Our High School was one of the only 19 in the ENTIRE state

[Horse with no Name]

that was recognized as being ACADEMICALLY UNACCEPTABLE.
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/account/2006/index.html

What an honor! If this damn school would concentrate on hiring and paying REAL teachers instead of spending all the big bucks on coaches and athletic directors (who babysit history and science classes) for substandard teams, kids in economically disadvantaged areas such as this MIGHT have a chance to succeed.
My daughter and I have had a major battle over college.
She was at the top of her class here, however, they don't teach these kids science and she wants to major in pharmacy.
I recommended that she go to a community college to solidify her science knowledge, while she wanted to go to a major university.
I don't believe in setting someone up for failure.

[cosmik debris]

1. In Waco we had 4 schools declared unacceptable

and in the same issue of the local paper in which the 4 schools were named, there was an article about the Waco Independent School District donating money to expand the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. There are a lot of LIVID tax payers in Waco!

[Horse with no Name]

3. I bet

I can't see straight for crap like this.:mad:

[Nite Owl]

2. I agree with you on both counts

Your daughter needs to have some background in science first, she will up against those that do. Even a year in cc would help.

As far as sports I wish it were out of the school programs totally. This is something where community involvement is needed to organize after school programs for kids. Our tax dollars need to spent on teachers, books etc. not on lavish sports stadiums. They want churches to get involved then this is something they can do, provide the after school programs.

[Horse with no Name]

5. I think that has to be an answer that we start looking at

With all the talk about "global economies", we fall very short in preparing our kids for competing in one.
When at least HALF of our school budgets go to sports, that is total insanity. The only answer is to make sports extracurricular--and by taking it out of schools and making it an afterschool activity supported by corporations or churches or whoever.

[bleedingheart]

9. problem is that parents don't typically go to the school board and

bitch about academic issues.

It is the loud mouthed parents who think junior will play pro-ball who go to school board meetings and push for more athletic funding.

For instance...it is rumored that one of the men who just got elected to our local school board did so in order to help out his one child's athletic career and to "punish" those who had hurt his other kid's athletic progress...no joke. He is rather well known and had never attended a school board meeting..even when he was running for office....and now he is on the board....what a joke.

Personally I learn a lot by going to those meetings.

[Odin2005]

23. Also, parents don't like to admit that thier "perfect" kid deserved an F.

Parents and teachers are taught nowdays that "protecting a kid's self-esteem", which is realy just creating narcissistic kids with big egos, is more important then actual learning. Instead they get pissed off at the school for "treating their perfect kid unfairly since Bad Boy Junior is just such a perfect little boy" :eyes: . The school board members need to keep parents happy to keep thier votes, hence things are dumbed down so there are less F's.

[acmejack]

13. When the highest paid person on campus is the football coach

it is more than an outrage it is a crime! Only one out of every 16,000 kinds grows up to be a professional athlete. Seems kind of stupid to invest that kind of money into those odds.

[eppur_se_muova]

22. Not my area of expertise exactly, but if she's thinking of Pharmacy School

you should look at *specific* schools she's interested in and see what the program requirements are. Some programs make it relatively easy to transfer in credits from another school, including a cc, while others will not, and may have time limits (you have to complete so many credits with such-and-so GPA within so many terms etc., or you have to complete certain courses with a certain minimum grade by x semester etc.)

Going to a cc could mean she spends a year taking courses to strengthen her science education, then still needs to spend four years to complete the pharmacy program. Or it could mean four years from the start of cc to completion of the pharmacy program; it depends very much on the pharmacy school. Either way might be fine, as long as you know in advance that's what you're in for! Finding out that you're short a prerequisite and won't graduate for another year is not something you want to have happen. Some programs won't even let you finish if you get to that point.

[Critters2]

4. Most schools will get this honor within the next few years

thanks to NCLB. The purpose of NCLB is to set unattainable standards, and punish--to the point of closing--public schools. The repugs want to undermine public education. Our school district tried to sue over the requirement for special ed kids to meet "age appropriate standards" but the suit was thrown out on some technicality.

Its the repugs that set schools up for failure.

[Horse with no Name]

8. How do you determine "age appropriateness" for developmentally

delayed kids?
When you have 10-years old functioning at the age of 6-year olds, that is a huge disconnect.

[Critters2]

14. Precisely the problem

and the reason for the lawsuit. The kids were expected to pass "age appropriate tests" or it would hurt the school's results, maybe to the point of being "unacceptable", which is the ultimate goal of NCLB.

Btw, when a school fails under NCLB, the punishment is to cut the funding that would be used to improve performance. See where this is going?

