re: High School Education

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Have you tried to enroll him in the Honors/AP program, or do they not have them in your school system? I can promise you that your student would be challenged in the AP program of our local school. Most kids who do AP in our school system here find their first two years of college extremely easy.

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He was in one or two Honors classes this year. Honestly, we didn't want to burn him out (he's just a freshman). I don't remember off hand what all he signed up for next year. I'll have to look.

Sounds like German style schools. They don't have high school, but after fourth grade you choose your secondary school. They are up to 9, 10 or 12 grades depending on what you pick.


Hauptschule

The Hauptschule (grades 5-9) teaches the same subjects as the Realschule and Gymnasium, but at a slower pace and with some vocational-oriented courses. It leads to part-time enrollment in a vocational school combined with apprenticeship training until the age of 18.

Realschule

The Realschule (grades 5-10 in most states) leads to part-time vocational schools and higher vocational schools. It is now possible for students with high academic achievement at the Realschule to switch to a Gymnasium on graduation.

Gymnasium

The Gymnasium leads to a diploma called the Abitur and prepares students for university study or for a dual academic and vocational credential. The most common education tracks offered by the standard Gymnasium are classical language, modern language, and mathematics and natural science. In recent years many States have changed the curriculum so students can get the "Abi" at the end of the 12th grade. Other States are making the transition but may still require a 13th grade.


The School Day

German students at public schools attend school in the morning. Classes normally start between 7:30 and 8:15 a.m. and can end between 12 noon and 1:30 p.m. Class periods are normally 45 minutes long with a short break in between. There is no provision for serving lunch. There can be a lot of homework and heavy emphasis on the "three Rs" - reading, writing and aRithmatic. The curriculum expands as students move up from Grundschule and depends on which of the three secondary schools they attend.

The School Year

The school year consists of two semesters and normally starts around the middle to end of August. There are longer breaks at Christmas and in the summer. Shorter breaks are around Easter and in autumn. There is no school on public holidays. The Christmas break is usually 2 weeks and the summer break is about 6 weeks. The exact dates of the various vacations and breaks are set by the individual Länder.

LINK

Many schools still focus on "closing the gap", that is they still feel their #1 priority is to raise the test scores of the lowest students to a passing rate on the current standardized test. Advanced students and even middle of the road students are usually already at the passing point and these groups tend to be neglected.

I know different accountability measures have been put in place to try and rectify this, but when NCLB went into effect our advanced students really took a hit, especially in schools were enrollment numbers limited the number of advanced class offerings, etc.

So it is not surprising a good student can quickly complete work targeted toward our lowest performing students.


FYI, if you want to make your ISS a better deterrent, consider these suggestions from a former alternative school director/principal.

1. Keep plenty of skill building work for your students...always keep them writing...rather than just sitting/sleeping when they have finished classwork. (ex. commonly misspelled words, ACT/SAT vocabulary reviews, multiplication facts, maybe even writing a list of Spanish words and their translation, etc.)

2. Play music all day. (classical, opera, classic bluegrass, Barney sing-a-longs, the Wiggles, audio books etc. Whatever you can find on youtube)

3. Have a daily grading system/report that students sign off each day. If students grade out less than 80% any day they have to repeat the day)

4. I also created my own homework students had to do each night and it was 1 of the items on their daily grading report...took about 40 minutes per night. My goal was to make them to prefer to stay in their classroom with their teachers.

Out of 200 or so students per year that visited me, only 4 or 5 would try serious resistance. Often these students would turn a 5 to 10 day placement into a 30 day placement since they failed to show progress while placed with me.

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Bama323_15

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Thanks for the reply. I like all the suggestions for ISS. Unfortunately, our administration is extremely weak when it comes to discipline. I have recommended kids have additional days of ISS but they ignored me. I will write kids up for not following my assignments or for outright defiance and they will not suspend them or send them home, they will just give them a "talk" and send them back.

If I had the authority to give students additional days of ISS, my days would be a lot easier.

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Play music all day

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Get kids involved in music programs. The stats are out there that kids gain critical skills that lead to higher IQ's later. Listening to music is great. Playing is even better.

Reading also helps. Fiction or non-fiction, keep kids reading.

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Students from Asia who are taught the old fashioned way of rote memorization/lectures (not the self taught/new-fangled methods espoused in the U.S. Educational system today) do better on the international tests. Not completely sure what this means and don't know if that inhibits creativity which is apparently lacking in China and Japan to a certain degree. I think students from the past actually learned math (at least) better than students of today.

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That's really interesting, as most of the "new" Common Core curriculum is "new fangled" and based on Singapore math pedagogical techniques because their math scores are insanely high.

Singapore Math Wiki

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Not all classes are like this. Especially Honors or AP classes. Maybe in the class where the student you observed is in. But certainly not all.

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AP classes are essentially junior college classes often taught by underqualified educators. AP classes are stupid easy for the kinds of people who take them, given these are almost always your future university students.

The sad thing is AP should be the minimum, not the maximum. Whenever I had to take a HS elective with regulars students I found myself wondering how they dressed themselves in the morning. Most if those kids had no business in an academic setting, they should have been funneled into trade schools in order to acquire useful job skills.

There are only three kinds of kids who struggle in HS: Those who don't care, those with genuine learning deficiencies and idiots. The majority fall into the first and last group.

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AP classes are essentially junior college classes often taught by underqualified educators. AP classes are stupid easy for the kinds of people who take them, given these are almost always your future university students.

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Eh. I wouldn't say that's necessarily the case everywhere, though I agree with most of the rest of your post. Maybe it's because I live in a college town, but most of the AP teachers in our high school could pretty much be professors in their subject, and the courses are downright brutal (other than AP Human Geography and AP Psychology which are both known as "easy" AP courses).

I definitely agree with the last of your post, though. Apathy is the biggest issue facing education.

I mean, Honors Ceramics is just a pottery class that's probably "honors" because it's designed for kids who are actually serious about pottery and art instead of the goofs that are taking it as the easy way to get their fine art credit.

Poetry Out Loud is a national competition that involves memorizing and reciting poetry. A lot of schools have competitions within the school and select a winner. That student then goes on to compete at the regional level. Then state level. Then national level, provided they keep winning. Here's a video of the 2015 National Champion if you want to watch it.

But don't let me get in the way of a good "get off my lawn" rant. I do agree with your comments about the everyone's a winner philosophy, though.

I was on the other end of that recently at our Wrestling Team's End of Year Banquet. My 10 and 7 year old both wrestle. My 10 year old is special needs and doesn't actually compete, but he has practiced every single practice and works hard. Anyway, neither of them got an award, and there were other kids who racked up multiple awards. I admit that I was a little pissed off at the end of the banquet and my wife was extremely pissed off. I ended up bringing up the fact that wrestling isn't one of those sports where everyone gets an awards and that it's good for our kids to experience that. Plus it will mean so much more when they do get an award from the team. I still wish they'd have given my special needs son some kind of "spirit" award as it would have made his day.