Our school system only requires 1 semester of PE and 1 of health.
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One variable in PE requirements, I think, is how many classes are built into the day. Where I am, there are 6 classes in a school day*—requiring 4 years of PE would be effectively impossible.
On the other hand, the place where I grew up had 8 classes in a school day, which meant that (after I had finished the 1 year of required PE and ½ year of required health) I had the flexibility to take two foreign languages and all the drama classes that were offered and a couple other things as well. But even if 4 years of PE had been required, I would have still been able to have a lot more breadth than my kids are getting with 1½ year of PE combined with just 6 classes per day.
(In case you couldn’t tell, I’m a fan of more classes in a day.)
*And we have both the shortest school day and the shortest school year in the nation. This is actually a legitimate problem with the schools here, but lengthen either of them and you might have to pay teachers more, and we can’t have that, can we?{/rant}
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You’re in Alaska right? I’m originally from Portland, Oregon and I definitely didn’t have the educational opportunities that my D gets in the poorest county in NJ. Her school was on lockdown recently for gun shots in the area and at one point the state took over the jr high for violence. Teaches in my city start out around $55,000/yr and a livable house is in the $250,000 range where in Oregon good luck finding something that isn’t covered in mold and falling down with no road to it for that price while making $35,000/yr. She has 8 classes per term and 4 daily in an “A” day “B” day block schedule. What she gets for free musically, the AP offerings plus a long list of vocational programs is heads above what my friends kids have in Portland. Not to mention the special Ed and early intervention. I could go on and on and agree with you that clearly education varies regionally to a ridiculous degree. Please pay teachers better!
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We are in the same state with PE/Health–Our district allows athletes to use their sport as PE though.
We just got a notice from our HS that due to “numerous” problems with the AP online testing platform–all of the remaining AP tests will be pencil & paper. Is anyone else hearing this?
Our district requires 1 year of PE for everyone, regardless of other sports/activities, and then will only let you count sports done in school, for the team if completed for the next three years (assuming it’s a one season sport, which most are). I’m bummed for my kids; my son plays ultimate frisbee, but that won’t count, so he’ll either have to do an extra year of PE or play a sport for the school, and the dancer would’ve had to do the same if she hadn’t changed schools.
Our school actually offers dance as an option instead of pe. My D has no interest in dance but lots of kids do and it’s become pretty popular
Ironically, all the other schools in our district have dance as a PE option; one actually has an amazing dance program–enough that my daughter toyed with transferring to the school–but ours does not. That would have made her day! To be fair, we do have a dance team she could have tried out for, but when she watched their videos she was uncomfortable with the amount of twerking and sexualized moves, so decided to skip auditioning. She has since heard that a number of the girls and parents are uncomfortable, but don’t want to rock the boat with the coach; it makes me sad that as we attempt to empower girls that this is the choreography chosen. But I digress.
Freshmen are required to take PE. After that if you are an athlete/marching band at the school you are good (most kids do a study hall, but there are electives and that is where my D is fulfilling her financial literacy requirement next year).
If it is an outside sport (ie club lacrosse, soccer, field hockey etc.) you will need to send a letter and certification from the coach demonstrating how the sport/activity meets the state requirements.
Otherwise, you have to have a semester of PE per year. The other semester is Health which is required. So much so that a kid in my D’s class is taking driver’s ed even though he has his license already!
I think all of our AP tests were paper anyway. I wonder what happened.
I know the entire College Board system crashed in the middle of the AP Chinese test yesterday (or was it the day before?) – if there were problems a second day in a row, yeah, I’d probably opt for the pencil/paper version, so there doesn’t have to be make-up days (which is happening for the AP Chinese tests, and some of those kids have graduation before the first possible make-up day).
yikes! That’s awful. This is the kind of thing I"m worried about for the digital PSAT this fall.
Interesting to see the social studies and PE requirements. I think that’s probably the 2 areas with the most variation.
Our SS curriculum is:
F…geography 1/2 class
S…World (AP or regular)
J…US (AP or regular)
S… government (regular or dual enroll where they actually go to the local directional and take the class from a professor there). 1/2 class
D also took AP Human Geography this year. It’s mostly seniors in the class but works better for her early. She will probably take psychology at the local directional, because 1 it gets her out of the HS for a class, which is good for her mental health, and 2 I know many colleges the intro psychology class is a choke point. So getting it done now, when hopefully it will transfer because it isn’t dual credit just a regular college class, may save her some registration frustration down the road.
PE/Health is one full class. Then she needs one more 1/2 class, there are a bunch of PE electives she can choose from, including weight training which most athletes take. She will try to take a class that focuses on outdoor lifelong sports (pickle ball, golf, canoeing, etc). S19 took it and had a blast.
Now that there’s a sign in the front yard announcing where S23 is going in August, I’m joining this thread for my D25. I found CC late in S23’s process, but not too late to feel really helped by the sharing of knowledge and experiences here. Between CC, the Your College-Bound Kid podcast, and actually going through it once (poor first kid, always the guinea pig!), I feel much more prepared for D’s process.
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Welcome! I’m super grateful for all the parents who have been through the process and have wisdom to share!
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Welcome and good luck! My 25 is #4, and exactly zero of them have the same interests or checklist items. A tiny bit of overlap between 3 and 4, but 3 was a bit prestige driven and also a bit of a grinder nerd (said as a compliment in this context). 4 decidedly is not. So even though both want/wanted LACs, there isn’t much overlap. Most of 3’s top choices are a hard no from #4!
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D25’s school has 2 years of PE requirement.
First AP test today. She said it was not as bad as she thought it would be. Starting to feel very real.
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AP test was on paper, but it was not changed from online.
DH and I were talking about why all AP tests aren’t online. D25 mentioned that one kid has an IEP and gets to type his essay, which is fine, but all these kids are typing all their essays all year long. Why not allow all kids to write how they write every day–on a computer! If someone asked me to hand write out my next big work product, it would be…difficult, and I have 30 years of writing experience.
I was also surprised to learn that they hold the AP tests at the same time to limit cheating, which is great. So, I’m guessing the AP Euro test was at 10:30 a.m. EST yesterday because D25 took it at 7:30 a.m. PST. But those poor kids in Hawaii, were they really taking it at 4:30 a.m.?
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Yes! My D’s handwriting is atrocious. I hope whoever grades her test is able to read it! I had her practice writing some essays just to have her practice the handwriting!
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D25 took AP Euro on the computer. I’m pretty sure it was 8 am Central.