@Hanna It’s only in place of a filler elective or study hall hour.
As for how it will look. To be clear, he’s not Ivy League or Johns Hopkins material.
There is likely a hierarchy of “care” extended to students. With Ivy-caliber students granted the bulk, the rest they may “care” insofar that they attend a 4-year university. What level of 4-year or how prepared the student is when they get there…they’re not losing sleep over such things. “100% of our graduates attend 4-year universities. insert Ivies, Duke, JHU, Notre Dame, Georgetown placements here” Which I actually understand! Only so much time in a day, Multiplier effect and whatnot.
We had a problem with my S’s math placement going into 8th grade. He had a teacher mismatch situation in 7th, which I won’t go into, and as a result didn’t do quite as well on a placement test as he should have, and so was not placed in the top Algebra class in 8th. This would have had a cascading effect going through HS, which would mean that he would probably not be in the AP stream in math and science, which that class was designed to feed into. This was not a match with his academic ability.
I talked to the G&T coordinator about this, and she suggested that we could remedy the situation either by having him take Algebra over the summer–which wasn’t possible–or by his taking an online class and retesting at the beginning of school. Since he was qualified to take CTY classes online, he started their Honors Algebra class at the end of July when he got back from camp. He got about 3/4 of the way through it, was retested on the first day of school, and placed in the desired class, where he proceeded to do very well, and in HS progressed through AP Calc BC, AP Bio, Chem, and Physics without a hitch.
I think it would make a lot more sense for your S to do an online geometry class to firm up the concepts he needs to know in order to progress in math. It would accomplish the desired end without littering his transcript and schedule with unnecessary classes. From the college admissions POV, all they would see was that he earned an A in his geometry class and did well on the ACT.
I really think you should look into Thinkwell or Khan Academy.
“To be clear, he’s not Ivy League or Johns Hopkins material.”
So what?
OP
You arent listening!!! You are dismissing sound advise from parents and a experienced college counselor -Hanna- whose job is to help her students prepare for many types of colleges, not just “elite colleges”
ALL colleges want to see that a student is challenging himself- not just the Ivy’s.
Repeating a class is a really BAD thing to see on a transcript.
It is a RED FLAG that gives admission officers a easy, fast reason to toss an application in the reject pile.
Is THAT what you want to have happen to your son??
Take a step back, lose the “my way or the highway attitude”, and stop trying to get your way with the counselor and school…
The one who will end up paying the price is your child…
I don’t think it matters what the alternative class would be, it does look odd for an 11th grader to be enrolled in geometry at all, much less for the second time.
I think you’ve been offered a lot of good ideas on this thread and yet after 6 pages, you continue to dismiss the solutions and you are still fixated on how it’s somehow all the fault of the school and how they are treating him like a second class student. I have news for you: Plenty of kids teach themselves things that their school isn’t willing or able to. It does require a bit of motivation, sure. But this is only basic geometry, something that half the kids in our local middle school are learning. He’s an 11th grader and he’s already had most of the material. He could also use many of the free or low cost resources on the web or books mentioned. He could ask if the geometry teacher would be willing to meet with him a few times and go over the geometry he’s having difficulty with. Or you could hire some 9th or 10th grader who recently aced honors geometry for $10 or $15/hr to go over the topics which are giving difficulty if you can’t get free tutoring through the school (our math honor society provides this). He could do an ACT study group with friends. It will hardly cost thousands of dollars, but yes, he has to be a little bit motivated and you need to focus on solutions that will work for him. Lots of options.
I called the school administration one time during DS’s 4 years there. The principal said that they preferred that students advocate for themselves; I said that I shared that preference, but that I thought that DS was being inappropriately bullied by a teacher, that the teacher was abusing his authority, and that the situation called for intervention. The principal got involved and the situation improved.
In math, DS felt that he had been poorly placed when he entered the school. After his sophomore year, he (HE!) approached the department head and asked to be bumped up a level. DS said he had self-studied the courses he wasn’t in and offered to take the final exams for them. The department head agreed, DS aced the tests, he was placed in the proper classes, and as the Brits say, “Bob’s your uncle.”
Fwiw, in defense of the school, my kids are notoriously late bloomers, so they could legitimately have missed that he had math skills. That said, he learned more by advocating for himself than he would have if I had stomped into the school and carried on. He learned that there is behavior (bullying) that we will defend him from, but other behaviors (the math department underestimating him) that we expect him to resolve himself.
I have been following this thread, but have drifted in and out so I might have missed it, but what does your son think about this situation?
I do think that part of what you pay for with a private school ought to be good communication. They ought to make all of the students feel that they are worth the counselor’s time. If they aren’t doing that, then shame on them.
Somewhere, the parent of an Ivy-bound student is venting that the counselor is ignoring her kid because the remedial kids get all the attention. I hear this from parents on both sides: the school only pays attention to the kids who will get into top schools and ignores my average kid; the school only pays attention to the kids who are behind and ignores my high achiever because they think he’ll be OK no matter what.
@IxnayBob He’s not happy to be in a course with students younger than him. I told him 100x more embarrassing will be getting one of the lower ACT scores in the building—which is what he’s headed for.
