Skills for living, I want to say shouldn’t they be learning those at home? I mean, they live in a house, they eat, I’m assuming someone in their family has acquired those skills that they can pass on?
@MotherOfDragons my parents were not big on delegating chores to children. I did learn to cook a few meals and clean, but I did not learn how to do odd household repairs - we paid people to do those.
My D isn’t learning any basic house maintenance. She’ll do as I do and hire someone. My time is too valuable to do it myself. Nothing wrong with that. I’d rather schools focus on academic subjects unless the student choose those types of classes.
There is something really rubbing me the wrong way about saying that one’s time is too valuable to do repairs or maintenance or whatnot. It’s fine if one doesn’t have the time, doesn’t have the expertise, or simply doesn’t want to but to say one’s time is too valuable is giving an air of superiority over those in the trades.
Also, hiring someone can be less convenient than doing it oneself for many things. For example, if your car has a flat tire, it is often faster to install the spare tire oneself than to wait for the roadside service to come and do it.
It’s not superiority. It’s basic Economics. I’m actually quite handy and worked a trade for years. Just doesn’t make financial sense for me to do it.
@PNWedwonk FRL 15% 50% caucasian and 50% black, asian, and hispanic pretty evenly distributed, 30% ESL, 5% not proficient in English. 10% special ed. Avg SAT 1720 500 11th graders took 588 AP tests with a passing percentage of 81%. They have a breakdown for passing percentage of each AP class but it’s not on the website. Most of the one AP class only kids seem to take AP Gov’t, Enviro Science, Stats, or Human Geo. We are a very average school for our large high performing district. Some kids do fail these classes and many get Cs. Gov’t is required for graduation so I would guess there is probably some grade inflation in that class. It was certainly among the least challenging AP classes my kids have taken and the one teacher they both had boasted of a 100% pass rate on the AP test but they don’t separate out the school pass rate by teacher so I can’t verify that. We specifically chose to live in this district because they make such an effort all through school to promote high achievement for every type of student. We have no mandatory skills for living classes but do have a full complement of home ec, business, and tech/engineering classes.
Looks like a relatively high income distribution with only 15% on free or reduced price lunch (look up the income thresholds for reduced price lunch).
We do have a high average income but it’s an area with an extremely high cost of living–close in Wash DC suburbs. Incomes are all pretty similar in this area not many super high incomes either. Many kids work, very few have new cars, designer clothes are not the norm, etc. It’s not measured but I would guess we have an unusually high number of parents with a college degree too. Every child in every district may not be able to handle an AP class but under the right circumstances in terms of high expectations from early on and teachers who know how to teach AP classes so that kids pass many “average” students can be successful in AP classes. Schools that gate keep their AP classes to try and keep their scores up are doing many kids a disservice and in some cases are protecting teachers who are not capable of properly teaching an AP class.
@dcplanner, thank you for your detailed response!
Did I miss the size of the school? (Trying to figure out the percent of 11th graders who test.)
@ucbalumnus said:
In our District, IB programs have been added to schools that struggle to attract students, so they tend to have higher FRL rates than the District average. The higher SES neighborhoods have schools that focus on AP.
One of the two IB schools which requires all juniors to take Lang and Lit has a FRL rate of 76.3% and a special ed rate of 21.3%, 26.6% are designated “transitional bilingual.” My D graduated from the third IB school which does not currently require everyone take an IB class. The FRL rate there is 28%, Special Ed is 11.3% and “transitional bilingual” is 6.2%. So D’s school is more comparable to dcplanner’s. I need to look up the percent of students who take one IB test (or maybe just class) there. I think I can find it.
For the people asking about the skills for living class- it is an elective. But one that is full every semester, with all types of students
However, do they require every student in the school (not just those in the IB programs) to take at least one IB HL course?
@ucbalumnus, yes, two out of three of them do require all of the juniors to take IB Lang and Lit. Nor sure if they have to take both years.