<p>My son has not been doing well in math at a public high school, after finishing middle school from another school district. He got C in Geometry and B- in Algebra II in freshman and sophomore years. I thought he might not have a mind for math, so we had him take the SAT at the end of sophomore year, to see if he should continue studying higher math. He scored a 690 in Math (also 690 in Verbal). That put him as a sophomore at par with the top 5% of high school seniors in the nation. So it seems to me he understands and reasons just fine in math. So, why did his school give him such low grades? Has anyone else had a similar experience. Any ideas on what I should do? Thanks.</p>
<p>The math on the sat is basic algebra and arithmetic. So if you really want to test his math have him take math level 2 of the sat subject test</p>
<p>Perhaps it is as simple of not turning in assignments on time - perhaps because he’s bored by the work?</p>
<p>Geometry throws some people for a loop - it requires a certain amount of both logic and visualization that is unlike most of the other pre-calc material. But it also seems to me that he could just be a sloppy student - not turning in assignments/not checking work. Some teachers can be real sticklers in terms of grading. Can you ask him to how you some of his work - both assignments and exams?
I"m guessing he would be in a pre-calculus sort of class now - how is that going?</p>
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<p>SAT Math tests algebra and geometry.</p>
<p>The SAT math test has absolutely nothing to do with the benchmarks set by your child’s school for grades in those classes. Most students receive a syllabus at the start of the year from the teacher which clearly outlines what they need to do to get certain grades in the classes. </p>
<p>Did your son seek any special assistance from the teachers during the school year to try to improve his performance on whatever was lowering his grades in class? That might be something to do for future math courses.</p>
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<p>That could be the case. It is surprisingly common. For D’s hs Geometry class, 10% of the grade was based on keeping a tidy notebook of assignments. </p>
<p>Also, some math classes have projects. Those require more effort than sitting down and taking a test. Some kids love it, others don’t. My kids often complained about the need to “explain how you derived the answer”, but it’s a good skill to have!</p>
<p>nemom, He has last year’s Algebra teacher for pre calc. I fear this will be another low grade, followed by a 700-800 on SAT Math 2. Should I withdraw him from this public high school? Can he home school, take SAT subject tests, then GDE and attend a community college next year? Or will this ruin his chances of going to college? Perhaps we should find him another school.</p>
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<p>one would think benchmarks are designed to get children to reach a certain proficiency in a subject by the end of the year and were not a goal unto themselves. That grades were trying to predict this progress. Apparently not.</p>
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- What does you child say as to why this is the grade ?
2, What does the teacher say, and is there any correlation with what the child says? - Be sure you understand 1. and 2. above before you move to a different public school or withdraw for homeschooling.</p>
<p>More: Find out how to email the teacher and ask what your kid is doing wrong (assume he’s doing something wrong) to get such grades? (That’s how you’ll find out if he’s not turning in assignments.) Even better: does the public school have a meet-the-teacher night, or did that date already pass? </p>
<p>You can also ask your child to show you somewhere on a computer where it’s stated in print from each teacher what’s required for grades. Sometimes this is expressed as a percentage of grade for items such as: turning in assignments on time, attendance, class discussion, quiz grades, test grades.</p>
<p>If the child doesn’t know where such a document is located, call the head of the Math department at the highschool. Perhaps he’ll have the document and can email it. If not, and he sends you back in a circle to your son for the document, you now know something about your son: he needs to gather and refer to such documents in every class from now on.</p>
<p>My experience with 2 of my kids was they would forget to hand in one homework per term, leaving it in their bookbag. They’d get a zero, which hurt their grade. While some teachers believe a late-submitted homework loses a grade level, others have policies of giving zero for any lateness. This has nothing to do with the child’s ability in math, and everything to do with organizational skills they need to survive in life.</p>
<p>If you haven’t had a parent teacher conference yet, schedule one and take a look at the work. The teacher should be able to break down the grade to see where strengths and weaknesses are.</p>
<p>Why not talk to the teacher and get more information? </p>
<p>Also what do you see regarding specifics- how do his tests look? his homework? What kind of grades are you seeing on those and where is he losing the marks?</p>
<p>High school math teachers want students to show their work – to be able to write out a proof or write the series of steps needed to solve a problem. Very often, a good teacher will give partial credit for a wrong answer, if the paper shows that the student had a grasp of the concept and was following the right steps, but happened to make some procedural error along the way.</p>
