Wow!!! Congrats!

yeah sorry I was feeling grumpy LOL

Also as to someone who was cautious about students finishing vocational training by 18, due to safety and EF issues/ in Finland, there are 3 certifications: upper secondary, further and advanced. Your upper secondary certification is a complete Certification which includes apprenticeship and hands-on training and prepares you for a full-time job. However that is not necessarily the best certification nor does it necessarily show complete and total competency over the entire job which is why the government also offers further certification and also advanced certification both of which you could apply for after high school. But they finish high school with a Certification and a full time job. Perhaps these Secondary certifications do not include the most advanced techniques or perhaps when they are hired their work is routinely examined by an overseer. ****^But the point is it is possible to train an 18 year old to do a job worthy of full time employment. Which I would remind you the United States Military does all the time. They graduate 18 year olds from technical colleges before even turning 19, and these young men and women are making your airplanes run, fixing the ground equipment that services and fuels them, keeping our bases safe patrolling with weapons and tactical training, and even air traffic controllers (though that training is a little longer). So to say an 18-19 year old doesn’t have the EF skills to be fully trained for a full time job requiring major responsibility is a little off the mark.**** And anywhere you work, there is oversight, leaders, bosses and continued education to keep your sharp 🙂

I do not think it is anyone else’s but the parents, let alone the government’s responsibility to take care of teenagers who do not wish to be educated. And of those who are frustrated and angry with school, many many would have been much more engaged and interested if it were vocational and if the vocational track was not considered less worthy- if from little children up they had career days where plumbers, electricians, welders, masons, machinist visit the schools and talk about their job etc. etc I’m sorry that many parents don’t have time to focus on their teenagers but the government forcing the teens into a program they don’t want to be in, till the age of 18 is ridiculous. It is a waste of taxpayer money, time and effort and only perpetuates the same problems without ever solving anything for teenagers. It truly is like jail. When was the last time you Visited a normal not very high Performing just average public school? These kids show up in the pajamas, sleep though half the classes, cause discipline issues and sell drugs on campus, leave get high and come back to school high, make out on the lawn, And barely pass state benchmarks if at all. ....and they’re all mixed in with the kids taking good classes and working hard. It’s a total mess. And then there’s the good kids who don’t test well as far as maths or sciences or whatever, or just plain hate sitting still, or struggle with academics and would have loved something hands on but they never even knew it was an option. a society always gets more of what it subsidizes. If you provide or say you will provide 18 years of free daycare and food for 35 hours per week you will get more people having children planning to utilize said free daycare system. And sadly it’s not even effective on an educational level and worse some of the kids (many!) might have been much more interested in a trade, hands on work, shorter school day and somewhat faster track to adulthood.

I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic schools for 10 out of 12 years - even when we could not afford it my mom worked cleaning the 1760 rectory which was no small task. Later in high school I earned a scholarship and even as a 14 year old understood the blessing and value that was. I think my catholic upbringing positively affected how I patented. in the beginning we were overly authoritative and if I had just called my mom or just looked at how she did things - how she WAS instead of reading all the how to books it would have gone a lot better.

So far this thread seems to be missing an age component. When children are little they need more Parent in Charge. Not completely. They still need coaching on thinking through their options and also they need Someone in Charge who just isn’t a pushover. Ideally every young mom would have the personality of a loving and gentle mother who had such a strong side that the kids learn she’s In Charge. they need rules, boundaries and limitations within a healthy loving framework. I think the older they get the more it resembles a peer relationship. But if you did your job well when the kid was little he would always have a special understanding in the back of his mind that the parents word is final and that mom and dad don’t take shit. (Sorry best way to say that.) When the kids become teens hopefully around that time you’ve gotten to the point Where most of what they do is independent. They ask advice, they check in with you on new ideas and you plan each semester together, mostly them planning and mostly you making a few suggestions. By age 16 hopefully you’ll have a hormonal young person who has moods but by then they’re working on their own so if something fails they take personal responsibility and you can ask if they want advice. Some kids will be harder than others and you may have do do a few hard things like grounding but generally not for schoolwork. in our house outsourcing was 100% necessary for my older because he was leaps and bounds ahead of me, by about 7th grade. For my younger by about 7th grade although I could have kept up for another year or two academically, she was emotionally ready to separate and outsourcing is 100% the answer. If this was 1989 and no co ops existed She would be using ACE Paces because there is no way I could have the emotional strength to stand up against not only her hormones but her personality. She is very assertive and an FP and I am an ESTJ and it is very easy to manipulate me or emotionally exhaust me. I am a planner, worker and doer through and through dependable but hand me a person who wants to disagree with, discuss, change assignments and I unravel or give in very quickly. She is an A student in every class almost across the board and works very hard. She needs external validation and motivation for school. that’s not to say she needs external validation for *learning** like most homeschooled kids she loves to learn and teaches herself stuff outside of her School hours constantly. So in my point of view if parents establish authority in a loving healthy consistent manner when kids are little, it reaps positive rewards when it’s time for that relationship to move towards an independent person who is under authority but not having authority affect their daily life. In this time it can feel a lot like a peer relationship but it’s not and IMO never should be. My mom is still my mom and so is my stepdad and they earned the right for a special position . They are no longer my authority in any way but I treat them with more respect and deference than any average Joe and I value their advice even when I do not ask for it.

