I know when they go to the finance office to pay they have a list of classes you are enrolled in and you can only pay/register for those tests.
No interest in having them take any others but I’m not sure how you would get around it.
I’m so glad our high school will let you take whatever classes you have the prerequisites for. We have a new GC this year and I don’t like her. Our school has a policy that they will put “birth” siblings in the same class if you request this. DS18 and DS 20 are obviously not birth siblings but since they were taking the same pre AP Chem class I asked if this courtesy could be extended to them. Instead of just checking to see if it would be an easy fix and if space was open (they both have lunch a different period opposite each other’s chem class) she immediately started questioning why if they weren’t twins would they be taking the same level science class, I explained that ds18 opted to take the new intro to engineering class and comp sci principles class and did not have room for an additional science last year and that ds20 was coming from home school and already had official credit for Biology and that Pre AP Chem was the next class in the sequence (which she would have known if she had bother to read the email a had sent the week prior!)
Before she would even look at the schedules she went on and on about the benefits of having “different perspectives” and when I tried to explain that this school uses department based tests and it’s just easier to have the same info and same homework dates she said that “oh, so your sons have to work on their communication issues” really??? I just wanted to get them in the same class if it wasn’t a going to be a be problem. If it was an issue, no problem, we’d deal with it. This woman was so used to all kids having the exact same sequence that she really couldn’t deal with a freshman in a sophomore level class and junior in a typically sophomore class. This was just not done at her old school obviously.
DS20 is in two AP classes, AP comp sci and AP Human Geo
Our school doesn’t have any prohibition against AP classes other than HUG for freshman as long as they meet the prerequisites but I’ve never heard of anyone doing so. It would be very hard to meet prerequisites for any others in middle school.
Our district offers any AP you qualify for in 9th grade. There is a new Comp Sci AP which many 9th graders are taking. World History AP is another popular 9th grade class.
Honors students here usually take one social studies AP per year. I guess a student could change the order but I don’t see what advantage it would give
AP HUG
APEURO
APUSH
APecon or AP gov (both cover 2 AP tests)
I think there’s also something to be said for taking classes with your class. The kids’ school has 2800 students and taking classes with your class for the most part is a social thing.
@texaspg - some of these things (most?) are well out of our control as teachers on the Portal - when I get a stack of papers, and start entering grades, the stupid machine immediately makes all the ones I haven’t typed in, into zeroes. And if a kid is moved by Guidance to a new section of the class, all their grades get zeroed out. And things like that! I think that there is something they can fix because it doesn’t always happen this way, but from the teacher’s perspective, it can be just as frustrating, I promise. 
@3scoutsmom - that is so annoying! Again chiming in as a teacher, I once had a GC pull the same kind of opinion: we had a transfer student coming in who was in 9th grade, and it was something like November. She had been taking biology, and 9th-graders at my school take physics. The GC put her into physics “because it’s the 9th grade course” - and naturally she had no idea what was flying in spite of having been an “A” science student in the previous school. I went to the GC again and was told, “you should try to meet her after school to catch her up”. Eventually my (and perhaps the parent?) pestering led to her “trying for a day” in the bio class, which of course was great, and then she was moved.
My sister (2 years younger) and I took the occasional class together in HS years ago, and it seems like a reasonable request. But in my professional experience, parents more often request different sections for siblings, particularly if they are different ages. It’s a pain for me this year, because I have a set of twins in different sections of the same class, and one twin is out of the state for a couple weeks, and it would be so much easier if I could have the sister be the partner/helper with the same dates. (And they get along; it was just random.)
AP World History and AP Human Geography are offered to freshman at our school.
Freshman are not allowed to take any AP’s at my D20’s high school. And the only AP they are allowed to take in 10th grade is AP World History. I asked the school guidance counselor about it and he told me that they do not make exceptions :(.
Our history sequence is usually
9- World History (reg, honors or AP)
10 - Euro (AP)
11 - US History (reg, AP)
12 - Gov/Econ (reg, AP)
Human Geography is offered but very few kids take it. I’m not sure why. :-?
And for sciences, 9th graders usually start with Bio and then go to Chem. They tend to recommend holding off on Physics until the kids have more math. It isn’t black and white but that is the most common sequence.
@lkg4answers that is the same sequence at our school as well. And for science - ours is Bio, Chem, AP Bio, AP Physics OR AP Chem. Some do take both Physics and Chem senior year, but very few, and usually those kids decided not to do a foreign language past sophomore year (3 years if including middle school).
English APs don’t start until junior year, Math APs don’t start until junior year as well.
@fretfulmother - I am not complaining about teachers. I am saying in general we saw the issue with one or two teachers each year where we would go to the kid and ask what happened in the class (and get that lecture about “chill”), but we figured out quickly we just need to wait for that teacher to add the grade. For whatever reason, we had no issues with the rest of the teachers.
Overall, we were very happy that we knew what was going by just logging into grade report site.
@texaspg I figured as much.
I think there is a setting that either defaults non entered grades as null or as zeroes…
I’m on my computer quite a bit and have to keep myself from checking my kid’s school portal. Not all teachers had posted grades in the first two weeks and it concerned me. But I figured if D was doing well in the two classes that were posted, then she must be doing well in the others.
So frustrating. D is already missing 3 assignments. Come to find out that she has been busy helping others with their homework/assignments and not having enough time for her own. I’ve been oblivious to the amount of requests for help that she has been getting…via email, text, Instagram and Snapchat. It’s not like when I was a teen in the Stone Age and you actually had call someone on the phone (that was probably in the kitchen) to ask a classmate for help. She’s a terrific kid and I hate to do it, but I will be taking her phone during homework time from now on.
Phone use during homework time can/has been an issue on and off here too. Efficient use of time is so important to start now!
School is in session for about a week now for S20. There isn’t a lot of materials yet. He spends about 30 minutes daily on his school work. He promptly goes to bed at 10pm and comes down to the kitchen at 6:40am everyday. So far so good.
@khmama, I can relate. When I “catch” D on her phone, she’s often helping others or taking pictures of text book pages to send to friends who don’t have their books! She is playing a fall sport and oftentimes doesn’t get to start homework until 6:30 and 8:30 on game nights. Last night, I asked her to put her phone away and then answer their questions afterward.
I reminded her of the airline instructions to “put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others” to drive my point home.
HUG and pre-calc are the time sucks here. Overall hw time is averaging 3 hours/night.
I freaked a little about the first pre-calc test score and then found out the class average was a 70.
@lilmom glad to know I’m not alone! I love the idea of telling her about the airline instructions - perfect analogy! D told me that she is able to turn in all of her missing assignments today and get credit for them. Fingers crossed!
I’m wondering…how many of your kids’ high schools are on a block schedule? Our high school is on the block schedule, and I don’t really like it. I think it limits the ability to take a variety of courses. Students at our school take 6 classes, split up by 3 classes per day on a A/B schedule. If they want to take an additional class, they have to take zero period at 7am, which leaves them exhausted.
I’ve noticed that many kids on College Confidential are able to take more classes during the day and even have free periods or study halls (no such thing as study hall at our school).
We also have a really limited amount of AP classes at our school, and I’m wondering if the block schedule affects that.
The block schedule also seems to make for huge amounts of homework a night.
How does it work at your kids’ high schools?