<p>Ecom- Options for our HS seniors are regular, concurrent via CC (0.5 GPA boost), AP (1.0 GPA boost), e-school (does not count for GPA), and summer school. We have heard AP Ecom was hard and S1 took the concurrent course.</p>
<p>We’re talking about AP Gov (1 semester) instead of APUSH for next year should D’15 stay put. Her math/science schedule will be quite heavy, and with it being an election year, it should be a great class. The problem then is the trade-off between AP Econ (2 semesters, fulfills 2 silly graduation requirements) vs. AP Euro. She’s a science kid, so I don’t think it matters, but it’s a quandary.</p>
<p>Every school has different levels of difficulty for different AP courses, so there’s not a good way to compare within schools, to some extent.</p>
<p>mihcal - our HS just gave the PSAT to all the freshmen during school - it wasn’t a Saturday morning. It didn’t cost anything, and I’m sure a student could opt out if they wanted to and go sit somewhere while all the other freshmen took it, but why would he? Do students in your area take the PSAT on a Saturday, like the SAT?</p>
<p>Our HS has 8 periods - 4 meet each day for 90 minutes, so students have each class every other day. i love the schedule. One perk is that there’s never homework due the very next day, so kids can work around EC’s and stuff. Students only take 7 courses though - one period is a study hall. it’s mandatory for every student, and the whole school does it at the same time so teachers and peer tutors are available for questions and clubs can meet during it also.</p>
<p>mihcal - I feel for you on trade offs and not being able to do everything. Even with 7 classes per semester, S was just talking this morning about some classes he’d like to have time for. </p>
<p>welceom 2girlzmum! I sympathize with teh IB choice. None of my boys were ever tempted to do it, but I know it has pros and cons to it.</p>
<p>2girlzmum - can your D take AP instead of the IB program? SS12 is a senior, finishing IB and if he had to do it again, we all agree that AP would be the way to go. IB is great, but soooo time-consuming and we really aren’t seeing the benefit over AP.</p>
<p>Great point someone made above about taking APUSH next year during the election - hadn’t thought of that! D is taking it next year. It’s the only AP class, but she is taking Honors English 10, Honors Pre-AP Calc, Chem I, French 3 and Choir 2, so she’s going to have quite a heavy schedule. She’s also a kid who has had to take summer classes to make room for the Choir (which she LOVES).</p>
<p>My problem with D is getting her involved in EC’s. She’s at a huge school, so she’s got lots of options and she’s joined a few clubs and plays rec soccer, but she’s not all that motivated.</p>
<p>Yep, the APs here are fairly rigorous but I think for S I’m pushing him towards the regular one so he’ll be with peers - he already is with older classmates in math and language so for a class he’s not likely to be passionate about I think peer classmates may be better but I’ll leave it up to him as he may want the challenge. He’s also very much enjoying HS from the social aspect and is involved in the crew team which takes up a lot of time so that’s a consideration in finding balance. My oldest, now a 2nd year at UVA, pushed herself with every advanced class in HS and was successful in college admissions but I also think she overextended herself to some degree by taking advanced classes across the board when her passions are very obviously math/science (she’s a happy mech-e major). We’ll never know if taking all APs even in subject areas that weren’t her strengths were the key to her admission success or if she could have chosen to be a little more lopsided (as it was she was lopsided graduating with 8 science credits and 6 math credits but still all-around). She also has the personality to survive that in HS - I don’t know that my D’13 or my S’15 do - they crave a bit more social balance 
And I’d like them to sleep more than D’10 ever did :)</p>
<p>mihcal-
D2 took PSAT during school and the county paid for it.</p>
<p>Our local HS gives the PLAN (ACT version of the PSAT) in spring of Freshman year. Since it’s normed for fall of Sophomore year, it doesn’t give as much information as it should. Also, it doesn’t mean anything to anyone (me included) and since it’s a local administration, they don’t give all of the “translation” to ACT information. Worse than useless.</p>
<p>2girls- My S attends an IB school, and I agree that it offers little room. That may be because we are a small school with limited options. Example- S is taking two AP courses next year as part of the Pre-IB or Middle Years Program. This is because that is all that is offered. S has no business in AP Lit- the class will kill him. Our IB program is unfortunately fairly weak in math/science, which is why we are considering the extra work to turn chem into AP. </p>
<p>Mihcal- our school requires all freshmen to take the PSAT during school as a way to get a baseline. They pay. I am not sure what the purpose is other than that. If I want S to take next year I will have to pay and make arrangements for him to take with the Juniors.</p>
<p>PSAT (and PLAN, ACT, SAT) are offered on Saturdays mornings here. I think it’s possible to get an exemption to take it on a Wednesday, off-site, if you cannot take it on a Saturday for religious reasons. </p>
