<p>I used to get perfect grades all the time in elementary school. My grades dipped to low 90’s in 7-8 grades and dipped way low to 70’s in my freshman year of highschool. After sophmore year, I regrouped and fought my way to mid to low 90’s and high 80’s. Junior year I had all low 90’s and now in Senior year I have most high 90’s and a few perfect quarterly grades again. I sympathize. lol</p>
<p>EmilyBee, my son also was the classic “forget to turn your homework in; stare out the window” student which brought down his grades. Do you think it is a boredom thing or a boy thing?</p>
<p>When I was in 7th grade, I was considered exceptionally bright in the field of mathematics. I was placed in Advanced Algebra I my 8th grade year, and had a solid A for the class. Fast forward to my Advanced Algebra II class sophomore year. I was one of the 15 kids in that class; at least 5 should have never stepped over the classroom threshold. We were the good class too. Although I grasped the subject matter, it was pretty hard to succeed and accomplish anything when I had to wait half a period to ask a question because the teacher had to give Algebra I run-downs to the same kids everyday. Math has been my lowest standardized test score since sophomore year.</p>
<p>Once kids really feel they are confined in a off-white, cinder block prison eight hours of the day, school becomes tough and performance declines. Once teachers feel like they are required to pass a kid and make sure no child is left behind, the whole class suffers.</p>
<p>I tend to agree with the idea that this is a motivation problem, but that doesn’t give schools a free pass. Oftentimes, my high school’s policies pushed very bright students to bad places. I remember a policy one year where the school would not allow students to leave before lunch ended, even if they had no classes after lunch. Cue a zillion frustrated students sitting in cars all through lunch because the school was literally keeping them there just to count lunchtime as “instructional minutes.” I’d say that was one of the things, too–my school got really hung up on minutes. The union’s contract got in the way of the state’s requirements and we had a new schedule every year to accommodate the number of minutes we needed. It really bugged us. This is, for those of you who’ve been following education news of late, the school whose juniors were made ineligible for National Merit because someone at the district office neglected to properly ship the PSAT scores. </p>
<p>But it’s not all on the schools. I dealt with bullying and classmate issues (not to mention some issues with teachers) that corroded my enthusiasm until literally the day of graduation. It made me less interested in trying at a certain point. </p>
<p>Motivation is a huge challenge for students of all levels, and I remember feeling like I’d never get out of high school. The good news is, I feel like it’s completely reversible. My motivation for school returned when I got to college. My academic priorities just shifted. </p>
<p>And besides, I was always a motivated person. I just wasn’t always motivated for school. :D</p>
<p>“EmilyBee, my son also was the classic “forget to turn your homework in; stare out the window” student which brought down his grades. Do you think it is a boredom thing or a boy thing?”</p>
<p>I use to think it was a boy thing but since he turned it around in a matter of days (literally) when we put him in private school, I believe it was what was going on in the school. It was just not a good fit for him.</p>
<p>Interesting article. Having two kids back to back in school, I can say the one who tested “gifted” in 3rd Grade has struggled through public HS, bored, unorganized, unmotiviated unless he has that occasional outstanding Teacher. The other has blossomed and is totally self motivated, not a B in HS, all the EC’s and loves it,
loves school… Same parents 
Same rules. Both have High ACTs, go figure.</p>
<p>^Standardized test scores correlate better with intelligence test scores than grades do.</p>
<p>There’s much more to success in school than simply being “smart” or “gifted.” </p>
<p>“Smart” is enough to get by on in elementary school. But as material becomes more complex in middle and high school, and hormones kick in and social and other pressures increase (ie getting a job to save money for college), what determines a student’s success isn’t just his or her brain power - it’s their work habits AND their resiliency. For lack of a better term, some psych researchers call this GRIT. It’s the ability to say, “No, I can’t go to the movies tonight, I need to study.” And the ability to say, “I got a C on a quiz, that means I need to talk to the teacher and go for some extra help, and I need to work harder/differently” rather than saying, “The teacher hates me,” or “Clearly math isn’t my thing, I’m not good at it, so I’ll focus on history.” The ability to figure out how to get your work done when your laptop dies, or how to keep going when mom is seriously ill or your part-time job needs you to work extra hours the week you have 3 tests. It’s life skills, practical/intellectual virtues, that make the difference between who succeeds in high school and college and who gives up or slides to the middle/bottom. Not IQ. IQ helps, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle. </p>
<p>Google Dr. Carol Dweck (Stanford Univ) and “Growth Mindset.” Kids who believe that results come from effort, rather than from natural ability, do a lot better in school. Kids who believe that “if something is challenging it means that I’m learning” do better than kids that think “if something is hard that means I’m not good at it, because smart kids learn everything easily and naturally.”</p>
