<p>I swear that the Texas legislature and education agency are out to totally ruin the public schools. The legislature recently decided to eliminate certain required classes - Health, Speech, Technology and one semester of PE. Fine - my 13 year old will get to take more electives.</p>
<p>BUT, *the education commissioner decided to make the change effective immediately. How can you change the graduation requirements for the incoming junior class? * Last summer we paid for my D to take speech and health in summer school so she could fit in all the classes she wanted to take - she sat in class 6 hours a day - and now she needn't have! </p>
<p>Don't the folks in Austin realize that this is going to affect who is at the top of the class at some schools? Say one student took the 2 hours of unweighted required classes Freshman and Sophomore year; compare that to the student who waited until senior year to take those classes, only now he doesn't have to take them, so he can add 2 AP classes....Assuming perfect scores in the classes, student A would have two 4.0 grades in her GPA and student B would have two 5.25 grades. It could really change who Val and Sal are based on if they took the classes or not.</p>
<p>I can just see the mess at schedule pick up - all the kids wanting to drop speech and health and tech because they are no longer required and the school saying you have to take them because you signed up for them (4 months ago, when they were required).</p>
<p>How can the state possibly change graduation requirements for a current class??!!!</p>
<p>I would certainly be frustrated by the sudden changes, but I would have a different take on the situation. The first being just a fundamental disagreement over the importance of val/sal designations at HS graduation. I just feel that it is a distinction that shouldn’t be a primary goal and while top grades are a good thing, fretting about 6 vs 8 vs 10 total AP classes is actually a problem with the setup of the entire HS system. I certainly don’t expect you to change your mind but sharing how others might view its level of importance (and whether or not the legislature should have shielded current students from that potential val/sal shuffle in student standings next year).</p>
<p>The second is that even though your child doesn’t “need” the speech and health classes anymore, it wasn’t the worst way to spend a summer. I think the true “loss” is less whether or not more APs could have been squeezed in and val/sal status problems as much as I would love for a child to have explored more creative or dynamic educational or volunteer or work experiences that summer instead. </p>
<p>Lastly, I’m with you that the requirement lists for many HS systems don’t really allow for true education of the individual to happen, even with electives. But all is good, it sounds like your daughter is going to have many college options! </p>
<p>The val/sal designation is of vital importance to a handful of students (AND THEIR POSSIBLY LITIGIOUS PARENTS) at most schools. I think that those in charge did not even consider that in many schools the required classes are unweighted and that the top students are loathe to take any unweighted classes. To intentionally make a formerly even playing field favor one group of students over another is asking for trouble, if not litigation. It’s the local districts that will have to deal with the angry parents, not the education commissioners.</p>
<p>Schools aren’t too happy with the change either. It means getting the current Health, BCIS, etc teachers certified in other areas. There are also mandated programs such as drug education, sex education (abstinence), etc that have been included in the Health curriculum which will need to be shifted somewhere else.</p>
<p>As usual, a short-sighted move with little concern for the implications.</p>
<p>And there are so many of them! How many students do you think will still take Health or Speech? You go from teaching a class that 100% of the students have to take to a class that maybe 5% take. The state really needs to have given the districts time to deal with the personnel issue. As I said, I assume that the schools will make almost all of the students who signed up for those classes for the '09-'10 school year stay in them, but that still gives the districts only a year to move *a whole lot *of teachers into other subjects.</p>
<p>My son is signed up for health this fall. I wonder if he can drop it now and take something more fun and interesting. His school district only allows for 4 weighted classes (to be counted in gpa calculation), so it won’t effect the ranking at all. I just know he’d love getting out of taking health, which is taught by one of the football coaches and is a total joke at his school :)</p>
<p>Are you buddies with anyone you can sweet talk? I assume that a majority of students who signed up for health will want to drop it. (Of course, if the lack of weighting isn’t a problem, it’s often the path to an easy 100.) A school can’t let everyone out of the class, because then there are unoccupied teachers. At our school, schedule changes are only permitted under extenuating circumstances (e.g. last year the computer put my D into two classes that met at the same time.) But there are always people who manage to get schedule changes. Be thinking of who your pals at the school are.</p>