<p>Our school does not pay for any college-prep testing. Nor, sadly, much of anything else. As of this year, budget cuts have forced the end of hands-on science labs. Now, instead of doing it themselves, the kids watch videos of experiments or (rarely) watch the teacher do a demo. There’s just no money for equipment or supplies. Will the classes retain AP accreditation if the kids don’t do any labs?</p>
<p>At the middle school, they can’t afford to replace or repair the lab-bench-height stools in the science labs, which tend to come apart at the welded joints. So now the kids have to watch the lab demos standing up!</p>
<p>I hear rumors of another budget-related change, new this year, that summer school will only be offered for remediation (making up a failed class) and not open to students trying to get ahead or clear room in their schedule. The community classes are already badly impacted, and high-schoolers get last dibs on registration, so that’s unlikely to be an option for many kids. </p>
<p>Finally, my MIL substitute-teaches, and yesterday she subbed in a 5th grade class with 35 kids. There are classes at the HS with as many as 51 students. My D2015 has H.English class 6th period, when many of the kids are out for athletics, so her class is a little smaller – but the 5th period class has 37 students. The poor teacher cannot manage to read that many essays, so she just has the kids trade papers and grade for one-another.</p>
<p>What’s happening to education funding in CA is truly appalling!</p>
<p>FWIW, our (NCLB failing) HS gives the PLAN to all freshmen during school hours so they can pinpoint the kids who will fail our NCLB graduation test as Juniors, which has the ACT as one part. They give us very, very little information about it because they don’t want to freak out parents (since it’s being given 6 months before the time the norming data would reflect). It’s this odd thing with the ACT tests. ACT is out of 36 (as we all know) but PLAN is out of 32(?) and EXPLORE is out of 28(?) I know that there are projection tables, but those are kept secret.</p>
<p>Our limits on class sizes is the number of chairs that can be put in the room – somewhere between 25 and 30 for most, but not all classrooms. D’12’s magnet school will not run a class with fewer than 12 students. It’s not just CA! It’s just that CA was ahead of everyone for so long that you all have farther to fall.</p>
<p>@suzy100. Yes her school offers AP classes too. I believe she will do AP World History next year because she’s pretty sick of American history and wants to learn about somewhere else. She also said she wants to join DECA but if she does, she has to take some kind of business or marketing class. I got an email from the school that said once they find out what their budget situation is for next year, they <em>might</em> be able to allow kids to take more classes. My eldest is graduating this year and just in time for her…
I’m just venting for now. This kid is hard to predict.</p>
<p>@mihcal, Good luck to your D’s history project!</p>
<p>My D. wishes she could have more time to work on it. There is so much homework that she didn’t have time this weekend to work on her project at all - plus she wants to go to ski. so there. But she did get an important interview done yesterday which she would like to include in her movie. We had to travel long distance for that.</p>
<p>Thanks herandhisMom! Good luck to your D too. </p>
<p>My D made it to state-level History Day last year (Junior Division) and we were shocked at the lengths some of the kids had gone in doing their research. There were kids that had made multiple trips abroad … to places like Europe and Japan!</p>
<p>We were also shocked by how elaborate some of the kids’ had made their costumes and sets. There was one girl who did a solo skit and that incorporated at least a half-dozen costume changes – she had skirts sewn up with velcro fastenings, jackets that hooked on/off, etc. She must have worked with someone who has a background in costume design, to figure out how to make it all work. We also saw some schools, with multiple teams, that showed up with U-Haul trucks to lug their groups’ equipment. </p>
<p>We hadn’t seen anything like that at our local county-level History Day.</p>
<p>The 9th graders in my son’s school took the redi-stat (sp), which I believe is meant to be the new pre-PSAT test. </p>
<p>Congrats to everyone’s successes so far! My son’s competitive focus is on science. Science Bowl and Science Olympiad which he did throughout middle school. Any one else??</p>
<p>It’s math competition season here. ARML tryouts last week, this week NACLO and a local competition, next week the AMC-10/12. D’12 is a mathlete, D’15 tags along and is remarkably good, though that’s not her great passion. Our local high school doesn’t do Science Bowl or Science Olympiad, and D’15 is missing all of the Science Bowl practices.</p>
<p>@mihcal, We’ve been to the state to do the history day contest, and have seen some of those performances. They’re amazing!! My D’s school never had really good performance, imo. Last year she made it to the state with her movie. That gave us chance to see other documentaries. Some are really good. She always spent so much time on the research, sacrificed many snow days. :)</p>
<p>@IJustDrive, good luck with the math competition!