<p>Lafalum, my life is an illustration of all that research. My IQ has presumably been the same throughout my life, and my standardized test scores have always been good. But my grades have ranged from straight A’s to straight F’s depending on what else was going on in my life and my developmental level at each stage. If you tried to judge my brainpower from my grades, you’d get very confused.</p>
<p>There’s also emotional intelligence along with general intelligence. I know far too many of my peers that are very intelligent and test highly, but lack emotional intelligence.</p>
<p>School is so subjective depending on the student. I’m hoping my enthusiasm for learning will come back in college. I’m graduating as a high performing but frustrated senior and I can’t wait to get out of this school system.</p>
<p>We always joked that my son had a family of rare animals living in his backpack who ate his homework before it could be turned in. He always did well on tests, but keeping a neat notebook and turning in homework killed his grades.</p>
<p>He is now in a school that uses the iPad in a one to one computing model. It has changed his life because he takes notes on an app suited to the purpose and turns in homework online. So much less stress for both of us.</p>
<p>Well, the great thing about emotional intelligence is that it can and does grow. Just getting older and more experienced helps, but you can also work to learn better habits and figure out how to avoid repeating old mistakes. This improvement can go on forever if you put in the effort.</p>
<p>Hanna, knowing that someone as accomplished as you had grades all over the place gives me hope for my son’s future.</p>
<p>My H and I always come back to the question of: What is your end goal for your kid’s education? If it’s to get into HYP, then maybe you are better off putting your kid in the “elite” private or public school where he can take many APs, study for SATs, get a high GPA, etc.</p>
<p>If it’s for him to acquire knowledge, or to learn how to learn and learn how to think, then you have to re-think your strategy.</p>
<p>For us, that meant putting our daughter in a school that had more of a block focus. For 4 weeks in the mornings they focus on one topic. Then for the next 4 weeks, another topic. So over the course of the year they are still getting in their biology, government, physics etc. In the afternoons they have English, math and language, plus arts.</p>
<p>My D went from hating school and the huge amount of busy work (“WHY do I have to memorize the periodic chart?” “WHy do I have to memorize a zillion dates in history?”) to loving the educational experience and not realizing how much she was learning.</p>
<p>She would routinely bring up topics they had been discussing in school. In passing an office complex called The Atrium she blurted out, hey, that is a part of the heart and then went on to describe the chambers etc of the heart. It just bubbled out of her, she really connected to the lesson because they were not just listening to a lecture and then memorizing notes.</p>
<p>I can go on and on, but I won’t for now. I just do fear for the future of our educational system.</p>
<p>This is exactly how it is at my school. Most of my AP classes are overcrowded and have under qualified students in them. What is really sad is that in the classes that are required to graduate, like government, there are students taking the ap version that are failing and aren’t going to graduate because they wanted their transcript to have another ap class on it.</p>
<p>Could also be a factor of the differing maturation rates of children. Late bloomers sometimes outshine the early bloomers in the long run.</p>
<p>My son was always great at standardized tests. His GPA however always suffered because he never turned assignments on time. No matter how much I’ve told him, his teachers nothing helped. Now that he wants to go to college things have changed. Unfortunately he has the SAT and ACT of a top school but not the GPA. He still going to a good college but not to the one he good gave been if he had applied himself as he did this year. Even with Calc II AP, AP Comp Sci, intro to Eng, Artificial Intelligence classes all his grades are A. I guess kids have to mature. Everything said about intrinsic x extrinsic factor, motivation, EI they are all correct and they all play a factor, however I believe that maturity plays the biggest role in making them change their behavior.</p>
<p>“Late bloomers sometimes outshine the early bloomers in the long run.”</p>
<p>Yes, though the way I think about it, most kids are mixed bloomers. Intellectual, social, emotional, musical, athletic, etc. development can happen at different rates within the same kid. Some kids are intellectually ready for college at 12 but not socially ready until 21, and vice versa.</p>
<p>I wish society could go back to the old way of grading where students wouldn’t feel like their entire lives were lost because of a B… Unfortunately, current students feel pushed into getting As by any means because that is what seemingly everyone is getting. No one wants to be left behind, so learning becomes secondary to getting As. Getting good grades is not synonymous with learning the material, so these 4.0 students getting into top schools remain unprepared for college (especially for places that strictly follow their grading schemes like U of Chicago or Cornell… i.e. an “A” truly means “excellent work.”)</p>
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<p>No, they don’t. Standardized test scores correlate with level of academic motivation. Anyone with enough motivation can study his/her way to good scores. Not to mention the fact that these tests generally involve very simple concepts. It is the timed aspect of these tests that puts pressure on kids… and this is something that can be resolved with plenty of practice.</p>