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<p>hmmmmm. maybe they weren’t ready to take advanced courses in the 7th or 8th grade.
The vast majority of our kids who take AP’s are/have been enrolled in honors courses - at least in the AP subject. Our high school does not restrict kids who want to enroll in an honors course.</p>
<p>One of my kids was recommended by her 8th grade Lang Arts teacher to take college prep English in 9th grade. The one who taught herself to read at age 3. I overrode that teacher and put her into honors and she took AP English in 12th and scored a 4 and a 5.
Many parents don’t know they can override the teacher and just go along.</p>
<p>Like I said - if early on the work is too demanding the kids get moved. There is extensive counseling. There is a required meeting at the end of the year to hand out summer homework and go over expectations. When older teens are allowed to self-select their classes then they have control and ownership of the situation. It’s a win-win.</p>
<p>justAmomof4- I agree that there are plenty of students still on the 5,6,6+ year grad rate, but the APs sure do help.</p>
<p>We have no requirements for AP’s. Anybody who wants to sign up for an AP can and all are encouraged to do so. It is regarded as sort of the “new honors” here. Since the GC’s push AP’s so hard, those who want to just stick with regular Honors classes are led to believe they don’t have a chance at getting into good schools (and I’m talking State schools here). So the kids all rush to sign up for as many AP’s as they think they can stand so they’ll get those extra quality points giving them a boost in class rank. Our system pays for all the exams so the kids have nothing to lose by taking the class just to look good on their transcript and get the GPA boost. Many don’t care if they pass the exam or not because they didn’t pay for it.</p>
<p>hmmmmm. maybe you ignored the 9 -10 grade reference.</p>
<p>I stand by my statement - if a teen chooses not to take advanced courses in 7 - 8 - 9 and 10th grade - I do not think they should be in AP courses in 11 -12.</p>
<p>I think that some kids use the extra college credits not to graduate early but to allow them to pick up a minor, or additional major in college.</p>
<p>At our middle school - there aren’t any advance courses for kids to take - it’s homogeneous instruction.</p>
<p>I didn’t miss the 9-10 grade reference at all. The same comment applies. Some kids aren’t ready for honors then but take honors in 11th and/or 12th and do well.<br>
My daughter had a friend who never took and honors history course take AP World history last year. She passed and did fine in the course.</p>
<p>We have lots of kids who take college prep classes - never an honors class in high school - who do fine in college. If they can do well their freshman year in college on that instruction and they are motivated their senior year - they take an AP course - usually in their best subject and get a feel for college. Mostly they do fine.
Where is the risk?</p>
<p>Our district hs offers 14(?) AP courses as well a 2 courses for direct college credit thru a local university. Because it desires to teach them at a college level, students must be approved by the department in order to enroll, typically allows only jr or sr grade students to enroll and limits the number taken to 3 at any one time.</p>
<p>Because of this policy, pass rates are very high(100%) in most cases and high percentages of 4/5 scores. The students seem happy with the limit on enrollments and colleges seem to appreciate the district policy come admissions time. I guess they know that our students will enter college understanding the calibre of college course expectations. Our son got a B- in his hs calc BC class, but got a 5 on the AP exam and earned a 3.75 gpa in the 4 maths he took in college-Calc 2, MVCalc, Discrete Structures and Computability&Logic.</p>
<p>My take is that high schools have a choice to make re AP courses-quantity vs quality. If too many students are able to take AP courses or if students are able to take too many, the quality of each individual class will suffer.</p>
<p>And if a hs offers a lot of AP classes it will not only be the top decile of students able to enroll. I know that a lot of the students in AP-Art Studio, AP Art History, AP Music Theory and AP Spanish 5 are ones talented in those areas of study but not necessarily ensconced in at the top of the class academically. Hey my son would not have standed a chance of enrolling in AP Art Studio or AP Spanish if he had the urge to do something stupid.</p>
<p>NEM2,</p>
<p>You seem to be ignoring a lot of research that shows that kids do not mature at the same rate. You might be surprised to learn, for example, that some kids that are not developmentally ready to take algebra in 8th grade can do fine in BC Calc their senior year in HS. </p>
<p>I’m sure the same is true in other disciplines, too.</p>
<p>We have an open curriculum policy at our high school, so anyone can sign up for an AP class. We have a couple of teachers who are unbelievably qualified to handle those classes, namely our APUSH and AP English teachers. The work is demanding, but not overbearing. Since we are a small school, we have small classes. AP is particularly small – maybe 15 kids. </p>
<p>The biggest problem we have at the school is that the other teachers resent our AP teachers. They think they have no problems because they teach the smart kids all day. Well, first, only a handful really belong in the classes. Second, it’s just as difficult to keep the gifted kid going as it is to work with any child. Third, it does not help when you have staff members who want AP ended because they think it’s too much pressure on a kid. </p>
<p>Today, one of our staff members told me that her son was not going to return to AP as a senior. She says he went to guidance and learned that he did not need AP to get into some highly selective colleges in VA. His GPA was good, so who needs AP?</p>
<p>Hope he has lots of backups.</p>