Our school does Science Bowl. H. and I go to help when they need us. It was then we realized that this school was not going anywhere - it’s almost like a joke. While other school kids probably practice 4 times a week, our team meets once biweekly! Well sometimes they meet after lunch, but as far as I know, those meets are once a week. And the kids come and go - We went to help several times, rarely saw familiar faces. 
I felt like saying something but I don’t think it’s my place.</p>
<p>Science Bowl was a big part of D’15’s middle school life, so she’s missing it some, though she’s really, really busy with other activities. I do think it’s better to not put in the effort and have a team if there’s not the support or enthusiasm for it. There’s so much else to do in high school.</p>
<p>It’s very strange. It feels like I’ve been driving to these competitions for forever (and I have!) because it’s D’12’s last year. But it’s all new (or almost new) for D’15. She doesn’t have the record, expectations or reputation (other than that of “little sister”). It’s a shift in my thoughts too. D’15 has never wanted to be the “little sister” so it’s all a little strange.</p>
<p>Second semester began yesterday for my daughter. She had a good first semester but it’s going to get tougher now since Gym and Ceramics have been replaced with an engineering class (to fulfill a tech requirement-she has zero interest) and a Junior-Senior level Social Studies class-again she had to take this since with all the teacher cuts it was hard to get the right classes as a freshman so she could take what she needed in future years. It is so much easier with her since I have learned from the numerous mistakes made with the boy.</p>
<p>I thought she would have a much tougher time trying to meet expectations she set up in her mind as her big brother left (in her mind) big shoes to fill. It has gone so much better-first the couple of teachers who had my son were very clear in our parent teacher meetings there would be no comparing of the two-I was impressed at how sensitive they were to that-and second-they are so different academically and socially they don’t lend themselves to an easy comparison. I really couldn’t be happier with how her HS experience is going. The academics are adequate, her sports have been very good for her, and socially she is blossoming.</p>
<p>I also have a different perspective on the experience. Well maybe not different but I feel almost validated in my beliefs that balance is the most important part of life-including HS.</p>
<p>Sounds like your D is having a great freshman year, pepper - nice to hear it! IJustDrive - my S’12 has pulled S’15 into the math contests - they are both signed up for AMC soon. It’s cute to see them at the whiteboard with older son teaching younger son math stuff. 2 weeks to prep for AMC? Ha - I hope S’15 doesn’t get discouraged if he doesn’t do well! He dove into chess tournaments this year and didn’t seem discouraged that he lost just about every match for a few tournaments.</p>
<p>As far as filling older siblings’ shoes, here’s my story. My oldest son had a miserable time in middle school. By 8th grade, he was a miserable student for any teacher - refusing to do any work, being sullen, etc. When my middle S had the same English teacher 2 years later, on the first day of class she looked at his name, looked at him, and sniffed, “You’re not as bad as your brother are you?” How’s that for a nice welcome to the year!</p>
<p>Freshman S has an audition today for the spring musical. They’re doing Les Mis, so there is lots of room for chorus members, but with 4500 kids in the school, it can be hard for a freshman to get a spot. Crossing fingers!</p>
<p>Today was the first schoolday after the start of Girl Scout Cookie sales. My D2015 trudged to school with two cases of cookies – as much as she could manage to carry. Mid-morning, I get a text:</p>
<p>
</p>