@mathyone - as a teacher, I wouldn’t “like” to consider myself a professional- I am a professional. I trained for what I do (a bachelors and 2 masters degrees in my field) and I am paid a salary to do it. Is there another definition of “professional” that I am missing? And btw- the curriculum for 2 of the classes I teach have had HUGE revisions in the last 2 years- APUSH was an all new test last year, and Euro is all new this year. The college board has been making changes to address university concerns that the tests and curriculum have not been truly reflective modern university curriculum. But given how disrespectful your entire post #232 was of the teaching profession - particularly of ap teachers, I get the feeling you don’t really get what it is we do…
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It is meritocracy, with some exceptions 
At least, Chinese value meritocracy. Americans - don’t. That is corrosive to young minds (IMHO).
I would like to think so too, but then how is it that the majority of high school teachers apparently cannot teach or learn to teach the college intro course in their field of expertise? College professors are sometimes expected to teach classes which are rather out of their field of expertise and they are expected to learn the material if they don’t know it.
Organic Chemistry is not an enrichment class. Gosh! Theater and digital design are enrichment classes (for non-professionals), IMHO.
If your D is interested in Chemistry, she should have jumped at an opportunity to take Organic Chemistry in summer. Somehow, your D was the only student in her class that decided to skip organic chemistry in summer. It is not her classmates problem that they were studying and she did not.
< Also, D was working over the summer to earn money. The summer classes cost $800-$2000 depending on what is taken and where, plus the opportunity cost of not making money. >
I think all high schools have policy that summer classes paid by “volunteer donations”. Also, if you are from a low income area, you can always petition your high school to have a fee-free education . i cannot imagine a high school that would refuse such petition by a low income family.
One class is, probably, 2 hours long, four days per week, 6 weeks? Your D could not schedule her work to allocate this amount of time?
Speaking from experience.
A public high school should not require a summer course costing several hundred dollars in order to take AP Chem. Or an advanced art or music class either. Not that those matter, if course .
Your D takes classes at Stanford, but can’t afford public HS? I thought Stanford is much more expensive than summer classes at public.
<Re: #228
The OP and daughter were not told by anyone that the summer course was a prerequisite for the AP chemistry course. The main complaint was that it was a secret prerequisite. >
OP said that all other students, except his D took this pre-req. Obviously, is was not that secret.
@californiaaa: You are aware that organic chemistry is oft-times a class that students take after AP Chem at the high school level, right? Few people who are not intrinsically interested in organic chem think to take it as a “bridge” course before a rather familiar and on-the-next-level-after-high-school-level AP Chem.
It is not necessarily a choice to avoid the fees attached to an essential course that would have a student fill her time with something else, but an understanding that there was no pre-req beyond that to which she had already been exposed which was needed to be adequately prepared for the AP course. (Adding in here the normal summer self-study that has already been spoken of for public school students in those regions where school begins after Labor Day.)
You seem to couch the option for paying for summer study or not as one of merely economics, and then approach that viewpoint as though only the poorest of families would eschew a pay-for summer course.
There are other perspectives and reasons for wanting a student to fill her time with other activities/options.
Considering that many AP courses are year long high school courses but their AP scores are only accepted for semester long college courses (if accepted at all for subject credit), there should be plenty of slack time in them for additional side discussions that advanced students may bring up (presumably, these advanced students have no trouble learning the baseline AP syllabus material at college pace, leaving plenty of class time for those additional side discussions).
Unless the student will major in chemistry or biology, or do pre-med, s/he is unlikely to need to take an organic chemistry course, which is typically a sophomore level college course that is taken after frosh level general chemistry or high school AP chemistry. It is really odd that organic chemistry is a prerequisite (secret or otherwise) to a high school AP chemistry course.
If the high school does have a lot of very advanced prospective chemistry/biology/pre-med students, then offering an organic chemistry course as an enrichment elective for them to explore their interests in more advanced chemistry is fine, but it should not be a prerequisite for any of the more standard chemistry (including AP) courses in the high school.
