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Somewhat OT--Austin, when did you graduate from high school? I took a pretty full AP/honors load at one of the most competitive and highly ranked high schools in my highly populated northeastern state and it was not like this. I graduated in 1990, though, so it was a while ago.

I feel like I hear a LOT about the crazy expectations for honors/AP track kids in HS these days, and I do wonder when and how the culture changed.

Apparently they are on board with it b/c the counselor is the one who has said this repeatedly and the assistant principal confirmed that in the parent orientation although he said that it varied from kid to kid. It isn't just the kids saying this although the upperclassman who showed her group around on the first day did tell her that you "can't" take more than one AP class or you won't be able to do any clubs or anything outside of school.

Yes, and reality is that she is 12 years old. I don't think that she is less prepared to be in 9th grade than a 14 y/o, though, and I don't want to keep bringing up her age b/c it will make it appear that way or like we are asking for special accommodations b/c she is younger, which really isn't the case. I don't think that this quantity of work would be any more reasonable for her in a year or two.

Thank you all for your ideas, BTW!

Me too . I've been told that AP hasn't changed a ton in that time, though, which is why I have such an issue with this. AP never was meant to be about quantity. IB, on the other hand, I've heard has always had a greater focus on quantity, which is why we never felt like it would be a good fit for dd in high school.

I took a full AP/honors load at what was, at the time, the most highly ranked school in my state, and participated in dance, chorus, and science research and competitions, and I still had plenty of time to just hang out with my friends and go sailing and play D&D on the weekends, and I made 5s on my AP exams. I graduated...well, let's just say, even earlier than you, ultramarina. My AP courses actually had a lighter load in terms of the volume of work required than the regular track college prep classes at my high school, but higher expectations in terms of depth of understanding, analysis of the material, and quality of work products. They were much more like college courses than high school courses in this respect - which is, after all, what they are supposed to be.

My eldest is in 8th grade. He's had a lot of busy work so far this year. Example: a large, intricately done 4-hour coloring sheet that teaches about primary and secondary colors. It's a simple coloring job: use primary colors in quadrant 1. Use secondaries in quadrant 2. Mix them to see what happens in quadrant 3. Etc. This assignment requires nothing more challenging than choosing a colored pencil. But there are so many sections to color, it is literally a four-hour job.

He had a math assignment that required him to write essays about "math myths." He had to pick three; one myth was that there's no such thing as a "mathy mind." DH snorted and said, "This isn't math!" But it shows pretty clearly that the teacher doesn't understand about math talent.

They started preparing for standardized tests today. The tests are given in May.

I don't really know what can be done about this kind of thing in the short term. Given that it's just a single component of a basically broken education system, it's hard to see a way to fix it without re-evaluating the overall goals of our school system and how to achieve them. For some schools, the goal is to get the kids to pass the tests. For others, it's to get the kids into IVY LEAGUE SCHOOLS. Either way, the game they have to play is awful in some ways.

Hard work is important. Persistence is important. But by manufacturing goals that lack substance and greater meaning, I fear that we're maximizing the hard work without really teaching the whole point of persistence.

Early 1980s.

I still read and did other things on my own. I also held down a part time job. I'd do my homework then stay up until 1 am or later reading or programming. I also played sports.

Here is what I recall.

In Humanities we had 50 vocab words a week with the words given to us on Monday and a test on Friday. We read one book a week in that class. I was constantly reading. We had one essay due every Monday that had to use half the vocab words from the week before on the historical topic.

Our calculus teacher had a MS in Math. She spent the first 10 minutes lecturing, worked a problem or two, then we worked on homework the rest of the class. Every other day was new material. One of the problems was always a proof. I always had to work an hour a night.

Chemistry and physics were no different. Both teachers had majored in their subject in college. Everyone feared the physics teacher - and with good reason. Those two classes were 30 minutes to an hour each night.

Right there, four core classes - 3 to five hours a night. Now add in band or journalism or yearbook or Latin or sports and it was a full load. Some of the kids had dance or music or non-school sanctioned sports outside of school, too.

I'd leave school at 3:15, walk to a local restaurant, sit in the back studying until 6, walk home, eat, then study until 8, then I'd be free to do what ever I wanted, usually reading or programming until 1 am. I also studied during lunch, eating first, then spending my time in the next class prior to it starting, studying.

In 10th grade we started with about 30 kids on the honors track and out of that group only 14 stuck with it through to their senior year.

My senior year I met a number of kids from elite NYC public schools while on a class trip to DC and when we compared our schools, I felt we were on par in terms of course material and workload.

Talking to friends with kids in the Plano school district here and looking over their AP homework, I do not see anything different from what I did almost 30 years ago. The pacing and intro of the material is the same. Ditto in Humanities, etc. Looking at the top private schools, its the same.

One difference is that nowadays the top graduating seniors spend a lot of time at Chinese or other enrichment schools from K onwards along with a lot of time at private prep academies. I am beginning to think the statistical anomalies are due to hard work rather than countless hours self tutoring at the library. But this mirrors the experience of the top athletes who also spend a lot time practicing on their own or going to camps.

Has anyone read Outliers? He outlines how you need to do 10,000 hours of whatever to become an expert- an expert violinist, an expert computer programmer. Hard work = excellence. I think being gifted is somewhat overrated, in the sense that it isn't enough over the long haul!

We've discussed Outliers several times (not trying to stop anyone doing so again, just saying...)
'Outliers', anyone reading it?? (thread has 11 pages as I type)
Outliers, Tiger Moms, and Nature (7 pages)
and another related thread
Achievement vs Intelligence (4 pages)

I've always heard that you need about 5 to 10 years to become an expert.

However, you have to do the right kinds of work and receive the right kinds of training and feedback. Without an appropriate mentor and appropriate feedback, you aren't going to become an expert in anything.

I would think that being gifted would certainly increase the speed with which you can internalize the appropriate feedback and move forward.

Sorry, I just saw this and it is timely. I still can't see the times/dates when people posted things; it still reads as a random string of #s on the top right of the post -- most irritating!

On topic, though, things are not getting any better and I am fairly concerned w/ dd. She's crying non-stop, writing depressing poetry, and generally highly depressed. The accommodation she gets from her 504 is extra time if needed, but turning things in late will just cause stuff to pile up and make it no less manageable.

From what I see, the issues are as follows:

1) She works for at least 5 hrs every night and that much or more each day on the weekend. She isn't goofing off and is working as quickly as she can. This leaves her with no freetime to see friends, read, watch TV, play with the dogs, or do virtually anything. She is also very tired b/c she's getting to bed too late. Last night it was 10:30 or so by the time she got to bed and she's up at 5:30. She worked pretty straight through from the time she got home (3:30) until she went to bed. She didn't even have time to shower.

2) Some of the work remains pointless IMHO. Her social studies class continues to assign coloring projects that take hours upon hours and are graded harshly if they aren't super detailed, if any white is left showing on the page around the colored pencil...

3) She has some group projects that have aversely affected her grades. For instance, in English, she's gotten A+s on all individual work but the two group projects entailed the other kids not doing the work at all and/or doing it totally wrong (did you know that Democrats were the cause of slavery due to their belief in big government and that slavery ended 20 yrs before the Civil War began?). She's had to re-do their work and has gotten low Bs on the two things that involved turning in stuff that was partially done by other kids. This has her grade for that class at a B+ -- I know it's not bad, but she's upset and it's just adding to her homework load to be picking up the pieces for other kids.