School is no place to learn!!

Test Preparation
1

<p>We need help. My sophomore son is very intelligent, he is an excellent student and is near the top of his class taking as many honors classes as he can fit/school offers. He bombed the sophomore PSAT in a big way, particularly on math. The problem is that he goes to an arts magnet high school that is simply awful on academics. Examples: Honors Biology last year had 1 lab - a frog dissection. Honors Chemistry so far this year has had 0 labs (teacher's excuse, unruly students make it dangerous). Honors Algebra last year, did not complete the syllabus and many advanced concepts in BASIC Algebra were not taught. Honors Geometry, we are at the end of the third quarter, and nowhere close to completing the syllabus by the end of the year. Many advanced concepts in geometry will not be taught.</p>

<p>I have been helping him prep on the collegeboard.com website for this fall's PSAT to get him in good shape for QuestBridge and then next year's SAT and ACT. I am a math/science IDIOT (although I am a bright lawyer with a high IQ, the math side of my brain checked out at around 4th grade)! But even I can see that many of the questions he is having problems with are things he should know easily.</p>

<p>To make matters worse, last night I looked at the SAT II prep books at Barnes and Noble, and I can assure you the concepts on those tests have not been taught to my son, who brought home high A's in those classes. I don't know if he will be able to take any of those tests.</p>

<p>I am also concerned that they won't teach everything needed to pass the AP exams in AP classes.</p>

<p>So what do I do? Where do I begin? He can't change schools. He has to learn these things and I can't teach him. He is not the type of student to go and try to figure it out for himself. I am not sure Kaplan will help, test taking strategies are one thing, but he doesn't know how to do coordinates on a line or slope-intercepts and I don't think Kaplan will teach him that. He also has limited time because he is taking extra classes online in order to have the correct number of academic units when he graduates. So adding yet another class won't be possible.</p>

<p>Can anyone recommend a plan for us to try and supplement his education in these areas so that he can do better on his standardized tests, and life in general? Thank you!!</p>

2

<p>Since he can’t change schools, are tutors a possibility? And nothing you can do will have any affect if he is not interesting and dedicating in doing these things himself, so if he isn’t motivated it would be a waste of time and money. </p>

<p>I must ask, why would you enroll him in an arts magnet school if you want him to be an academic whiz?</p>

3

<p>He is interested and willing to do the work, just not a great self-starter.</p>

<p>He is a musical prodigy, he originally wanted to pursue a career in music but changed his mind this year. He loves his school, it is a good fit for him socially and that is most important to us because he has had a lot of issues in the past. So we don’t want to take him out of this school, especially since he plans to continue his study of music either as a double major or a concentration.</p>

4

<p>Since he’s motivated, I’d say get him a math tutor. Also, the best way to improve one’s P/SAT scores is just doing practice tests. Buy “The Blue Book” (it’s written by the Collegeboard) and just do problems over and over until he learns and is able to predict the type of questions asked on the P/SAT from there you can focus on specific areas where he needs the most improvements. For the Critical Reading, I’d recommend studying the Spark Notes 1000 SAT words. I only looked on the first page of words the night before the test (there’s about 25 per page) and three of the words were on there and I like those odds.</p>