Why do kids in "regular" courses get A's?
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Anonymous
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Hear me out. Several teachers have told me these kids are only taught 50-60% of the material compared to the equivalent Honors-Advanced-AP course. Obviously Honors-Advanced-AP courses are weighed, but a "regular" course kid can get a report card full of A's and B's. Gullible parents assume their kid is bright, but the kid is shaping up to be years behind their peers in the Honors-Advanced-AP courses.
Remember when Honors-Advanced-AP courses were called "COLLEGE TRACK"? Going further, this seems like a long-con that tricks naive parents into sending their kids away to college, when they're severely unprepared. Seems an easy way of waking both kids and parents up would be to only give these kids B's, at best. |
Anonymous
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An A (or BCDF) reflects how well the student masters the content for a particular class. You can absolutely get an A in math 10 and should to reflect your work in that class.
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Anonymous
| OP, yours is hands down the stupidest post I have ever seen on DCUM, which really is saying something. You should get a certificate. |
Anonymous
OP, you need to relax. You seem wound extremely tight. Why do you care? I grew up in a crappy school system where we barely had honors/AP, was a terrible high school student but excellent writer and test-taker, made it in to Big State U (miraculously, if you ask my parents) and graduated magna cum laude. I didn't feel unprepared. Maybe because I was "only" at Big State U and not an Ivy. But seriously. Your snowflake will be OK, honors/AP or the horror of "regular" curriculum. And if you live anywhere in MoCo or Northern VA, your regular kid already has a leg up on kids from where I come from. Funny, all the Ffx Co kids at my college were cheating off me in class. |
Anonymous
No, but then I'm really old. When dinosaurs roamed the earth and I went to HS, (a gigantic suburban HS with over 2,000 students), many students were considered to be on the college track. It had to do with which progression of courses you took (i.e., into to Chem/Physics as a Frosh, Biology as a Soph, Chem as a Jr, and Physics as a Sr). The top 10% or so of us were invited to be in the Honors versions of the courses, and we got bumps on our GPAs as a result (an "A" in regular Biology was a 4.0, whereas an "A" in Honors Biology was worth 4.2). The point is that the Honors designation was for an invitation-only version of the class, so that serious students (nerds like me) could be with our fellow nerds and have more serious discussions and fewer distractions. That doesn't mean that everyone else in the school, taking those courses, wasn't expected to be on a college track. They were - in some cases - less "talented" (which I think is less precocial academic learners, but quite possibly more adept social learners), but some of them also had other competing interests. I gave up cheerleading because "Honors PE" (required for cheerleaders) took place at the same time as "Honors Spanish 3-4." Don't assume that someone who isn't taking and Honors/AP/IB course isn't serious about college. They may very well be balancing priorities that differ from yours. |
Anonymous
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It's interesting because now I think the grading is the opposite of what it was even a decade ago. It used to be that the good high schools offered honor or AP classes with the weighted grades. Now this is no longer an indicator of quality.
The really good schools do not weight AP classes. Rather it's a given that all the students are at that level so it's a meaningless signal. I'm thinking of mostly university lab schools or test-in publics. OP, I think your kid is at a crappy school. |
Anonymous
+1000000 there are not enough zeros for this |
Anonymous
| Are you jealous of kids who get As in "regular" classes? To most colleges, an A is an A. |
Anonymous
+1 I think OP is the stupid one in this scenario. |
Anonymous
| These days, all high school courses are on the college track. The AP courses are on the college level, which is why passing the AP test can earn college credits. |
Anonymous
I doubt that's entirely true. I suspect college admissions committees make a distinction between "IB Diploma", "AP English", and "Honors English" and regular 12th grade English. The thing is that at many schools it may very well be a distinction without a consequential difference. If you're in a state where the top 10% of students are automatically accepted to the flagship state university, then unless your Honors/AP/IB class comes with a GPA bump, you've actually got less incentive to take it. |
Anonymous
An A isn't an A. Of course colleges look to see if kids took AP and Honors classes. Do you really think that they are going to accept a kid with straight As taking automechanic and woodwork over a kid with As/Bs in Honors English and physics? You are out of your mind. |
Anonymous
Except that selective universities (particularly the private ones) have little to no incentive to offer college credits for AP. The University of Nebraska may give you credit, but that doesn't mean Dartmouth will. |
Anonymous
You need to stop hanging out with crappy teachers. Kids in high school only need to take high school classes. There are plenty of those kids (mine included) who end up in schools with kids who take AP courses. I have long thought that the Honore/AP track are the long-con on parents who feel their kids must take those courses to be ready for college. It doesn't work like that. |
Anonymous
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Wow.
I've heard that American kids are only taught 50-60% of the material compared to many other countries. Gullible Americans assume their kids is bright, but actually years behind their peers from other countries who will be taking their jobs. There might be kids in honors class who might not be ready for college or for life and there might be kids in "regular" classes who will do great in college. So you want a regular kid who learned material well and and aced the test to get a B because there's an honors kid out there somewhere who deserves the A for also acing the tests? So the regular school teaches my kid Spanish. He does well, deserves an A (he is trilingual), but can't get it because A is for honors kids. You don't know what else the regular kid knows. They might know twice as much as the honors kids. Not their fault they are taught less and tested on less (maybe, we don't know that). A lot more goes into doing well in college than your honors grades. My sister was told that she needs to go and milk cows because she had Cs in regular class. She did learn how to milk them in 4-yearschool, but she also decided to go to college. She moved to US, graduated cum laude from no name private and got her Masters from Georgetown. Her teachers were completely unaware what she can accomplish with hard work. She would've never got even an A according to you had there been some honors kids at the private. Doesn't make sense, doesn't seem fair since she did well in her classes and learned the material given. OP, sorry, but I think you are delusional. How do you know those regular kids are unprepared for college? How do you know what their parents know about their own kids? And when they are given a "B" that means they are prepared? Or that means they know they are not prepared? I'm just really lost. I'm trying to get your point or be on your side but it's not happening. |