Honors classes and freshman year?

[Anonymous]

Mine took AP NSL and everything else honors in 9th. Only exception was required PE. If your kid is doing AP NSL he is surely capable of honors.

Also, depending on the school, the regular classes tend to have more disruptive kids in them. My DC tutored in one and was surprised at the difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mine took AP NSL and everything else honors in 9th. Only exception was required PE. If your kid is doing AP NSL he is surely capable of honors.

Also, depending on the school, the regular classes tend to have more disruptive kids in them. My DC tutored in one and was surprised at the difference.

Yup. Our experience as well -- when the HS eliminated the on-level English classes and made everyone "Honors." The class dynamic greatly changed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our experience: Honors Algebra 2 can be tough but it’s not very much work. NSL is a ton of work if you’re serious about it. My kid was up late rereading the Federalist Papers. Alg 2 is done with a few quick worksheets. Honors English and Bio aren’t very much work, though bio is tougher on grading

Honors Bio was the hardest course my son took that wasn’t an AP. And he’s an excellent student. It’s very teacher dependent. He had a heavy workload and the teacher went much deeper than other teachers teaching the same course. We had to hire a tutor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s so asinine that honors courses are the “regular” ones. Talk about coddling kids. Just call it “Algebra 2” or “English.” No need to call it honors if the vast majority of kids take it. What a joke.

I think it’s not so much about ‘coddling’ but that MCPS is all about optics. They want to say they ‘Look, every MS kid is in Advanced English’. Who cares that the class is a complete joke?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, this schedule is easier than many (most?) college bound kids at our school take. Consider honors algebra 2. And the social studies course varies by school, so stick with AP NSL, but note that many kids whose parents are on this board (at other high schools) take an AP social studies course (AP us history) that is roughly twice as hard as NSL. So this schedule is very doable for a good student.

To a PP asking about NSL, I wouldn't call NSL a joke (really depends on the kid's strengths), but the AP NSL course teaches a university-level 3 credit course across the full year (It's very arguable/unlikely that it is really university level, but that's the intent.) The other AP social studies courses teach 6 credits of university-level content over the year. So NSL is structured to be half as fast as AP USH, among others. For those of us whose kids take APUSH first, NSL seems extremely light.

A mistake driven by the administration/history department. Kids should absolutely start in AP U.S. Government (MCPS made up the fake name "AP NSL" which is a violation of trademark. Don't make people feel "less than" because a few of the high schools push kids prematurely into APUSH.