[karlrschneider]

15. Same as "beatings will continue until morale improves"

:eyes:

[Horse with no Name]

16. It is nothing but a circular firing squad

:(

[eppur_se_muova]

24. Undermine so as to privatize. You have that right. nt

[bleedingheart]

6. If your daughter's high school did not have a good science or math

department, I think your advice is wise.

I was fortunate to go to a high school where I had a full year of calculus and very rigorous science courses (including a 2 period physics class)....when I went to engineering school, I saw many classmates drop out because they were not fully prepared for the type of work they needed to do and it was directly related to what their high schools had available and also their choices. Many kids opted out of taking calculus in high school to "take it easy" their senior year.

[Horse with no Name]

10. She is a whiz at math

and took every AP course offered, however, many necessary courses weren't offered, and most--when they were--were "taught" by coaches.

[bleedingheart]

11. that is the kind of stuff that makes me very mad...

I was talking to a retired teacher and she told me with digust about how people who were clearly incompetent were given teaching positions due to political preferences instead of competence.

[LisaM]

7. I agree that teachers need more money, BUT my father

was a very good high school history teacher for over 35 years and coached tennis and football on the side to help pay the bills! Please don't tar all coaches who teach with the same brush. My father is the smartest person I know and usually didn't have students who were up to his teaching skills (he had one, for instance, who, on a multiple choice test, said that after his death, Woodrow Wilson was hung upside down from his heels and stoned by an angry mob - you can bet my dad didn't teach him THAT).

[Horse with no Name]

12. Please don't misunderstand me

I know teachers that become coaches--like you said, to help out financially or just because they like kids.
I am talking about coaches that are plugged into the academic holes that their higher salaries created.
There is a difference.

[LisaM]

18. Yeah, well that IS wrong. I agree!

I think she should take some math in a commumity college. Our high school didn't have calculus either, and though I took college algebra to prep for my college calculus class (which I didn't NEED, I just wanted to expose myself to it) I was really bothered by the fact that most of the people in the class were completely familiar with the material already. A lot of them were from China and were just miles ahead of the students from the US. I think some of them, if not most, were GPA padders and why the school let them do this is really beyond my comprehension, but that's how it was.

[SheilaT]

20. That was an actual choice on

the multiple choice test?

Did your dad ever give essay questions or short-answer questions that really do test what someone has learned? Multiple choice (which I prefer to call multiple-guess) tend just to see what knowledge you recognized. The student who checked off the a Woodrow Wilson hung upside down choice had learned that some country's leader had that happen, just couldn't correctly recognize either who had, or what had actually happened to WW, if that was the question.

[LisaM]

21. His tests were a combination of essay and multiple choice

though in this particular case, I mis-described it slightly. There were four world leaders listed and you had to match up which statement applied to each. I didn't see the rest of it, because while my father read the startling response aloud to us and we all laughed, he didn't let us see the paper or tell us who the student was.

[SheilaT]

25. Oh, okay.

Actually, match-ups can be tricky. Surely this wasn't the only student that got it wrong? Maybe it was, and the student missed that day?

I'm trying to be sympathetic, because while I have always loved history, the reason I know so much at this point is in large part because I'm 40 years out of high school. Not sure that back then I knew that particular piece of information.

[Bill McBlueState]

17. she may be okay

The first year of college science classes usually contain the things kids used to learn in high school, because so many people are in the same situation your daughter is in.

A pharmacy program is going to be a lot of work, but if she's a serious enough student to finish at the top of her class, she's likely to do fine. And she'll make assloads of cash if she completes the program.

[SheilaT]

19. The real way to figure out if she

can go straight to a good four-year college is: how did she do on standardized tests like her APs and SAT IIs? If she got 4s and 5s on the APs, and at least 650 on SAT IIs in chemistry and biology, then she's ready for real college.

More questions: What major university is she considering? If it's a huge University of (fill in the state here) then she's far, far better off attending a good junior college at half the cost and with smaller classes and teachers who really care about teaching at that level. Many, if not all, research universities do not do well by their undergraduates, particular freshmen and sophomores. The only real down side to attending junior college is that she won't have any campus life.

If, on the other hand, she's considering a smaller college with strong science programs (and there are lots and lots out there) and she has the grades and the standardized test scores (see my first paragraph above) to get accepted, then she'll probably do just fine.

What I should ask you is what exactly what you mean when you say they don't teach those kids science. I cannot emphasize enough that the long standing standardized SAT IIs and the APs are a truly accurate measure of what kids have learned in those subjects.