<p>Chevda- I'm missing your point. Anjali was not a transfer in- she completed in 3 years. I agreed that a transfer in should be re-weighted to the receiving schools' policy.</p>
<p>Pipmom, it's about more than just a GPA number. Just as those transfer kids who you resent had opportunities for more advanced courses, Anjali also had exceptions made to allow her more advanced courses. There is no way to evaluate the grading differences in different high schools either. So those kids who now are ranked above your D may have been held to much higher standards than your D. Who knows? It's comparing apples and oranges. </p>
<p>The very fact that Anjali graduated in three years, rather than four, means she did not have to fill up her days with unwieghted courses, like the four year graduate did. Perhaps he was not aware that a pushy dad could have secured him a spot in an AP Lit class as a freshman. Should he be penalized for this?</p>
<p>I'm still confused, I guess. I can certainly understand the argument that says 1 and 2 did in fact take "higher" courses than my daughter- they did. The school requires my d to take 4 unweighted music courses a year. At other schools, these would have been weighted electives. So, I could understand their parents crying foul if things changed to their kid's detriment. </p>
<p>So-- it all comes down to "What is fair?" And apparently no one can really agree as to what that is. So, we muddle through, sometimes with class, and sometimes not.</p>
<p>Pipmom, with 4 required music courses a year, is your daughter at an arts magnet school?</p>
<p>As for athletics being a class, ours is not only a class, but a double-blocked class (so it's 2 of your 8 classes every year.) Same with drill team, marching band and cheerleading. But all are unweighted. My daughter wants to stay in choir and drill team. Right now, she is taking the maximum number of AP classes a year (one, for everyone except you know who) but I've told her that her class rank will plummet junior year when she's got those three unweighted grades and others are taking 4-6 AP classes. She's absolutely fine with that and that makes me happy. </p>
<p>I do think it's sad year after year when the kids at the very top of the class drop their sport their senior year...</p>
<p>But senior year is tricky. My son is taking 2 periods of "senior release" because he's taking 4 AP classes and 2 choirs and any two "regular" classes he would add would only lower his class rank (Hey, I'm just trying to get the kid out of school in the top TWENTY percent.)</p>
<p>"senior release" -- sounds like my memory! :)</p>
<p>Actually, this year is the last year they are permitting Senior Release...it went away without any explanation to the parents or kids. I guess the school thought that with a 4th year of math and science required in the future, most seniors (of the 17 year old variety) will have to go all day anyway.</p>
<p>My kid's school must be an anomoly. There are 8 periods in a day and 24.5 credits are required for graduation.
Graduating in 3 years is NOT allowed - it was tried a few years ago.
Several unweighted electives are required and honors classes are never weighted. They can't even take a weighted class until 11th grade.
4 English and 4 social studies are required as are 3 years of science and math and a 4th year of either.</p>
<p>Our top grads are active in athletics, music or both. Band and chorus are never weighted but kids still take them for 4 years. Phys Ed is required all 4 years.
What I think kids are missing -when they concentrate on all Math and Science in high school are the electives. This should be a time when a kids can take an Art class or wood shop if they so desire. High school should be a time to explore different classes. A couple of my girls took art classes - they were never going to major in art but they loved them. They also usually got worse grades in Art than math!</p>
<p>I don't care how talented or brilliant a 16 year old is - what is the rush?
If teenagers can't take classes like Art or creative writing or technical drawing in high school they are never going to get the chance in college.