<p>Kids with strong intuitive grasp of math concepts often are much better at figuring out the answer than at following or explaining the particular steps taken to reach that conclusion. Often they actually use novel strategies that don’t fit with the process the teacher has given. So in class they are turning in papers that write out all the steps to the solution in a complete, sequential fashion; or papers where the answers to the questions are correct but the steps are all wrong, or at least look wrong to the teacher who is used to a more conventional approach; or some kids don’t bother writing out the steps at all, despite the teacher’s insistence. If they have very strong intuitive math skills, they probably aren’t all that happy with homework assignment requiring them to spend time doing stuff they already know.</p>
<p>No one has to write out the steps to arriving at an answer on the SAT. They just look at the question and have to choose the right answer. By design, there are a set of 5 answers, but only 2 or at most 3 are plausible. So for anyone reasonably good with math, the odds are that they will get 40% or so right just by eliminating wrong answers and guessing at the rest. But the kid who is intuitively strong in math has another advantage – his gut is telling him the right answer to most of the questions, without having to give it much thought. </p>
<p>Plus, the SAT offers an added benefit: sometimes you can simply figure out a math problem by working backwards. Instead of bothering to do all the math, you simply start with the most likely answer and plug it into the problem an see if it works. Since you know that the test allows for only one correct answer for each question, then if the value supplied for the answer works when plugged in to the equation, it has to be the right answer – no need to test the other answers. </p>
<p>So basically a person can be pretty good with math, do great on the SAT, and have a rough time of it in math classes in a school setting. Any math problem is a whole lot easier when you are given a set of possible answers to choose from as opposed to having to work the whole thing out yourself, in any case.</p>
<p>I can tell you this…the student at my kids’ school who had the perfect SAT 2400 did not have great grades…because he often didn’t do his assignments and he wasn’t organized.</p>
<p>Some schools have systems where you can check grades online. Does your son’s school do this? If so, you may be able to see if his lowish grades are because of missed assignments or whatever.</p>
<p>Many math teachers do grade students’ notebooks via a “notebook check”. These grades are often equal to a test grade, so a low grade here can really drop one’s average.</p>
<p>It sounds like you’re not talking to his math teachers…that’s where you should start.</p>
<p>I think you are missing what most people are saying. Though I understand your frustration. The school’s curriculum and evaluation does not necessarily match up with what is on the SAT math section. Geometry is not geometry is not geometry. You can do well on the SAT section, but that was not the focus of the class, or assignments were not handed in on time, the test focused on triangles and the class focused on circles, etc. Just like students can score a perfect SAT score but be a straight C high school student, the school’s curriculum and the criteria for achieving the grades almost never line up with SAT. </p>
<p>The only way to figure out what is going on is to get more information. A parent-teacher conference would be a good start.</p>
<p>“So why did his school give him such low grades”</p>
<p>He earned the grades he got, or are you saying he was somehow not treated fairly?</p>
<p>Presumably he is not working up to his potential (which is pretty good) for some combination of the above reasons, right? Does he do better in English and Humanities?</p>
<p>My favorite phrase to my kids when they assume ability will get them there is… ‘It is not what you know, it is what you show.’</p>
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<p>Why are you asking that question here? No one on an internet forum can answer this question for you.</p>
<p>The school doesn’t “give him such low grades”.</p>
<p>He earns the grades.</p>
<p>^^^^^</p>
<p>Exactly - just because he is capable of doing the work doesn’t mean that he is actually doing the work. </p>
<p>You mention the school and the teacher’s issues. How about your son? Is he doing homework, studying for tests, participating in class and doing whatever he needs to do to actually earn a good grade? </p>
<p>If not, he is going to have this issue where ever he goes to school.</p>
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<p>This I believe is a part of son’s problem too. For example, he worked on an assignment all day, then forgot to take it in. I took my son to see the school counselor, last week, who gave him a talk about the importance of time management and organizational skills. Although the real problem, I believe was, that teachers at this school district had a website that he did not know about, where they were giving solutions to extra problems. Apparently, this is a district wide practice that kids who did middle school here knew about, but my son did not. So, problems were popping up on tests that were not covered in class or given in homework. This year he knows about this website, but he has 5 AP (Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science, US History, English Language) in addition to Pre Calc. pre AP and Physics pre AP. So, I think the issue this year is going to be, too many AP classes. Once again, I wish someone had talked to us about how many AP classes is too many. We were led to believe that taking this course load was normal for GT kids. When I went to see the counselor a few days ago, she again repeated that it was common for kids here. I spoke to the Principal’s office, they said the same thing. On the other hand, when I speak to people on this board it seems this is not a normal load, even for smart kids. </p>
<p>Bottom line is, whether it was my son’s job to find out about the website as a freshman or sophomore in this district or whether he should have known about how many APs he could handle as a Junior, I get the feeling this district and school is like a little closed country club where information does not come out when it is needed.</p>