The public HS closest to us (which my kids WOULD be attending if they weren’t at a public charter HS instead) only offers AP, not DE. Although their website DOES say they have DE, but in actuality, you have to take the DE classes at another HS about 10 min drive away. Doesn’t have IB either, but yet another HS 10 min in opposite direction has AP and IB. Other HS in the same district offer all 3 (AP, DE, IB).
One beef I have w/our local school system is that the feeder middle school to our local HS only offers Spanish as the foreign language option. So if you want to take French, like D24 did, you’d have to wait until 9th grade, whereas the public charter school she went to instead had French available starting in 7th grade. If you want your kid to take French in middle school, the only option at our local school district is to test into the 'accelerated middle school (I have big issues with requiring a minimum standardized test score for something like this). So we stuck with the charter school instead because there were no stupid testing requirements in order to get admitted into the school.
Back to the DE topic, though, the public charter school that my kids attend only offers AP. No IB or DE.
So much variation from 1 school to the next, from 1 school district to another, and even within the same school district!
I would think so. I worked alongside a qualified teacher who had an undergrad degree in content-specific education but had passed state certification in our state. She could have taught AP, but the class was assigned to another qualified teacher.
To add on to what I shared earlier, I think the reason many of our students also take the AP test is to demonstrate that the rigor of our on campus dual credit class is equal to or exceeds the AP. As students are self selecting which AP tests to take, our pass rate is also higher as a school, again demonstrating rigor to potential colleges.
My own son has 64 units in dual credit. His dual credit is from a private university, but we have found it very well received at in state publics. UC Berkeley will accept nearly all of his credit. Private universities are hit and miss. USC would have accepted none of his credit.
If there is one thing that I have learned from reading posts on this forum, it’s that there is a huge diversity in school systems across this country. What I can’t decide is if that is a positive or a negative. There are experiences that are unique to our community that I wouldn’t give up. However, when I read about all the academic opportunities other students have I am very jealous.
Yes, adding on that the Middle Years Program is not related to what the US calls “middle school.” The MYP is grades 6-10, with the MYP Certificate being awarded at the end of 10th grade.
The MYP, integrated into a standard US curriculum, sets the students up for IB work (identify a global issue, etc).
We’re at an IB school, and there are no APs at all, over 40 IB classes (breaking down the two year classes into 2 separate ones), and just a handful of DE classes - all of which are taught during the day at the high school. They are known to be easier than the IB ones, but it becomes an on-ramp or off-ramp for rigor for students who don’t want the two-year IB sequence for that subject.
Presumably as a continuation of MYP, some districts offer pre-IB courses, which students take as freshmen and sophomores to prepare for IB. Different high schools may call those programs different names and I don’t think they are officially part of the IB program, which itself is standardized.
The IB conversation is another thread though so if someone would like to start that as a topic, great idea!
It would seem that the main value of DE courses, going by the general consensus on this thread, is that some high schools appear to be using them as a way to offer more rigor when they don’t offer much in the way of AP classes, that students value them as a way of earning college credit early, and that they give students flexibility in their schooling.
Based on all these comments, they seem to be of real benefit to many students and parents on the whole. The things we learn here!
@nothappyabout Running Start is the DE program for Washington State, not your local district. It’s not “cheap/subsidized” – it’s public education and it’s free. My youngest (of 3) is graduating from university next week (actually an LAC “back east”) a year early thanks to all of the credits that transferred. He’s headed to a prestigious masters program abroad. Fingers crossed he’ll “maybe get a job that allows him to sit down sometimes.”
There are two reasons I see students in our area taking DE courses.
One, S24’s school only has a six period day and it’s not a block schedule. That means you can only take six classes per year. And sports count as one period. That means you can only take five classes. This means if you want to take four years of the five main core classes, plus an elective and you are on a team, you have to constantly take community college classes as well to get everything in. These are not DE classes taught on campus, but actual community college classes taught at the community college with community college students. So the majority of students are taking at least one community college class a year (mostly in summer, but sometimes concurrently). Most other districts and private schools around us offer seven or eight periods so those students have a chance to fit in eight classes a year. At this district you cannot fit that in unless you are adding community college classes.