High school is not the time to be starting a career - it is a time for exploration.</p>
<p>JustaMomof4, I agree - what IS the rush? Of course, if one is going into a field with many years of graduate school ahead, I guess going in young may be okay-but where was the fun?</p>
<p>My neighbor's daughter skipped 7th grade, and finished undergrad in 3 years. So, now she's in her cubicle in the "real" world at a young 20...were those extra 2 years she'll spend in her cublicle worth it?</p>
<p>JustAMom, that sounds heavenly, and I agree. But what I hear a lot of the time, unfortunately, is how fun 4.0 classes go by the wayside because of the effect it has on GPA. </p>
<p>For instance, a lot of kids get PE waivers, taking all sorts of outside classes so that they meet the PE requirement without lowering their GPA. Same thing with other state requirements. Kids take online health that goes down as a pass/fail and then frees up another 5.0 slot on the schedule.</p>
<p>I love all the rationalizing here. As soon as a kid transfers in Sophomore year because her dad is in the military and shipping to Iraq, all the 4 year and 7 semester rules will die a loud and public death. In this day and age, it is amazing that anyone thinks transfers aren't going to happen and shouldn't "rate" as highly as students that come from "good local stock".</p>
<p>I really don't think so. There are many reasons for transfers-most are legit, others are an attempt to game the system. I think schools would follow their written policies (and I personally don't think the Iraq vet dad would be on TV complaining about it but I could be wrong.)</p>
<p>At my son's high school once you have met all of the graduation requirements you are allowed to "declare" electives such as band, art, chorus, etc. When a class is "declared" you get credit for it but it does not count in your gpa. That is how they avoid forcing the top students to drop electives that are not weighted. It seems to work for our school. The trick though is to be aware at the beginning of the year that the course needs to be "declared", you are not allowed to go back and do it. This really only comes into play with the very top handful of students in a graduating class.</p>
<p>Interesting. Back in the day, band, orchestra and choir were all pass/fail. The art classes, however, was graded (giving me one of my two Bs in high school.) I actually wanted to take more art classes, but I didn't because I didn't think I could make an A.</p>
<p>Our high school does the opposite of CinciMom's. It allows the students to take band/chorus/orchestra for Honors Credit, though there are fairly significant requirements in order to do this (attendance, leadership, solo/recitals, community service, private lessons) to name a few. Thus a strong academic kid who takes band/chorus/orch can fulfill the extra requirements and have it be considered "honors" and therefore, it does not ruin their GPA. This is only for a small number of students, such as those who take all AP's, and for whom a non-honors course would damage their GPA.</p>
<p>There are more ways for districts to do this than we can ever discuss. I started out saying I needed a decoder ring to figure it out. I don't want to remember the details :eek: but only certain "academic classes" counted, and then just x number of semesters of those. The top kids were "culling". It was truly odd but it was written and was reasonably clear. Just goofy.</p>
<p>I was talking to a guy in San Antonio, and he said that the athletes in the local school disctict were complaining about the weighting of some classes and athletics not being weighted, so the district made eveything be the same weight.</p>
<p>Yes, my D attends a performing arts high school. She took 5 academic classes each semester and the 4 music courses. They are on block scheduling so they get 1.5 hrs per class a day. At one time, I understand that the music courses were weighted, but the school changed that years ago since music, art, theatre and dance courses are not weighted in the other public schools. </p>
<p>I like the decoder ring image- it certainly does feel that way when we hear of all the different ways things count and the convoluted ways each individual school district figures things out.</p>
<p>My D took Spanish III in 9th grade, and in her Spanish III class had only two kids from grade 9 (including my D) and the rest of the kids were 10th graders. My D had the highest marks in that class but she was denied the Spanish III award for that year. The reason was that there is a rule that said they have to have at least 20 kids from the same grade to get an award. Even though there were more than 30 kids in the class, only two kids were from her grade. So the award went to 10th grader who had highest marks among 10th graders.</p>
<p>Without a doubt everyone knew My D was the best student in Spanish, but she ended up not getting any award. Poor thing still talks about it.
I told her rule is a rule, there is nothing we can do about it.</p>
<p>In case anyone is wondering, my D has no Latino background she is just good in languages.</p>
<p>S took two APs as an 8th grader. As a result, he did not get awards for the classes in those two subjects. No big deal. There's more to life than awards and even val or sal status (which he did not get either, because he was taking college classes AND graduated in three years).</p>
<p>All of this drama makes me grateful to my HS for concealing rank and for having the senior class choose graduation speakers democratically.</p>