The issues with self-studying is I’d have to monitor it, no guarantee he actually does it, and it takes time away from his other commits outside of school.
@hannah Whether elite or bottom quartile, at the end of the day none of them really care about your child. Some are better at schmoozing but their students are still irrelevant to them. Which is why I don’t let them make any decisions without me signing off.
@cpamum, I don’t mean to be harsh, but I think you’re coddling him. DS was playing on a high level travel hockey team and still managed to self-study. He had an active social life. Kids make the time if it matters to them; if it doesn’t matter to them, address that directly rather than spinning your wheels about GCs.
If you’re anticipating a low ACT score, what was his PLAN score? Perhaps the PSAT/SAT is more suited to him.
I understand that this seems to be on you now; it shouldn’t be.
You can’t control what the GC does, right or wrong. You can control what your son does. I hired a math tutor for my son to help him with his SAT. He needed a certain minimum score to get into his first choice school. He was not the most motivated student. However, he was sure he wanted to go to college, and this one in particular. This helped quite a bit. He was tutored once a week for about 6 weeks. I found a college student who did a pretty good job. I did not have to monitor. We did have to re-arrange music lessons to fit them in.
I don’t know how poor the score is, but if it would limit his college choices, and he isn’t concerned, then that’s a problem. If he is concerned, then I would think he would be willing to prioritize improving his score over other activities. Does he have a study hall? My daughter took an online computer science class her senior year since her high school didn’t offer anything like that. She did it during her study hall.
Again, even if he was able to re-take geometry, there is no guarantee that would fix his ACT issue. I have tutored a lot of kids in math (except my own). Kids can do well in a class and it doesn’t always translate to the standardized test because the questions are different. My first step would be to get his answers to the exam and see the specific questions he got wrong. If I were his tutor, that’s the first thing I would ask for.
I think you stated he is in a prep class. Are they not covering the info there? Or do I have that wrong?
You won’t listen to me, most likely, but if this is how you feel you should stay away from the school, because your attitude will show. Please let your son manage this.
I won’t let this son make his own decisions yet. Too immature at this point. And it’s probably our fault for not catching this sooner but work has been hectic.
Elder sons picked their own courses and did all communication from 10th grade on.
This is your S problem to resolve and he needs to take ownership of how to improve his anticipated ACT score since he has yet take the actual test. You cannot fix it for him. What does he propose doing? You are embarrassing him by demanding that he repeat a class with younger students and frankly are going to do him more harm than good. He is old enough to figure a solution out for himself.
And yes I know of which I speak. The only prep my s did for the ACT last April was to sharpen his pencil. He pulled a 30 on the math section but is a couple of points short of qualifying for some major scholarships. I have been suggesting since last April that if he studied just a little and take the test again…to absolutely no avail. But after talking to his GC on Tuesday it is now his idea and he tells me gosh mom he really should study a little and pull up his score to qualify for a major scholarship. Now that he owns the idea, he will do it in October.
[-O<
@goldensrock My oldest sons scored 34 and 31, respectively. He is on track for a 20-21. So please, let’s compare apples to apples. His body age is rather insignificant, he’s immature for his age. And students at his capacity aren’t “self-starters” known for teaching themselves courses after school. This one is my biggest challenge.
If left up to him he’d do nothing, ignoring the future consequences. And when hit with the consequences it will be too late to do much about it.
OP.
this is what you dont understand.
the HIGH SCHOOL is NOT going to be penalized or discredited because they did a poor job of teaching math- you SON is the one who is going to PAY THE PRICE !! He’s the one applying to college - not the teachers.
The RED FLAG is on HIS transcript and it wont be dismissed or glossed over or justified with excuses that the HS handed out easy A’s. Taking the same class twice will make HIM look bad- NOT the HS.
Playing this incredibly short sighted, defeatist BLAME GAME wont help your son at all.
You have a short window of time to fix this situation.
Get him some tutoring that he is REQUIRED to do , before his outside activities, until he “gets” geometry.
“I don’t know how poor the score is, but if it would limit his college choices, and he isn’t concerned, then that’s a problem.”
^^ this!!!
We pay $17,000 in tuition a year … and instead of taking a class for free during school hours I’m supposed to find and pay for a tutor and interrupt my career and his schedule outside of school? That’s frankly absurd. Thanks to all for the help. Goodbye.
Curious discussion but something here sounds strange to me.
First, if the kid doesn’t have extra time to self-study (because of the other commitments), where he is going to get that time to do the homework for the extra geometry class? Lower-level math classes tend to have ridiculous amount of busy work - isn’t time better spent just doing what he’s got to do on his own and tailored for his own needs?
Second, I agree that for some kids it’s difficult to self-study on their own (I have one of this kind) but there were already plenty of excellent suggestions with minimal (if any) costs and which will be much less time-consuming than an hour a day for a year (or is it a semester?) of boring hw for the sake of a few chapters.
And third, it’s different for everyone, of course, and I don’t know what his commitments are but doesn’t school and college prep work take priority over the ECs? (if it were ECs - my apologies if I am wrong here)