Reply to HB Woodlawn provides unfair advantage to students for college since no intensified classes

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Reply to "HB Woodlawn provides unfair advantage to students for college since no intensified classes"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A bigger problem is that there are not enough AP classes that are offered so it's almost impossible to take as hard a course load as other schools unless you plan to take advanced classes elsewhere, which APS does not always recognize. However, you might need a crystal ball to know which courses may or may not be feasible to take in any given year at HB, not to mention the dearth of fine arts classes restrict you to certain time blocks only. Some AP courses, such as in science and math, traditionally conflict in time block so it may be impossible to fit them in during the 2 or 3 grades you're able to. All AP courses are very limited in number of classes offered per year so supply/demand forces students to wait until senior year to take the easier, more popular ones, thus having to take AP courses out of the traditional sequence. Some AP classes are taught along with the non-AP version of it so I'm guessing class prep for the AP test may be more difficult. Also, the availability of teachers is limited so it's not uncommon to see teachers teaching a particular course for the first time a kid is taking it, or is teaching an AP class that is outside the dept/field that they normally are teaching classes in; the teachers may know the material but since AP tests are standardized, they may have less familiarity with how best to prepare students for the actual test.

And, in general, if there is no true advanced level class for a course offered that has only very high performing students, the fact remains that any APS class, intensified or not, will probably be at a level where, if the kid is struggling, they're probably not looking at a college that actually cares about these lower level classes since APs will weigh more heavily anyhow. So yes, if you're an average student, the OP's argument may hold. But if you're competing with other kids from schools within/outside the county for a finite number of spots at competitive colleges, your transcript may not look as good. Just compare the colleges that HB kids get accepted to vs other high school kids.[/quote]

Offer all the arguments you want, this is a CHOICE program that everyone there CHOOSES. If they don't like the offerings, they can go to their assigned high school. It's an "unfair advantage" AT students get so many DE classes and can graduate high school with an associate's degree; every non - WL student is "disadvantaged" because they can't access any IB classes but WL students can, even without doing the full IB program; etc.

Sorry, OP; but no sympathy or even agreement re an HB disadvantage. HB students are OPTING INto a HIGHLY-sought, HIGHLY-respected, HIGHLY-successful academic program. Graduates go on to attend high quality, selective colleges and universities. Not one single high school "has it all."[/quote]

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