<p>Colleges do not for the most part assume that kids are going to go to a local junior college to make up for classes they cannot get at school.</p>
<p>I went to high school 100 years ago and we had Physics. My daughter’s high school also has Physics. It’s a pretty select group of kids who take that class, though - I think my high school Physics class had about 12 students (I was not one of them). </p>
<p>I took Physics at my sub standard high school. Hated it and not sure that it would have prepared me for the rigor of a Yale physics class. Luckily I was a psychology major so it was a moot point.</p>
<p>"Of course, savvy parents usually had a plan B of sending student to local junior college when class was not offered at high school. "</p>
<p>Which, of course, is only accessible to kids / families who are well-off enough that they can spare an extra car for the kid to trot off to a community college. </p>
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<p>Not in every case… There was a free bus from my high school to the local university that kids would take when they wanted to take classes there. The high school would pay for the class too but if they did it couldn’t count for college credit, only high school (not exactly sure how that worked), so many students did (or their parents did) pay for it, though it wasn’t necessary.</p>
<p>Ok, fine. How many of the 30,000 hs in the US do you think have such a bus? And how do you take a class at a CC without effectively dropping after school activities? </p>
<p>Not to mention rural areas where there is no nearby CC. </p>
<p>And by defintion, anything that requires savvy parents is going to exclude some students. </p>
<p>Back in the dark ages my small private HS offered physics, but only AP physics and very few people took it. I did not. I kind of wish I had. And I susiect that far more students there take it now. There is probably a non AP version too. My state only required 3 years of science back then, so many people didn’t take more than that. 4 years is required now. </p>
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<p>Relatively few. I was just explaining how some schools handle it. Obviously not every school can. </p>
<p>My point being, I think that from 1500 students, high school should be able to find 24 each year who want to take physics. Most years they do, but for the years when it’s more difficult, some encouragement and direction from counsellors and teachers would help.</p>
<p>Back in the dark ages of the mid 1970’s, my top private high school (in the South) had a two year required unified physics and chemistry course for its boys’ school, but didn’t offer any physics classes for the girls’ school. Yes, they were that sexist.</p>
<p>“My point being, I think that from 1500 students, high school should be able to find 24 each year who want to take physics. Most years they do, but for the years when it’s more difficult, some encouragement and direction from counsellors and teachers would help.”</p>
<p>Small towns and rural areas may not have 1500 students in a high school, or they do they are from a very wide geographic area. Not everyone lives in suburbia. . </p>
<p>Pizzagirl. Agree. Maybe some sort of on-line classes would help in those cases. I would like to see schools put as much emphasis on science education as they do reading and math. Lots of kids are too ready to be done with it after requisite year of biology and chemistry.</p>
<p>I didn’t take physics in high school though my high school offered it. I took regular pre-med physics in college because I needed it for architecture school. It was challenging but by no means impossible. The worst part was that they assumed I’d already taken a college chem course which I hadn’t. I did take chem junior year in high school, but I’d certainly forgotten pretty much everything by the time I was taking that physics course senior year n college.</p>
<p>We are not in a rural area, but there is no really practical way for a kid to take classes at our county community college - it’s a long drive and minimal public transportation. And it wasn’t any better at the local colleges - I looked for computer science courses for my older son and there was nothing.</p>
<p>NYS requires two years of science, but I believe it can be Earth Science and Living Environment (Biology).</p>
<p>I live in a small town where the entire school system has 1500 kids. That being said, the high school curriculum is definitely college prep (98% of the graduates go on to college). There are 3 physics classes offered–AP physics B, Honors Physics, and Applied Physics.</p>
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<p>For what was the non-regents HS diploma when I attended HS, yes. However, if one wanted a regents diploma one had to take a 3 year science sequence of biology, chemistry, and physics WITH LAB to fulfill the minimum science requirements. The specialized HSs required another year of science on top of that along with some other science/tech related courses*.</p>
<p>Due to that experience and being around students who opted for the regents diploma as even the regents requirements of the '90**s were considered a joke by many HS classmates and some students attending regular NYC HSs, I didn’t know anyone who only took 2 years of science in HS until I went off to college. </p>
<p>One who only took two years of science to graduate attended a respectable mid-Atlantic boarding school…and they were “rocks for jocks” type courses without a lab component. Something which ended causing him some problems when he had to take what I considered to be an easy CS for non-majors course which did have lab and he didn’t have a clue as to how to compose and complete a lab report. </p>
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<li>E.g. Drafting(sophomore rite of passage when I attended), computer/technology electives, and 1 year’s worth of science electives. On the last, I opted for meteorology and pharmacology. Latter was an odd choice on my part as vast majority of those electing it were aspiring pre-meds and pre-pharma students and I was neither.<br></li>
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<p>** Which added to the puzzlement over the regents cheating scandal of 2012 as several old teachers still teaching HS along with HS classmates who are NYC public HS teachers have stated the current regents curriculum/exams are considerably watered down compared to the ones we remembered from the early-mid '90s. </p>
<p>Regents requirements changed so often, it’s very hard to keep up. My kids found them easy, but there was one year when they put so many tricky questions on the Chemistry Regents one year when my kids were in school that lots of A students were getting scores in the 70s and 80s. It’s all pretty moot - the kids in our school applying to selective colleges took took Bio, Chem and Physics (often AP Physics B which doesn’t exist any more) and one AP science even if they weren’t STEM bound or two or three AP sciences if they were. </p>
<p>All that’s beside the original question - which is apparently that it’s quite common for physics not to be offered, even though in suburban high schools it’s always offered and usually the AP too.</p>
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<p>This mentality of only offering physics as an option for advanced students and not for all students is probably a reason why some electrician training programs now require community college courses including physics before starting the apprenticeship training programs. </p>
<p>Several electricians have stated that one of the minimum prereqs for apprenticing as an electrician is to have a working knowledge of high school level physics. </p>