Dd12 started her freshman year of high school last Friday. We had some trepidation about quantity of work b/c we had heard repeatedly to expect 4-5 hrs of homework/night if you are taking pre-AP classes, a # that has been repeated often over the past few days at parent orientation, freshman orientation...
So, here's the issue. Dd is not fast. She's extremely able. She scored in the mid 500s on the verbal parts of the SAT as a young 11 y/o and the upper 20s on the verbal parts of the ACT as a young 12 y/o. Her EXPLORE scores in 8th grade put her in the top 1% of the nation for 8th graders (composite) and she generally performs in the 98th-99th percentile on pretty much everything save for math which fluctuates around. Sometimes she's in the top 1/4 of the grade on a bad day, and sometimes she's in the top 5% on a good day. I can also honestly say that she is one of the best writers I've ever met in my life, a thought shared by many of her teachers in years past. She really should be in pre-AP classes level wise.
She also has to take two science classes this year if she wants to take anything but the bare minimum boring science offerings by the end of high school. Pre-AP Bio, earth systems science, and chemistry are all pre-reqs for AP Bio and pretty much everything else. She's taking pre-AP Bio & earth systems along with pre-AP English, Geometry, world history (not pre-AP), photography, PE & French 2. Classes meet sort of every other day so you don't have every class every day.
Her pre-AP bio teacher told her that they'd have 10 hrs of homework/week for that class alone. Her history teacher yesterday gave them do what amounted to major busy work IMHO. She had to hand write out the entire syllabus verbatum and bring it home for me to sign (two pages of writing). They also have a 20 question worksheet to complete that is full of questions like, "1) What is the title of the book? Publisher? List the authors of the book. How many units does the book have? Chapters?.... 5) Draw the picture from page 2-3..."
Dd takes longer than I would on this type of stuff, but I just don't see the educational purpose, honestly, and I hope that the school year isn't going to be full of her spending five hrs/night doing crud like this. Last night probably took her four to five and a half hours btwn her various classes. (I was at parent orientation for middle school, so I don't know if she took breaks.) The school seems to be counting on the kids getting more efficient to cut down the quantity, but I'm not sure.
Thoughts? I hate to go complain especially given that this is high school and she needs to be self sufficient, but she's a stressed out crying wreck already and feels like her work quality is going down hill due to her anxiety level.
