Special honors courses at your HS, aside from those APs

Parents Forum
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<p>Inspired by what Newsweek calls "top schools" by ranking schools based on one measure, AP courses, I'm wondering what other courses your HS also offers. I'm of the belief that there's much more than a CollegeBoard course, although they too have their value.</p>

<p>What Honors courses does your HS offer that are favorites for the top student?</p>

<p>At our HS, we offer two phenomenal courses that I know of: "Honors Science Research" and "World Leaders: Movers and Shakers" The science research program is a huge draw. The kids end up with projects that rival those at colleges. Kids go off to Intel and Siemen's and other regional science fairs. The equipment alone looks so cool. They've earned some top dollars in awards and patents too.</p>

<p>Another course is "World leaders.....". It's a combination of music and art as well as history and anthropology and of course English. It's a full-year and at least a 6 credit course. They get high profile speakers and they also go to exotic locales.</p>

<p>How about your HS?</p>

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<p>Those classes sound terrific!</p>

<p>Our private sticks with fundamental core academics, (plus excellent music, art, and theology depts). What I love is that the honors classes (and they are offered in almost every subject) truly are accelerated from Regular (and the APs and Dual Credits are correspondingly even more rigorous, and the weighting reflects it.</p>

<p>An A in regular is 4.0, in Honors is 4.5 and in AP and Dual Credit is 5.0. Our school also includes “plusses” and “minuses,” so I feel the grades very accurately delineate between different performance levels. I’m an advocate of weighting, though I know not everyone is.</p>

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<p>We do not have anything that great… I think the best we had was Honors Physics and Honors Pre-Calculus haha. I wish we had those classes.</p>

<p>Regular- 4.0 Honors-5.0 AP- 6.0</p>

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<p>Our school offers a second year of honors physics, more an engineering class. Project oriented, looks at real life applications. This is an alternate to AP Physics.</p>

<p>Also, an honors global studies class. They go in depth into many current issues and conflicts, a bit intensive in the writing requirements, but thought provoking for the kids. This is offered as an alternate to taking a senior AP history class.</p>

<p>There may be others…</p>

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<p>Our local HS offers nothing like this. I wish that they would.</p>

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<p>Schools in my state can’t offer AP if the same course is offered for dual credit or as a PSEO, so I’m guessing nobody from my neck of the woods make that Newsweek list. The local district offers just 9 APs: 1 in math (Stats), 2 in science, 1 in art, 1 in English and 3 in social sciences. So, the top students will take (and these are all dual credit or PSEO): Physics II, Calc, Anatomy. Phys II is the biggie. There’s also a differentiated math program. Those are all weighted like APs. There are other dual credits (Comp, Western Civ, Art Appreciation, Music Theory), but for whatever reason, they’re not weighted. Might have something to do with the number of college credit hours earned, but that’s just a guess. </p>

<p>Fine arts are very big at the district schools, so one tends to find the top students also in the elite chior (audition only, 6 kids in each part) or Jazz I.</p>

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<p>One of our local high schools used to have a course called “humanities”. Focused on art appreciation, music appreciation, film studies and philosophy. Offered only once a year and standing room only. When the teacher who created it (who was also our state’s teacher of the year at the time) retired, so did the class. Unfortunately the administration discounted the course as fluff, even though most students (honors students for the most part) found it to be one of the more influential and insightful classes they took during their high school years.</p>

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<p>my daughter took a Marine Bio class sophomore year- ( her school doesn’t offer AP bio) which easily was the equal of a college level class- even a Reed college level class. ( ok less reading :wink: ).</p>

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<p>Our HS has tons of honors classes! Some in standard subjects, like chem, bio, physics, but also in genetics, forensics, meteorology, oceanography and more (and that’s just the science dept).</p>

<p>In the standard subjects, there are on-level courses, honors courses and, in many cases, AP classes.</p>

<p>There is a humanities program in our schools, combining arts, social studies and English, but that’s not seen as true college prep (for top schools, anyway). It’s the step between on-level and honors.</p>

<p>Yes, we have great public schools here on Long Island, but we pay for it with exorbitant taxes!</p>

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<p>Our school has engineering physics also, an astrophysics course, forensic science (for dual credit and very popular), a science research program, and a dual credit accounting class. Maybe other things I don’t know about.</p>

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<p>Every school in my county has a “center” to which every kid in the county can apply to.</p>

<p>I got in to the center for Leadership, Government, and Global Economics (acceptance rate 11%), and the highlight of the 4 year program is a year long class on Ethics and Philosophy, which covers everything from Plato to Existentialism. Amazing, amazing course, which apparently is the equivalent of a second year Harvard philosophy course.</p>

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<p>Multivariate Calculus and Ordinary Differential Equations.</p>

<p>A local retired college prof drives over to teach 7:00 a.m. classes. They’re always full.</p>

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<p>We have several classes that are marked as most rigorous along with the APS…the only ones I remember are Anatomy & Pyysiology and Physics. Neither of them are AP branded, but both are year long and tough, tough classes. I cannot remember the others but I think there are 5 or 6 total that are not AP branded. We do not have “honors” track courses. The caveat is that the student must have teacher permission to take the AP or the rigrorous courses and have taken the pre-reqs. We also have Latin as a early morning class before the official start, 4 years Latin I through 4 and is marked rigorous although the kids love this class.</p>

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<p>Like LINYMom, our school also offers many, many honors courses as well as about 25 AP courses. </p>

<p>Aside from the ‘standard’ sciences, we have forensics, marine biology, marine biotechnology, astronomy, geology & meteorology, Environmental. In math, we go “up to” Multivariate Calculus and Ordinary Differential Equations. Languages include Spanish, German, French, Latin, Chinese, Italian. Music (in all its specialities) includes band, orchestra, jazz, choir. The theatre arts dept. produces amazing shows. We’ve got varsity sports in every possible focus (track, CC, bktball, basball, ice & field hockey, lacrosse, soccer, tennis, fencing, football, bowling, skiing, cheerleading, swimming, diving, water polo, badminton, vball, crew, wrestling, etc.)</p>

<p>It’s a big school that rivals most colleges in size and offerings. So what doesn’t look so good? It didn’t “score” well in Newsweek’s America’s Best HS list. We made “the list” but we are far from the top 100. This shows how WRONG that list is.</p>