@goldensrock Humiliating. Do you find the double pace of an advanced course and its 30-40% deeper content to be pointless? Is there no benefit to a student experiencing that intensity and covering that depth?
For the record, most students are in advanced track courses. Seems the bottom decile are the only students in regular track math.
I do not think the school or the curriculum is the problem here. To quote @thumper1, “love the kid on the couch.” And try as you might, continually refocusing the issue on the school will not help. Folks here have given you an amazing list of excellent options to assist your s in being successful on the ACT but you are determined not to “hear” them.
“Looking at his test scores and projections, he’s a student most people would predict isn’t “college material.””
No, most people who know what they’re doing would say he’s likely to be fine. If his lowest subscore is 20, he’s got lots of college-bound company. The ACT defines “college ready” in math at a score of 22. Maybe his eventual score will keep him out of UConn and he’ll have to go to Maine or WCSU. Maybe it won’t. But either way, the worst-case scenario is that his score doesn’t go up, and he can still go to college under that worst-case scenario.
National dropout rates tell you zero about the likelihood of college graduation for a prep school alum whose parents can cover the cost of college.
I know what you mean about immaturity - my S is quite of that type.
However, I think that repeating the course, even with doubled pace and deeper content, is exactly pointless. You are not building a foundation this way - you are boring him to death and making him hate the course, the teacher, and you in addition. Repetitive work is rarely giving anyone better knowledge or skills.
As for the students in the advanced track, why do you care about them? Your S is infinitely more important to you than all the geniuses in the world. Nor should you care about his decile at this school but you should care that his math track is right for him so that he gets his As. It looks like college adcoms do recognize good student work even if those students are never destined to have perfect scores (at least I seriously hope so as I have my own not-so-perfect senior 
).
Good luck for you anyway - I know, it’s hard with those boys!
Seems like you feel like you got a bad deal paying $17,000 for a private high school with apparently inferior quality courses. Correct?
Perhaps you can check other high schools (including the public one in your district) to see if they are more suitable.
“Nearly 60% of students drop out of college, with 90% of the dropouts coming from his predicted cohort.”
I don’t know what his “predicted cohort” means. I do know that he’s extremely unlikely to need any geometry in his college studies. He doesn’t seem to be headed for a very math-intensive major. How well he preps or doesn’t prep and ultimately scores on the math ACT has no bearing on how successful he will be in college. What matters is how much he cares about learning and how motivated and organized he is. It sounds like he is at risk in this respect because he can’t be bothered to figure out what his math deficiencies are and can’t be trusted or expected to work on this without you or a babysitter you hire breathing down his neck.
"Do you find the double pace of an advanced course and its 30-40% deeper content to be pointless? "
I’d like to know how the advanced course is “double pace” compared with the regular course, yet covers only 30-40% more material. A double pace course should cover double the material. For example, BC calculus is often taught as a single year class which covers both AB and BC material. In other schools, the AB and BC material are taught consecutively with double the instructional time. The former BC class is double pace. The geometry class as described doesn’t even make mathematical sense. Which is why I would take these descriptions with a large grain of salt not as the gospel you seem to think it is.
OP, after all this discussion you haven’t even answered a lot of important questions. Such as, how many practice tests did your son take? Are you freaking out over a single practice test here, or is this a consistent result obtained after an entire summer of prep and no improvement?
Were those topics covered in his prior class or were they not?
What does your son think about all this–why is he having difficulty and what does he think should be done? If you pushed him into this class against the advice and judgement of all the parents on here, and against his will, is he going to sit in the back texting his friends and hating you and will he end up with a C in the class? If he cannot be bothered or motivated to learn the subset of material he needs in any way suggested here, will he be happier and more successful if he has to spend way, way more time completing all the requirements of this class and wasting a lot of time going over material he already knows? You’ve already enrolled him in a pricey private prep school and also sent him to ACT prep classes. There is only so much you can push him. Is he going to get anything out of any of this or does he care so little you are wasting your time?
I am curious as to what the older sons’ scores have to do with anything. Do you have the expectation that this son should, must or had better be in that same ballpark?
I’m pretty convinced the prep classes low ball the starting scores so they look like they are improving your scores. My one son who took a class (he stopped going except to take practice tests) had a ridiculously low score from them, and even on the practice tests their grading for the essays bore no resemblance to the score he actually got. (They were giving him 1s and 2s - he actually got 9s and 10s.)
Have you asked the math department if there’s a way he could use a study hall period to do some sort of math independent study that would just cover the materials that he missed? I just think he’s going to be so bored for 70% of the class that he’s not going to be paying attention when they finally cover new material.
FWIW my younger son (not the math guy) was in a regular math section in 10th grade because of scheduling issues. He took the honors class the next year and he had to scramble and go to extra help for the things he had missed, but he survived and in fact that math teacher became his favorite teacher.
It’s a shame that your son couldn’t have taken the Advanced Geometry class in the summer. Where I live, the public school has summer school but the pace is fast, particularly for math. The area private schools also offer done summer offerings. They are the perfect solution for a student who needs some reinforcement.
I think your real challenge here is with your son. Parenting is hard. Parenting a teenage, unmotivated boy through high school can be very hard. I would recommend trying to motivate your son indirectly (not directly - when we push, they push back). For example, my son wasn’t interested in worrying about colleges or what he needed to do to improve his chances of admission. He thought he would be just fine at the local state school and that it really didn’t matter where he went. Although he was doing well in high school, he needed some extra motivation to focus a bit on the standardized testing component and to understand why a more competitive college might be a more enjoyable experience for him. When I questioned his planned course choices, he pushed back. When I suggested X, he responded with Y.
