Reply to Expanded High school electives at TJ

Forum Index » Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)

Reply to "Expanded High school electives at TJ"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ohhhh Japanese is back. Awesome! That could be good for my kid if they are accepted this year.[/quote]

I really like that this new Principal is doing things to make TJ academically excellent rather than engaging in social engineering.[/quote]

What exactly is your definition of academically excellent? By adding all those new AP classes, the kids will stop taking a balanced course load of TJ-specific classes created and taught by experts. That's why we picked TJ--this is a shame. Every kid is going to look exactly the same on paper and they'll all be burned out.  There's literally nothing special about it anymore.  Watch all the amazing teachers leave now that their programs are gone.[/quote]

The AP classes are a boon.  Your kid was going to take pre-calculus at an AP level of rigor anyway.  Now the class will be weighted as an AP class.
Your kid was going to take most of these classes at an AP level of rigor, now they get AP credit for it.
And the number of electives hasn't really changed. My kid can still take all the same electives he planned on taking when he was a freshman.

What programs are gone?[/quote]

NP.  I think what people advocating for more AP classes don't realize is that when an AP is offered in direct competition with a TJ-specific class and they both fulfil a requirement, the large majority will pick the AP class simply because it offers the extra weighting. When no kids choose the TJ-specific class anymore, it gets cut and the teacher who taught it gets assigned to teach something else, probably the AP.  The AP then becomes the standard, which sounds nice on the surface, but it just raises that standard for all the kids, making it the status quo and ultimately not helping anyone.  So while those TJ-specific electives are still listed--for now--in a year or two, as the APs take over, a lot  of the electives will be gone, kids will have less opportunity to differentiate themselves, and colleges will have a harder time choosing who to admit--from TJ AND between TJ and base schools. If they all look the same, there is no benefit.[/quote]

Stupid question here. I have a kid applying to TJ so I am learning.

[b]Can’t they teach the TJ specific biology class in a class called AP Bio?[/b] They need to make sure they cover all that content, but don’t they cover that in the TJ specific class? I have read that the TJ classes move more quickly and cover more material because they expect the kids to be able to do more. Maybe an AP Bio accelerated?

What I think a lot of people want is for heir kids to be able to take the AP exams in the different subjects to get the class credit and I was under the impression that the TJ specific classes required self study for the AP exams.[/quote]

TJ has always had AP classes and they have always had a higher level of rigor than required by the AP curriculum.  The non-AP classes at TJ also had higher levels of rigor than the AP curriculum.  All this did was slap an AP tag on the TJ class.[/quote]

So what is the issue? If the AP classes were there and the TJ electives, it sounds like kids were choosing the TJ elective classes over the AP classes. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics