Reply to What are your thoughts on how MCPS kids should use senior year?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am a sub for MCPS and an after-school tutor that focuses on college prep. The regular decision deadline for most colleges is January 1. Getting the personal statement, supplementals and applications done by Nov 1/Jan 1 can be daunting. That said, if AP classes are in the stars for a student, they aren't going to matter as much the 2nd semester, because admissions offers are already made. My senior year, I took several college courses at the local community college. Even if AP is supposed to be college level, it's not. In MCPS schools, honors is now on level and AP is what honors used to be.

Summer before senior year should be focused on finalizing a good SAT/ACT score. Even if a school says it's optional, it's really not.

Senior year, I would really focus on finding good internships for a student. Any good internship will set a student apart. One of my students had an awesome internship this summer and it rocked the way he approached his college essays.

Or a part-time job. It's really hard to get a job out of college with no work history. The value of showing up to work, getting feedback on performance, and having to deal with other people in a work setting is invaluable. Encourage kids to work part-time in a field they might want to go in. My first year in college, I got a job at the TV station my college owned and the rest became history.[/quote]

If you think classes at MC are more rigorous than APs...  :roll: [/quote]

I teach/ grade a bunch of AP assignments. High schools just aren't in a place to absorb everything they need from these classes. [b]The classes are dumbed down to meet the whole class in the middle, not push those kids who can do college-level work.[/b] Many colleges don't accept them, others only count a 5 or a 4 on the exam. Some colleges don't accept any AP's from certain schools, because they know this. Have your kid take the right classes for their career path, not just to lop some extra AP's on the transcript.

Yes, taking a class in a college setting where a student is required to manage their time differently shows a lot of initiative. [/quote]

As a teacher, I imagine this isn't the way you'd like for things to be.

How can we as parents, support teachers like yourself that see the dumbing down going on and want to push back against it? MCPS is an incredibly political entity, and they only seem to respond to public pressure. Where and how can we apply it best?[/quote]

DP here. It is that most students who need remedial support are now in honors classes and those are on-level. They are no longer honors. This is system-wide. They took the special ed teachers and remedial paras to form a lot of co-taught classes. [b]The teachers want the remedial students to have their own classes.[/b][/quote]

Got it. Back when I was in MCPS remedial and special ed classes were separate. How did this get undone and who was responsible for undoing this?

I imagine there must have been some special education advocates who lobbied for not having the separation but we need to push back.

Would it be fair to say that the issues are related but distinct:

1) You have some kids who aren't special needs but do need remedial work because they're behind academically

2) You have some kids who have learning disabilities and/or special needs but the school doesn't have the special ed resources to support them, so teachers' time is spent supporting special ed students rather than challenging the most advanced learners?

3) Honors-for-all as an experiment is a bust and we need to go back to distinct on-level and honors classes like we used to[/quote]

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