they want her taking the AP stat exam to improve their AP record.</p>
<p>The board that you posted to (Mass Home Learners) tends to have younger homeschoolers on it. There are some college-specific homeschool boards that are more focuses on college issues.</p>
<p>Many of the homeschoolers on MHLA also homeschooled from younger ages and don't have the attachment to public high-school that those with kids in high-school have.</p>
<p>CC is probably still a better place to discuss this stuff but the MHLA board was useful in painting the legal landscape.</p>
<p>Homeschoolers would like to be left alone for the most part. Free high-school and college courses would be nice along with inclusion on sports teams. For some reason, legislators around the country regularly pick on homeschoolers for added regulation. When this happens, we typically storm state houses.</p>
<p>I am still mulling over this dilemma. If not for the high school senior year activities and the difficulty of doing the college application process all on your own – it does seem the GED and then doing whatever college classes she wants senior year would be best academically. Do you think her college professors would write her recs? They did for my kids. Is it too late to hire a good private college counselor where you live? Sadly, it would be here. Will this be the first year for her to do the college courses? Can she do the college program if she isn’t in high school or are they linked somehow? Is she the only student in this situation this year? My suggestion is to work your way quietly and calmly and politely up the hierarchy, if you haven’t already done so. If the math coordinator says no, go to the principal, then the superintendent. State your position very clearly and don’t get off track into other discussions. Keep it all as simple as possible. (She needs ABC; anything else is just not acceptable. Thank you for your time. Now we are going to make an appointment the next level up because she needs ABC.) Let each level know you will continue to take it upstairs. Sometimes that gets you the answer you want right there. If you can enlist other parents on your side – great! All of you attend the meeting with a single spokesperson. Again, keep it real simple and very calm. If your kid is the only one in this situation – don’t be real vocal unless you feel it is a good use of your time and a community service to advertise the situation. It probably won’t help your cause, though. One idea: maybe a “bluff” would work. I don’t understand the reasoning behind it but sometimes when parents of the highest achievers at the school threaten to pull their kids out to homeschool, they get what they want Tell the superintendent in a very regretful voice that they have just left you no option other than to homeschool. But don’t count on that working. I don’t think there will be time to take it beyond the superitendent to get it resolved in time for next fall, but someone else here may have a different opinion on that or have had a different experience. This is just my best advice having actually been in similar situations. And I do hope you are able to work it out successfully.</p>
<p>CRD, I really admire your patience and calm. At this point I would be thinking about firebombing the math director's office.</p>
<p>Re-registering for geom. in protest doesn't seem like such a bad idea. As an alternative, does the school offer regular stat (not AP)? That would probably be less work than AP. A couple of my d's friends took both mvcalc and AP stat their senior year and said that AP stat was easy but an awful lot of work, and just the kind of work that math-loving kids hate (ie, lots of calculations and graphing). </p>
<p>The most important reason to take mvcalc is to keep the calc skills fresh so that freshman year math is not such a shock. One possibility is to take stat as the 4th hs class, do chem and the language as independent study, and enroll in a self-paced mvcalc class and plan to take most of the year to get through it - or plan not to start it until spring semester when apps are done. The only on-line experience we've had is with EPGY physics. You pay for the class in 3 month increments and, while they'll drop you if you really aren't making any progress, my son took 6 months to complete a class that had a suggested completion time of 16 weeks and nobody seemed concerned.</p>
<p>CRD, I have not read the entire thread, so you may have already decided what to do, but I'll share my experience and you can PM me if you think it would be helpful. </p>
<p>We also live in a high-performing MA school district. For reasons I'll describe briefly not having to do with budget cuts, I negotiated a system of partial home-schooling for my son starting in his sophomore year. He took lab science, art, and social studies at the school and did English and math outside the school and other things outside the school. In some cases, this included organized courses (Expos 20 at Harvard) and in other cases, just a Harvard grad student working with him in math or a tutor working with him on writing. It took a fair bit of negotiation, but we got tremendous cooperation from the Assistant Superintendent of Schools.</p>
<p>The reason we did it is that my son is both quite gifted and quite dyslexic (and other associated LDs). He also at the time had some health issues that may or my not be associated with the the LDs. Math at the HS was far too slow (so was science, actually, but we figured that lab science was harder to do elsewhere). In English, he really needed to work on getting his writing to the level of his thinking and that was our big emphasis in the home-schooling segment. The reason it may have been easier to negotiate in our case (he was the first partial home-schooler in the district) was that she had been the head of Special Education years earlier before moving to another state and then moving back and when she read his neuropsychological profile, she understood both how bright he was and how hard he was working to perform at the level he was performing given the severity of his learning disabilities.</p>
<p>You might consider something like this. The only thing that I recall as being a fundamental obstacle other than getting the Superintendent's approval was graduation. I had not assumed that my son would get a HS diploma from his HS because the HS had not given credit for some of his outside courses. This was not a problem as there are some accredited institutions that, for a fee, will review the kid's work/grades etc. and grand a diploma. College admissions would, in your case, have already happened, though in our case, they would not, but I just did not think it would be an issue. But, the assistant superintendent bent over backwards and leaned on the HS English department to retroactively give him credit for outside activities so that he could graduate with his class. That would be worth checking.</p>
<p>I've received an outpouring of support just about everywhere I've looked for it, and the parents of students involved are organized and united now, so I think it's more likely than not that we'll prevail on the AP Stats thing. I mean it's just so logical. </p>
<p>Thanks again everybody for your input. I'll report back when something happens.</p>
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CRD, I really admire your patience and calm