Another reason students take community college classes here is because they are awesome and interesting. For students who are interested in and passionate about a specific subject, community classes provide more in depth subject matter. My children have taken really interesting classes in history, economics, science, journalism, etc. - classes that would not be offered at a public high school (or at least at theirs). Our local community colleges are really well regarded and the classes were rigorous and the teachers were outstanding.
My daughter did DE so that she could go into depth in several subjects. For example, she could have taken one chemistry class at our local public high school, but she took five chemistry classes at the local CC and then a senior-level class at the local public university. Same with math and physics—so much more was offered at the CC, and it made learning SO much more fun for her.
It can also save us a HUGE amount of money. DE is free here, and she will enter UCLA with two years finished. If she wants, she can stay the full four years and do a double degree or a few minors, or she can finish in two years and save a ton of money.
She had a great job at the CC, her letters of recommendation were incredible. It was such a blessing for us.
Thanks for the info! Neither of my kids have been interested in Running Start (one took a CitHS math class, and several AP classes, which he got good enough scores on to transfer for some credit at UWTacoma – the other is class of 2025, and still figuring out what he wants to do (which might be a job that doesn’t involve sitting all day…) ), so I was mostly going on impressions from hearing other kids talk about it with my kids, rather than actually knowing!
Students love the flexibility DE offers at our rural hs. DE students are only required to show up to the hs for scheduled classes if they are DE participants. The ability to sleep in is a big incentive. Participation by senior year is close to 100%. 10% will earn an associates their senior year.
Our hs will also approve work permits so DE students can work if the schedule doesn’t conflict with class schedules. Local businesses love hiring from our hs because the students are available year round and at times typical hs students wouldn’t be available.
This is not new, either. I was pushed out of teaching in public schools by a racist superintendent who said that I wasn’t “representative” of his students in his majority-white public school system with a growing black and Hispanic population. He told me he was only hiring qualified staff with those backgrounds because that’s where the growth is. This was over ten years ago and how I ended up teaching in an affluent private school before I left the field. They never brought up my race or any other irrelevant topic in interviews, so I took the job.
I still live in that area and that superintendent has retired, but I don’t have any reason to believe that I would be taken seriously by the new superintendent.
Some days, I miss teaching all of the students I taught, but I do think with the changes in the systems near where I live, my skillset wouldn’t be valued, so I’ve moved on to another line of work.
I don’t think the anti-merit movement has had much success in our district beyond hiring, and those who have been hired are qualified, but that’s because parents keep pushing for AP and dual enrollment and are very engaged with school policy.
I wasn’t a victim of racial discrimination because I got a job at a private school. People aren’t hired for spurious reasons all of the time.
I don’t think that demographic litmus tests should be used in hiring for faculty, but that’s just my personal opinion. I do think that when districts complain that they have to eliminate programs due to teacher shortages, the media misses that policies like these litmus tests have reduced available staff. I also do see from other’s posts that DE is a way to split the teaching loads that CC faculty have between high school and CC students. I’m glad it’s working well in some places. It may be needed.
It’s clear to those like us that spend all of our free time thinking about selective colleges, but how why would it be clear to those who don’t?
After retirement, I now volunteer to teach people on the college admission process, and it was initially surprising how little even highly educated families know about this process.
Their approach is that they know rigor and grades matter. So more rigor, through AP and DE courses, must be better, right?
Each public school district has a separate superintendent who is responsible for hiring. I think this is true nationally. It’s true in my state and neighboring states at least.
Public and private school teachers are also contract workers. Each year, they have to get a new contract. It’s not the same as being “in” at a company as a salaried worker.
I never taught CC, so I don’t know how their hiring is done. If they have some sort of tenure system, I could see why assigning CC teachers to teach advanced high school classes makes sense from a management perspective.
My father was a public school teacher for 34 years and a proud member of NYSUT. He was tenured very early in his career and 30+ years since his death my mother still receives his union benefits.
So apparently it is a bit different in some jurisdictions.