And really, what's the point in that? They wasted basically four years of their educational lives taking classes they didn't need when, in a better system, they would have been tracked after 7th or 8th grade to go to a full time really apprenticeship/technical school.

It's going to get harder for everyone when the baby boomers retire. There are hundreds of magazine articles, tomes, and studies about this very thing. Maybe in rural areas or areas with more blue collar workers in general, it'll be a little easier. But, it's going to get more expensive for everyone. All of my friends, everyone I know here can't get basic stuff fixed around the house. We wait weeks or months, finally get desperate and then pay exorbitant fees to random people from TaskRabbit. (and yes I've learned to do A LOT myself and very proud of the few things I've successfully fixed, but I STINK at anything hands on and sometimes I make it worse or even put myself in danger trying. Just want everyone to know I'm not lazy. 🙂 )

See, here and in FL and in NJ, our VoTech high schools are merely introductory. The kids take regular high school classes, and specialize in say, Dental Hygienist. One of my best friends did this and then you apply to a college program for Dental Hygiene and they might (might) let you skip a few classes or practicums to reward you for the FOUR years you spent studying it part time at VoTech. Same with all the other VoTech trades. It's really just a good solid intro, with lots of hands on experience, but you basically have to start all over again once you leave there anyway. Your reward for going there was to skip a few classes once you get to the community college or trade school, and that you got to see what it was all about. And in all three states the Votech is run by the district you live in, or where I am currently it's regional VotTech that contracts out to several school districts who offer to send them a certain number of students per year and pass out their flyers and info. They're not private, but they are separate entities that aren't typical high schools. Still, it's an absolutely miniscule number compared to the vast numbers of kids floundering in public school who should not be college bound whether they want to or not. By forced out, I mean by testing and grade and behavior evaluations.

Everywhere I have lived there is one vocational school per entire county, so where there might be 200,000 students in high school, there are a maybe about 1000 at a vo-tech. Those are not the numbers we should be seeing. If that's truly the case, where you live should be a nationwide model, for breaking up long standing myths and prejudices against technical training. Ah, I see - you are in Connecticut. Interesting. But regardless of whether CT has broken those old prejudices and myths and invested in getting kids to vo-tech colleges, the kids still aren't forced and tracked out the way they are in Finland or even in the UK, which is still an issue here in the US. We need to get the kids out of "high school" altogether- not into a "vo-tech high school" but out- done by age 14 or 15, and then to an actual real technical training vocational situation. The problem even with the VoTechs high schools here in the US is that many of them only provide an introduction to your degree, so you graduate at 18 with only a few credits toward something vocational. It's weird. Why not just get them straight into a real fully accredited program so by the time they are 18 or 19 they actually are done with their license and apprenticeships.

As the baby boomers retire the kids that are in trades are going to be raking in the cash and the rest of the people will be charged hand over fist to pay them. It's already happening where I live, a big Tech Hub- we CANNOT find a handyman. You can call every handyman on Yelp and every one says, "Not only am I booked solid but I'm only taking huge jobs" (which, isn't a handyman to me.)...then you get on Handy or TaskRabbit and they're charging 200.00 per hour to fix stuff around your house, put together furniture, paint, etc. Seriously. They are so in demand that we are already seeing the baby boomer retirement crisis here. The rest of the country will see it in about 5-10 years. If either of my kids had any interest or ability whatsoever in a trade I would have jumped for joy, and found them a place- and even entered them into the program that This Old House was advertising. I even looked very hard at every single trade there is for my younger dd, wondering if one of them might fit but it really didn't. And actually, the job she;s going into doesn't really make a lot of sense being combined with a four year degree either, but there aren't many options for it other than 4 year degrees.

What is the option other than “stay in school til 12th grade?” I like the finish system where they track kids for either academic or trades and professions so no one who is not serious stays in academic school past 9th grade. And those serious about learning a trade or profession can do that too. And those just wasting everyone time can go waste their time at home. Here all the offspring are kept in big babysitting jails until nearly 19years old and they have pretty much no other choice. some of the offspring care, work hard, want to be there and make their best effort to take what they need out of the big babysitting jail. The rest are quite literally in jail. A place they have to go to 40 hours per week and show up whether they learn or not, which feeds them and tests them like cattle and shuffled them from place to place whether they want to learn or thrive or grow or not. Well technically They can drop out at 16-17 IF they pass a test and get their parents signatures. But most parents would rather have them be babysat at the jail school than bother figuring out what to do with them. and sadly a LOT of those kids actually would have been thrilled to learn a valuable profitable hands on trade and be ready to earn a living by 18.5 but no, the socialists of America know better.