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<p>Waiting, still no resolution. Calm, always, patient, no way. </p>
<p>All options explored thus far are bad ones for one reason or another. Partial homeschool does not seem feasible. </p>
<p>Considering looking into whether high school can legally not count Geometry toward the graduation requirements even though it was taken at the high school in the same class as 9th graders while D was in 8th grade. In other words, she has taken 4 yrs of math at the high school, it just started in 8th grade. I'm trying to find out whether they have grounds to deny that she's met the graduation requirement. I can't find any law either way, and I don't know where to begin looking. </p>
<p>I always ask the school district "What is your legal authority for telling me this?" when the school district says something that doesn't make sense. Laws have citations. So do regulations. If there is no citation given you in response to that kind of question, don't believe what they are saying.</p>
<p>Does the geom. class show up on her hs transcript? I just looked at my son's transcript, and it does show the geom. class (although it lists it with his freshman year classes, so it looks like he took geom. and advanced alg. the same year, which is not correct). I would think that if the transcript shows four math classes, the school is going to have a hard time claiming that she has not met the requirement.</p>
<p>Wow. Would the school be amenable to her doing EPGY? There are quite a few courses beyond BC-Calc available. Could she use MIT Open courseware under the supervision of a teacher or a college student? Is Harvard Extension out of the question if you pay? It is very possible that the school is concerned about having to pay for your D's 4th year of math if she does not take AP-Stats.</p>
<p>TokenAdult: I will ask when I get the opportunity, but I'd love to find a statute that makes it clear one way or the other so that I know the correct answer beforehand. </p>
<p>MarinMom: I don't know if it's on her transcript. I know it's not in her GPA, so I'm guessing it's not on the transcript. I do have a report card from the high school. So at least I have evidence that she took it. I just don't know if the school is allowed to deny kids credit because they weren't in 9th grade. </p>
<p>Marite: It's not about money. The parents pay anyway. Actually, it would save the school money by reducing enrollment. The math team kids have always gone to Harvard Extension post-calculus. If I had to speculate, I'd guess that they just want to inflate enrollment in the school's classes to put pressure on the district not to lay off teachers. I'm just not really sure. I haven't been given an explanation that has any logic behind it.</p>
<p>The California Education Code is searchable on line. I tried in vain to find something as easy for Mass. but only came up with this: MGL</a> Chapter Link & Search</p>
<p>How far up the chain of command have you gone?</p>
<p>I suspect the school may want to ensure that the brand new AP-Stats class has a big enough enrollment to keep it going. I actually lobbied for our school to have AP-Stats, not for my kid but for others, and the school expressed concern about low enrollments. that was way back, when there was no financial crisis.
Would your D like to take both AP-Stats and MVCalc at the HES? Or would it be too much? Or is she adamant that she does not want to study Stats?</p>
<p>IloveLA (so do I): We're waiting for a meeting with the Principal. It's been a week since we requested one. I know he's been sick. He's always seemed pretty reasonable, but the longer it takes, the less confident I am that he will be. </p>
<p>That's a great link. I do love this board! Thanks.</p>
<p>Marite: D's pretty adamant about not taking AP Stats. It would be too much.</p>
<p>Your daughter can request a copy of her transcript; it might cost her a few bucks. It's not a bad idea to take a look at the transcript in any case to make sure that there are no errors on it. If the transcript shows that she took the class and earned credit for it, seems to me that you're home free. I mean, you walk into the principal with a yellow-highlighted transcript and say, "4 classes, 20 units (or however they calculate units in your district)." Unless the published graduation requirements say specifically that the units have to be earned during 9th-12th grades, she's met the requirement.</p>
<p>Even if it's not calculated into her GPA, my guess is that it will show up somewhere on the transcript. If you received a report card from the hs I don't see how it would be legal for them to drop it off her record subsequently. I looked around the house for my daughter's transcript, but it must have ended up in the recycling after she left for college. As I recall, her 8th grade geometry class was listed in a separate year and was not calculated into her GPA, but it showed that she had earned the credits. </p>
<p>It's nice to have it all on the transcript, but even if it isn't, you can do the same thing with the report cards. Does her 8th grade report card show that she earned the units?</p>
<p>Wow, I can't believe that you even have to have this argument with your hs. When I went to register my daughter for 9th grade, the first thing that the counselor pointed out to us was that by taking geom. at the hs she had already completed her first year of math.</p>
<p>If you look at her 10th grade report card - how many units does it say she has completed? </p>
<p>Our school does count them - and show them on the transcript - but does not include in GPA. If I were to look at my DD report card from first semester 10th grade it would show 45 units attempted, 65 units completed (the extra ten being Math and French done at the middle school) They get counted when you pass the next higher class - e.g. Algebra 2 and French 2.</p>
<p>I agree that you should get a copy of her transcript - every Junior should look at their transcript to ensure no errors have been made. My kids are in a very good school district - that keeps very good records - and I have still caught errors on both of their transcripts.</p>
<p>Each district does things differently. Ours does not count courses taken in middle school--not even AP courses. It still insists on 4 years of math and 3 of science but is good at accommodating students who need college courses. Typically, it will not allow students to take college courses if there are courses in a discipline available, and this usually works against students in the humanities/social studies. When my Ss were in high school, the school did not offer AP-Stats, but I think that even if it had, students might have argued their way out of it and into MVCalc.</p>
<p>It would be interesting to see what they would do with a young math whiz in the neighborhood. He is in 8th grade and is taking AP Stats this year, having already completed Algebra 1 and 2 as well as geometry and trig (he took classes at the local JC over the last two summers). His dad tells me that he plans to take Calculus 1 over the summer at the JC - which means entering his freshman year there is no math left to be taken at the high school. Assuming he enrolls for math at the local JC, he will run out of math classes there in his junior year.</p>