Fwiw, I don’t recall any of the 15 AP course my two kids took completely abandoning teaching in early May. All taught additional content, had projects/labs, or did something productive, which were graded, with finals ant the same time as other classes.
Is this uncommon?
I also suspect few students have nothing but AP courses, so there’s still a reason to attend school.
I’m sure as in most cases every kids experience is different. Mine did nothing after AP tests - I’d blame it on Covid, but it wasn’t any different for the classes they took pre-COVID. They were done end of May, so perhaps if there were more weeks, it would have been different for teachers? Neither of mine had a single non-AP or IB course after sophomore year.
We start school after Labor Day and don’t end until June 23rd this year. Our AP classes have the final exam before the AP test. The final counts for 25% of your 4th quarter grade, or sometimes as a 5th of your final grade.
It is stressful and frustrating to be studying over spring break, cramming in the last units, with no class time for review. In APUSH, the last test is usually only a day or two before the final, so you have to review on your own while still learning new material, going to school full time, and participating in all activities full swing.
After the AP exams, which the kids are required to take, they stop going to those classes. The students who take all AP have a month and a half of going to school for gym, and maybe an elective. It’s frustrating because you can’t go on vacation or get a job as you are required to check-in each day and complete gym in order to graduate, plus, we have one of those rotating six day schedules so you don’t have regular hours off There is no way to bring up your grades for the AP classes you galloped through, as those grades are submitted after finals.
Then, for the last weeks of school in June, we follow a finals schedule with study days, but the AP kids have already taken most, if not all, of their finals.
My two kids who are at a rigorous academic college find it much less stressful and far more conducive to actual learning than their junior year of high school when they had multiple APs. Our third child (S24) knew that racing to an artificially early finish line was not for him, so he only took one AP class. This may hurt him in admissions, but he is having a reasonable Junior year, was able to travel for spring break, and is enjoying his sport rather than always feeling behind and maxed out.
Wow, that sounds like an ideal end to your senior year, in the mind of most teens. So little stress at that point. I am surprised the district allows that. It seems like a long time with no class. Growing up it was allowed during the last week of school, after testing was done, but for a month and a half?
Do not stress about lack of AP. Your child will find the right fit. D18 took 2 and did terribly, S21 took 7 and went in with 32 credits S23 has 4 only passed 1 so far 2 to go. S23 has lowest cost options of all 3 but all three had very good scholarship offers. Not sure your sons GPA but the 3.0-3.4 thread and 3.5-3.8 threads were really reassuring.
This thread has definitely made me look at the testing schedule a little differently!
It is nice for those seniors who take a lot of APs and aren’t worried about their grades or using their AP credits! But it makes Junior year, especially February-May 12, feel like a crazy race. Then, after the exams, comes all the learning/study time that can’t be used😜.
I’m not sure how the system could be any different, but kids from our high school invariably say that college is so much more reasonable and evenly paced.
Chiming in from private school in GA - we start school in August (latest start date I’ve seen is 08/11). Seniors are dismissed from HS on the last Tuesday of April while the AP teachers continue to help the Juniors (and Sophomores) through AP test practices for the rest of that week. The teachers really do try to have the AP curriculum complete by mid April give or take a week.
The fun/funny things are the rules surrounding AP courses: (1) if you take the class, you have to write the AP exam, (2) you do not have to come to school for any class the day before an AP exam you are writing, and (3) once you have written the exam, that class is officially over.
So in essence, my D24 (taking 5 AP, an independent theatre course, and a free period) will be done with ‘learning’ no later than Monday April 24th, reviewing until that Friday, then has 2 weeks of AP exams mixed with review sessions. Her independent course supervisor can decide to have her return to school for that course period but since she will have already put on her play April 22, it is pretty likely that she will be done with school Thursday May 11.
D16 graduated from a HS that started the day after Labor Day. The only AP that was offered was AP Calculus. Students had the option to take the AB or BC exam. The BC exam required some self-study. Her calculus teacher told me that her students who did the work always ended up with a 5 on the exam. D16 did indeed end up with a 5.