FYI Lewelma- they do not allow any type of digital watch whatsoever. The idea is that kids could store info on them nowadays.

I find this point interesting. My older son is a much more methodical, slow thinker, possibly higher IQ, but more careful patient student,.... no LDS and higher executive functioning. He did not run out of time. My younger kid is MUCH faster on her feet, sometimes completes board game moves or jumps to logical conclusions faster than the entire family, and reads whole paragraphs at a time, some focus/planning/executive functioning issues. She ran out of time, and luckily was watching the clock and filled in guesses to the last 10 questions in math. My slow methodical thinker DID NOT run out of time. My quick on her feet super clever student DID run out of time. So in our little experiment, it's more planning. test taking strategies and EF skills that will help you .

Have you tried Teaching Textbooks? For someone not going to be an engineer, it's a good program. It has plenty of practice, built in teaching and grading features, and hints and second chances on homework, if you desire it. My second child, not planning on a STEM degree completely teaches herself using this program and we could not be happier. She is on her third year with it, and scored a pretty solid 540 in math as a 10th grader which we feel was good considering it's not her strong point, and because she had only completed Alg 1 and Geometry! We expect a big score bump in math this year after finishing most of Algebra 2 and also practicing with Khan academy. We find the interface friendly and usable, and it is extremely affordable! Less than 100.00 for the entire year. Right now they haven't upgraded/merged away from Flash (they are working on it) so it doesn't work on the Chromebooks anymore. (EDIT I was wrong it is working on Chrome and Chromebook!) It's working on Macs, or you could always get the DVD version if you're willing. I don't know if it works on IE but I assume it does.

Also I keep looking this up and forgetting the answer but I can’t remember if there is trig/precalc and how much of it on the math sat ??

And yes there is still a ceiling because of inherent intelligence, focus, Speed, working memory, and I think in math there are some truly harder questions which would be difficult even for bright students-

1. It is less a test of IQ than it ever was before. TCB, through pressure from many sources has changed the type of questions, and the reading material and also even the math. it used to be that the SAT would really, more than anything, help colleges separate the top 5% ...while it was somewhat useful overall it was most useful in being able to tell the good students from the truly gifted- it truly was a bit of an IQ test. 2. I think they shot themselves in the foot- because now you can achiece even more by a year or even a few months of solid prep. They realized that and sought to close the gap with the free connection to khan academy. And we used it- the khan practice raised my dd’a score 100 points. But now, they’ve lost the very top they needed to separate the top students, and now they have even more proof that prep/being on the ball/ being aware/ will increase your score. Anyway, I think for your sake - intelligence, and high IQ help - a good foundation and actually doing Math in high school helps -and yes, spending some money on a good local test prep center will help. But if your don’t want to do that, the khan system does actually work, and it actually helps IF you also invest in a book that will teach your student tricks and test taking strategies. (The new SAT rewards guessing big time, how to watch the clock, how to manage time, how to stay focused, even what to wear and sleeping well and eating well etc.)

Thanks! I will mention this to my dd. Her RW was as high as I could expect and even higher considering her level of personal focus. But it can't hurt to mention this!! It's her math that really needs to come up 🙂

I have read numerous times, and I truly believe that the lower the score, the more prep will be likely to help! Once you get up into the 700's, you could just be talking about human error. For example, there are some versions of the SAT where 20 points can be just one problem missed depending on which problem it is. Here in our house, one kid prepped and raised the score by over 100 points and we expect another jump after prepping again. However, after, that she will be closer to the 700s in math and is already over 700 RW so, we won't bother after that. The fact is that statistically, once you get into the 1400's more prep doesn't always give a huge return on investment so you have to decide for yourself if it's worth it for that student.

I clicked on her website! Super amazing!! sounds like she is really awesome, and so glad for you that she is going to be able to do college and tour!

This is wonderful!

My son is supposed to take all 3 together first semester of sophomore year so, I would imagine it's ok.

This is a good point- you can make two versions, if you're the one sending them, which are arranged in different ways and just ask the target schools. By her stats I'm assuming she will apply to some schools that are on the tougher side to get into, or hope for scholarships to the more middle of the road schools....so calling a few can't hurt.

I don't know about business per se, but I do know that almost every college my ds applied to last year admitted specifically by School/College and there was at some point some sort of separate review of applicants by each college. CM, all the Ivies, PennState, all the big colleges we looked at admit by college/school...whereas some of the smaller ones admit to the entire U, but specifiy "for the major of..." in the acceptance. So I would imagine Business works the same way.