Here’s what worked. I took the Fiske Guide out from the library and set it down for a few days on the coffee table. I noticed that both my children picked it up and perused it every once in a while. A few days later, I asked my son to play a game with me. I would go through the Guide and pick out 5 schools that I thought he should consider for college and he would do the same for himself and then we would compare. After he looked at the colleges more closely, he started to understand and appreciate the differences and some looked more appealing to him. He might have been drawn to the schools that had better dorms, or more food variety, but at least he was starting to invest in the process. From there, he began noticing what the requirements of these schools were and we had an appointment with the college guidance counselor at his public school to confirm that mom wasn’t so crazy after all. Once he started thinking about colleges, we had a rough (and large) list of possible candidates. We scheduled a trip over the summer and toured a few schools and there he had an epiphany. He realized that all colleges were not the same and he really loved one of the schools that we visited. From that time forth, he has been extremely self-motivated and driven. We are still going to visit several other campuses and that initial love may not end up being his first choice, but he has become invested in the process. You have to find some way to facilitate your son having that awakening or all of your efforts will be in vain. You can lead the horse to a geometry classroom, but you can’t make him study. Good luck!
@pittsburghscribe “You can lead the horse to a geometry classroom, but you can’t make him study.”
Hehe - nice one…
@cpamum, are you saying that his prep class composite was 20, or just his math score? Since it is now September, was this a prep class he took over the summer, and if so, was that his first score or his score after completing the class? It is true that prep classes are frequently accused of low-balling initial scores.
One of the best ways to increase the chances that a kid will drop out of college–besides reducing his SES to a level where the family can’t pay for it–is to make him feel stupid and useless and hate school. I think your plan of making him sit in a class full of even younger kids is perfectly tailored to achieve that.
I understand your frustration with him and with the school. Perhaps you should not have assumed that private school is always necessarily better, or worth it. But that’s water under the bridge now. Moving him again is probably not the best solution.
Sign him up for Thinkwell. Or get a tutor. And move on. He WILL eventually mature. Your job is to make sure that he gets to that point with his psyche as intact as possible and his options as open as possible.
OP - My middle son is not a math student. He goes to a public school and is on the lowest math track. He took geometry last year and is taking algebra II this year. The way that the ACT works is that you average all the subjects together. For our son the truth is that it might be easier to try and raise the other subjects scores than the math in order to get a better composite. So I’m wondering if that might work for your son?
@pittsburghscribe is really onto something regarding the college visits and focusing on the ultimate goal with the student. Have you taken your son on any visits, recently?
Visits to older siblings’ colleges, and visits made when they are freshmen/sophomores are one thing, but these visits take on a whole new meaning when the kid gets to junior year suddenly realizes that pretty soon he/she is going to have to leave home and live somewhere else for four whole years.
This is also around the time where peers start talking about colleges, and the kid gets motivated/interested in colleges himself.
Once the interest in colleges begins, so also begins the regret at any past lackluster performance, be it grades or test scores, and many kids resolve to fix what they can with the time they have left.
Assuming your son develops an interest in going to a particular college, that could be motivational. As I described above, this is what happened with my son, and it did motivate him to prep for his SAT.
If what you are saying about his college choices is true, does it matter if he has a higher ACT math score?
On one hand, you are portraying the student as one who was short changed on the material covered in his math class.
On the other hand, you are portraying him as a student who won’t get accepted to any college.
There are several thousand colleges in this country and there really is a place for almost any student.
Why do you think it’s important for this kiddo to have a math ACT in the 30’s if you don’t think he is mature enough,mcapable enough, or ready enough for possible college?
I think you need to set your priorities.
Too late to edit…and I apologize for the typos as well.
We are hearing the point of view of one parent here…who seems to have a busy career. What is the other parent saying about this young man? Perhaps the second parent might be more supportive of this student’s needs in terms of seeking tutoring or self study than the parent who is posting here…who feels it’s the school’s obligation to fill in the holes.
OP, sorry, but your tactics come across as punitive, not helpful. Please consider what’s best for him emotionally as well as academically–not just what is most expedient for you.
Please check in later and let us know what happens.
So this was a sophomore who only took an ACT practice test? Why would that be predictive of his actual ACT score when he is a junior or senior? If he won’t take trig until he’s a senior, he might do better on SAT math anyway.
My D is not a great math student. B in regular geometry freshman year. Did not crack 500 in Math on her sophomore or junior PSAT, but she managed a 27 on ACT Math at the end of Junior year (not stellar, but she still got a 30) She never did any prep for the ACT (maybe 30 minutes) and certainly didn’t retake geometry. OP, Make sure he’s taking the right test and give the kid a chance. He might surprise you.
University of Connecticut main campus in Storrs could indeed be a reach for this student…depending on his class rank, and overall GPA. All that has been posted on the 40 posts by his parent is the low practice math ACT…not even the other practice ACT scores.
Having said that…there is absolutely nothing wrong with Eastern Connecticut State University or Western Connecticut State University…or Southern or even Central. The state has done quite a bit of work at these schools…with great new facilities and staff. There are also kids who go to one of these campuses…or a regional UConn campus and then transfer to UConn Storrs for their last two years to complete their degrees.
There is no shame in the above plans.