I do not think that the timing of the exam is a factor in the scores. I’ve taught AP and IB and a whole host of other levels of STEM. The date of the AP exam is not a surprise. Teachers have control over the pacing of the material and can finish the material well before the test. However, if the students don’t have the proper foundation/ don’t do the homework / are distracted by other things, whether teachers have 6 months or 8 months to teach the material won’t make a difference to the individual student.
Our school (BS) offered AP and IB and started Labor Day. Bigger issue for IB simply because US schools have less seat time than foreign schools where students are preparing for the same exam. There was ALWAYS some summer work for these classes to accomodate that.
The school, since then, changed its schedule so that IB and AP classes end before the exam. There is an additional term after that when students can take classes that don’t point toward these exams or (I believe) the first segment of a course they will test for in the next year.)
Yes, my D22 attended a top boarding school, but I’ve gotten the impression from friends that many of their children at local public schools are also very scheduled/booked and have little free time after school and (for athletes especially) busy weekends.
My D22 actually thought that day student classmates at her school were often more pinched for time because of their commutes and more of them pursued club sports and activities outside of school (like conservatory orchestras, pre-professional ballet, equestrian stuff, off-campus jobs, church, family commitments or whatever).
Again, I really wasn’t arguing that the workload in high school is harder. I was just trying to say that the current configuration of many high school schedules + extracurricular activities would make it hard for the AP courses (as I understand them) to fit into a single semester instead a full year. If the courses were just a semester long, then the homework load per night would likely be nearly doubled. When would kids sleep? Even when I was in high school, my seven classes met straight daily from 7:20-2:00 and during my sports season, every afternoon was taken up with practice + a job. The workload in college was harder but my daily schedule was lighter and so much more flexible.
Of course, I could be wrong since some high school students are able to take dual-enrollment courses at colleges, which presumably mostly meet for a single semester. And obviously, they have found time to make it work while doing all the problem sets and readings for those class and juggling other committments.
As you noted, I think that among a certain population, much of this behavior comes from a desire to impress colleges. I also also think it stems from parents not being willing to say no to their kids sometimes. It can be hard to say no to a kid who genuinely likes lots of activities and wants to do them all. I’ve had some hard conversations with my older children when they were in middle school. I insisted that they needed to make choices between activities rather than overloading their (and my) schedules. When I found that they were always eating dinner on the run between two different activities, I realized enough was enough.
I think it is valuable for kids to understand that you can’t always do a zillion things simultaneously and well. Or if a kid is going to do lots of activities then they should not try to pursue them at a high level. Parents can help by putting their foot down. Sleep, downtime, and family time are important.
This sounds like you believe that learning the same material in less time is only difficult for unprepared, lazy, or undisciplined students.
Especially for AP courses designed to be the equivalent of two college semesters (such as my example, APUSH), I think the amount of time students have to learn, understand, and review the material does matter. Fast readers and good memorizers will always have an advantage, but there is a point when too much information learned too quickly results in shallower knowledge.
We are also in the post-Labor Day, late June HS schedule. The AP tests can impact the spring break schedule (not too late in April). The AP tests are not required. My oldest did not take the Lang AP test since his college did not count it. If I remember correctly, some of the AP teachers gave a “final” right before the AP test. After the test, there was still learning including projects and some more “fun” learning, but not just movies or nothing.
Agree that the teachers may have to rush a bit to fit in all the AP test material, but at least at our HS the kids tend to do very well. And on the PSATs, the top scores tend to be from the NE states where the school year starts later so does not seem to impact the results.
Here seniors don’t have to take finals if they have an “A” in the class. Otherwise they do. Seniors also have to go until the end of the school year to get to the required number of days. The last couple of days, however, none of the HS kids tend to show up (except for graduation related things) as the teachers stop taking attendance and are focused on getting the grades done.
I agree that the lost month does not affect scores. Our school’s scores are very high. I do think the time crunch could be a factor in the pressure out students feel during junior year.
I was also reacting the suggestion that the material can easily be covered in less time, and that any student who has trouble fitting in review is unprepared and/or distracted. They do fit it in, mostly by sleeping less and forgoing time with family and friends.
I don’t see a way to fix it, and our kids do very well in the end. It’s just that, of course, things would be different if they had another month.