Preparing For High School Education In Usa

As can be concluded from kkrish's and JAG's posts, high school can be confusing, and even a parent who has his/her act together, can sometimes be at a loss. So, it is good to know all points of view, information about your high school and about college admissions in general, and then, use all that knowledge to guide child as he navigates high school. One week, one month, one semester at a time.

Coming to the post quoted above, many schools do that - tell the parent to let the child choose courses and be a judge of what he can handle. Which is good advice. But, when child is in 8th - 10th grade, in Feb or March choosing the next year's courses, not all children will be savvy about what courses they need to take and more importantly - the order in which these need to be taken. For example, in most schools Chem and Bio are pre-requisites for AP Bio. It is ideal to take AP Bio in 11th grade, so as to write Bio subject SAT after that, and so as to apply to colleges having completed that AP in 11th and hopefully a score of 5 in the AP exam. Most schools allow only one science course each year.

Now, that means child has to do Bio and Chem in 9th and 10th grades. An 8th grader will not normally know these things. Or know but not care. Most will simply fill what their friend is filling. Same for electives - be it performing art elective or an academic elective - kid may not know all the repercussions of choosing a certain elective. My friend's kid took Mandarin in spite of mom suggesting she take an easier language, and kid struggled all 3 years.

It is a delicate balancing act that the parent has to do - guide but not override child's wishes. That is why I suggest the parent be aware of the courses in the school's course catalog, and have tentative plan in mind of what child will be taking over the 4 years. Then, work with child to see what works best for child. Never push child to take more AP subjects than he can handle, but, definitely keep an eye on the course choices and how those impact the overall plans for the 4 yrs of high school.

 

Do private high schools follow a similar structure of course offerings? Is there a state/federal curriculum standard that schools need to meet? I remember we had a thread discussing pros and cons of private versus public. I need to locate it. How much of an advantage is a private school education at the high school level? We are seriously considering moving DS to a private school this year. Does it makes sense to do it at the elementary level or wait until middle/high school?

 

They say on seeking one can also find God, but this might be hard to find, because it is in believe it or not, the Neurons thread. : )

After we had a small discussion in the Neurons thread, I started a separate thread on it: Public School vs Private in USA

The above thread also quotes JAG's detailed informative post on the topic in Neurons.

Long answer to your question, I'll type later. Short is: if you plan to eventually enroll kid in a very hard to get into private high school, then, it is better to switch to that school at least by 6th or 7th grade.

 

@Rihana - Bio and Chem are mandatory right in 9th/10th? Freshman bio, Honors bio or IH Bio is all the choice the kids here have. Same for Chem. At least here, they have to take it and take it in those grades. 11th they can choose other science courses. Wish they made it an option between physics and bio.

@Gauri03 - My DD wrote the ISEE exams for private school entry at the end of the 8th grade and passed. This exam is widely accepted as an entrance into all private schools or most private schools. It's better than writing one entrance exam for each school.

We toured the private schools and picked one too. We opted out of it because she wanted to stay with her friends in HS. We also found out that there was limited intake from private schools to colleges. Kids end up not getting into college of choice. Not sure how true that is. @poovai - Do you know anything about this?

If you really want to try private schools do it in middle school when he might be more open to the idea. We had just moved from India then and she had just been to a public elementary, didn't want to move her within a year to yet another school.

 

@kkrish - For our district, honors placements start in the 6th for maths and 7th for science and English. Of course the gifted students do honors level social studies. The honors courses are assigned based on teacher recommendations alone for science and English and for math it's based on teacher recommendation, grades and state testing for the prior year.

We didn't get our daughter tested for the gifted program. For math/science/English the teachers put her in the honors classes. At the time, I didn't realize it but those honors get carried over to HS. It's hard to get into the honors class from a regular class in HS around here. In the regular HS those courses are designed differently is what I hear.
i think around Jan in the 8th grade teachers reevaluated the placement. Their recommendations were what the HS counselors went by.

I don't know how to phrase this, but I have seen shades of favoritism. Not all children are extremely socially adept or able to manage teacher expectations. I've seen some of the kids get left behind even if they have the ability. It's because of this, I don't like teacher recommendation alone. If done in conjunction with grades and other parameters it will be good.