I agree, but I am still puzzled as to how success in AP chem could be dependent on taking an organic chem class. AP chem is general, inorganic chemistry. Although in college this material would generally be a prerequisite for organic chem, I can’t understand why it would be so helpful to have taken organic first. Most of the material isn’t something that would be covered in an organic class.
I don’t see why a student should be faulted for not taking a high school organic class over the summer. It would be expensive and time consuming and the student would have to repeat the material in college. I don’t think that not taking it indicates that a student isn’t serious. People on this site often tell students not to bother with AP stats because it’s not nearly as rigorous as the stats class they will get in college. Organic chem is different, how?
No, ucbalumnus, there is no slack time. This is one of the reasons for the increased pressure at the university level for changes to the AP Physics exam, now broken down into two years.
Granted, my kid is one of those who would go into “breakout session,” and even linger after class to delve more deeply into things, but the teacher had to teach not just for the handful of kids for whom this stuff was simply wildly exciting.
Huh? AP physics C is commonly a two year sequence in high school covering what is usually a two quarter to two semester sequence in college (though many colleges consider AP physics C to be of insufficient depth and math intensity, so they do not accept it for physics and/or engineering majors). Seems like there should be plenty of slack time due to the slow pace of covering the material.
If you are referring to the former non-calculus AP physics B being split into the usually two year AP physics 1 and 2, that was fairly useless as AP credit anyway, though some high schools just used AP physics B as their honors physics course which it seems well suited for. Again, the new AP physics 1 and 2 should have plenty of slack time.
AP Physics C was a one year course for my kids. I thought that the change was that now it (‘C’)was required to be split into two years, not that the AB course was split into two years. My kids did not have to take AB.
I mentioned AP Physics not as “the” class without slack time per se, just as an AP class where I knew changes had been implemented at the high school level due to the colleges and universities citing the same lack of preparation and depth of instruction that you spoke of.
There are AP classes where, by the nature of the course, discussion is necessary and expected, so to some degree there will be discussion. But there are certainly courses where this is curtailed. This was my kids’ experience. This is what the teachers spoke to parents about.
The problem with AP physics C (from the colleges’ viewpoint) is that it only has a co-requisite of calculus. Many colleges require at least a semester of calculus (or high school calculus) before the student takes the first calculus-based physics course that covers mechanics, and require at least concurrent enrollment in multivariable calculus while taking the E&M course. So AP physics C may be seen by many colleges as being mathematically insufficient in comparison to the calculus-based physics courses offered by those colleges.
While I am not sure this is always the case, I would think that kids going into AP Physics C would have already taken the AP Calculus C exam, for, again, the reasons you state. Such is true where my kids attend.
I can’t speak to AP PHYS E&M (how hard it was, or whether he liked the course or the pacing), for my son simply does not say much. I can say that right now, in college, Vibrations and Waves is kicking his butt (apparently it is THE weeder class).
@toowonderful, no I just can’t understand why the vast majority of teachers who majored in a subject would not be able to teach (or to learn to teach, given a summer to prepare) an AP level class. Can you explain to us why a teacher with a degree in history would not be able to learn to teach an AP history class? Or a math teacher not able to teach calculus, or a chem teacher not able to teach AP chem, as in the cases being discussed here?
My kids have had student teachers in many of their AP classes. My daughter said most of her fall calc class was taught by student teachers. If student teachers can do this, why can’t the experienced professionals do it? I’m sure the students got assistance from the classroom teacher, probably detailed lesson plans, but why can’t an existing AP teacher share their lesson plans with a new teacher also? I don’t see the difference. Can you explain why this can’t be done?
@mathyone: Please tell me that your kids have not really had student teachers as AP instructors. Do you mean to say graduate students?
I mean “student teachers” as in students in training to become teachers, earning an education degree (not high school students). Don’t all teachers have to do a semester as a student teacher of a class as part of their training? Whether these student teachers are undergraduates double majoring in education or master’s students, I really couldn’t say. I’m not familiar enough with the track(s) to becoming a teacher.