HS science sequence

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The most important thing is which AP your child will want to take, since you typically need to take the regular/honors version before the AP version. So if you want AP bio and you're not taking Honors Bio til junior year, it constrains you to AP bio senior year. Not terrible, but maybe not your preference.

If you plan to take only those three classes and no APs, then the order won't matter much. (At our school, they've changed the recommended order a few times over the year. No idea why, but it means that kids are all over the place in terms of sequence.)

The county eliminated Matter & Energy and has rolled out new Biology, Chemistry, and Physics curriculum over the past 4 years to meet new state standards (which adopted Next Generation Science Standards released in 2012). Each high school already had different courses and pathways, and with the elimination of Matter & Energy (typically 9th grade) which was in some pathways, the schools had to plan different pathways to meet their students' needs and interests. There are also staffing challenges because science teachers are certified by area, so if the sequence is shifted there can be a bulge of students going through the course sequence (e.g. needing an extra two teachers for biology one year, then chemistry the next, then physics.) Depending on the school's actual needs, they may be shuffling the order for some students trying to flatten the bulge.