Is that maybe the reason they’re dropping the classes - so that some number of teachers will become unoccupied - i.e. so they can let some teachers go and shrink the budget?</p>
<p>Doubtful - the students still have to take something in lieu of the required courses. It seems more effecient (financially) to have more required classes rather than fewer. Let’s say you have 30 students who need take a class. If all 30 have to take Health, you put them all in one class with one teacher. But if the 30 want to take three different electives, that’s 3 teachers teaching a class of 10 each…</p>
<p>just a FYI - Val is important in Texas due to the tuition and fees waiver that they give to each Val for the first year of instate public schooling…</p>
<p>And of course, it’s not just the Val-Sal…having two weighted As vs. two unweighted As could put you in the top 10% instead of the top 11%, which is crucial for admission to the state flagship. It’s just that the students in the hunt for Val tend to know who their competition is and what classes they’ve taken. Student no. 61 out of 600 probably doesn’t know who student 60 is and whether she took Health and Speech, but I bet student no. 3 know who nos. 1 and 2 are and what classes they took.</p>
<p>Considering the 10% rule here in Texas, I think this is a big mistake. The lawsuits are going to start rolling in and, in this case, I don’t blame the parents a bit.</p>
<p>We have also paid for classes each summer so that S could get these required classes out of the way. Money down the drain. </p>
<p>Of course, they find the funds to make sure that all high schoolers take abstinence ed so that Texas can remain competitive in the unplanned teen pregnancy catagory.</p>
<p>Jesus christ this is unfair. My friends just finished health and speech this summer to find out it was a waste of time. My four semesters of Swim for PE will now no longer count against my GPA, but who knows if theyl count them against me? The regular tech class I took as a sophomore could have been replaced with an AP like european history, and instead it brings me down. Texas needs to get its **** together. This is absolutely ridiculous.</p>
<p>WOAH!!! I’ve been out of town and missed this. </p>
<p>SO - if I understand correctly - the requirements are STILL in effect for students who will be seniors next year but NOT in effect for students who will be juniors?</p>
<p>My sons (12th, and 11th grades next year) just took Speech in summer school (which I paid for). My older one will do Health by correspondence because there is no room in his schedule for it next year.</p>
<p>The younger one (11th grader) signed up for Health and the technology course for next year. PE isn’t an issue because he’s on the golf team. I am not worried about GPA issues so much for my younger one (nowhere near the top 10%), but I sure would prefer him to take classes that are of more interest to him than Health and technology.</p>
<p>I read it in the Dallas Morning News. The legislature changed the law and the ed commissioner said, “Let’s just make it take effect immediately for everyone.” They have to do some state rule changes to get rid of speech, however, since that was somehow required by ed commission rule rather than legislation.</p>
<p>It seems unbelievable that he would change the rules in the middle of the game, but he was quoted in the Morning News. This morning I emailed him (<a href="mailto:commissioner@tea.state.tx.us">commissioner@tea.state.tx.us</a>) to confirm my understanding. I’ll let you know if I receive a reply.</p>
<p>Edited to add: The newspaper article said that districts have the option of having “stricter” requirements, whatever that means. I emailed our district administration, but their office is closed this week. It is possible that individual districts could continue to require those courses for a few more years, if only to give them time to figure out what classes all those health, speech and tech teachers are going to teach.</p>
<p>missy,
I’m with you. Our politicians let us down again. How many times do they have to interfere with education in general before they learn that they are part of the problem?? They really make planning most difficult for parents and families and imperial decisions like this have real-life consequences.</p>
<p>I’m still most frustrated by the state of Texas’s 10% rule (which I think is also ripe for a legal challenge). It’s suicide. How many pretty good students in strong school districts will be redirected to schools other than the Texas publics (including many out of state)while a lot of kids who don’t belong there will find their way into Austin or College Station??</p>
<p>The Highland Park ISD has recently announced that in the future it will only rank the top 10% of students. They said that their bottom quartile students are getting killed in college admissions even when they have awesome scores and GPAs.</p>