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Help needed for missed work
Fatimaj57 December 13, 2012
My family was out of country for the summer and the past three months of school, and we just got back. My daughter is a freshman in highschool this year, and she needs to start school and catch up immediately. We have talked to her school, and they are offering two options. Either she catches up on cyber school,or she joins the school right now and sees what happens. Now the problem is, we can't find any cyber school that offers honors courses for the ninth grade. What i mean by honors courses is the courses that will give you bonus points by giving u a more weighted GPA at the end of the year if you get good grades in them. Now, for my daughter and I this is unacceptable. We have been searching and calling for days, trying to find a cyber school that will offer honors classes. Regarding the other option, we find it difficult to start school for her in the middle of her year with no previous work done, and it is quite impossible. Please if any one has ideas, post them!
TeacherParent December 24, 2012
People do move during the school year - that your daughter missed the first three months of the school year wouldn't stop me from enrolling her in your local school. Math can be a challenge if she's behind three months in math but a good tutor can help her to hurry along and catch up to the class - if she's even behind. Foreign language is another class where catch-up needs to happen if she hasn't studied the language before and the class has been studying it for the past three months but again - a good tutor can help her to quickly close that gap.
Other than those two subjects, a student should be able to step in to the classes. I teach in a school where students enroll throughout the year - it isn't a problem. Ideally your daughter's teachers should take certain things into account - if they've already taught gerunds in Lit class, she might not know what gerund is.
The school should be able to give you a course outline for each class and they should be able to tell you what concepts of significance that she's missed. It's a public school's job to be accomodating!! They have NO right to tell you to have her 'catch up in cyber school' - if a public school officially recommends a school other than itself, it's obligated to pay the tuition for that other school.
They're mad that you had her out of school for three months - schools hate that - as if it's their business to police your life. It's not their business or their place to do that - don't let them and don't let them give you a rough time about enrolling her. If a family moved into the district from abroad, would they dare tell that family to 'catch up in cyber school'? 81865
Amalhope December 17, 2012
I do not know where you live, but most cyber charter schools will not let you "catch up". They only allow you to take the standard coursework anyway. We live in GA and there are many options to pay for the courses, including AP courses, and those would be the only way to catch up but it would be expensive, generally 200 per course.
I would go to the district office and see if any of the schools offer block schedule. Block schedule allows you to take 4 classes for an hour and a half for ONE semester. You then take a new 4 classes for the secound semester. Insead of 6 classes for a year, you take a total of 8 classes for a semester and get full credit. This way you would not have to get caught up. You would simply have to take all 4 of your academic courses in one semester(and this will not be easy). Most students have more credits than they need when they graduate anyway. My son can graduate in Dec his Sr. year dispite takeing the normal course load. On standard or block scedule you will likely not be able to take AP anyway. Even on Block schedule AP is a year long course. Most schools that I know of require you to take Pre AP. as an elective at the beginning of the school year and then you take the actual AP course secound semester. The elective is a prereq for AP, can'g get in without it.
In my sons high school Honors courses give an extra .5 toward your gpa(AP gives you 1.0). Realisticly I think the best you are going to get is block schedule starting in Jan with some Honors courses.
if your home school does not offer block schedule, I would talk to the district and request to be transfered to one that does due to the circumstances. In our district half offer block schedule and half do not.
Good luck I hope it helps81810
MagnetMom December 14, 2012
Hi Fatimaj57,
I can't imagine starting a semester late, and trying to catch up. You'd like honors courses, but the reality is that the colleges don't really look at freshman coursework that closely that one semester would be too much of an issue. In fact, the University of California system doesn't even look at the grades until 10th grade.
She could easily overcome this by taking a community college course or two by the time she graduates (maybe over the summers), and by adding a note to her file saying why the 9th grade course work was not available in honors.
Good luck.
81745
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