I love stories like this about our home schooled kids! Kids who go in to something with no expectation of external reward or recognition, pour their time, energy, and genuine care into it, going so far above & beyond everyone's expectations that the people involved can't help but notice and heap accolades upon them! Nothing false or check-the-box about the volunteer work those kids do! Kudos to your daughter!!

This makes the ACT look so slimy..... Up front assuring students their information is completely confidential, but then finding a back door through the Interest Inventory to gather that information and SELL it to the very colleges the student hopes to get into!

I hope college counselors are all aware of what the ACT is doing, informs their students, and recommends that students skip all those questions. Once this is well publicized, students may begin gaming those questions, trying to answer in ways they think could improve their chances at certain colleges. That could make the info the ACT is selling to colleges suspect. Perhaps then colleges won't be so willing to pay for it. Exactly! I'm sure the ACT _knew_ that if counselors found out the ACT was selling potentially damaging information about students taking the exam the counselors would have advised skipping those questions, so the ACT consciously and intentionally hid the fact by not sending the counselors the same report they sent colleges. To hide what you're doing, which could potentially hurt some students, and to profit off it?!?! That is just so wrong.

We had a great online French tutor for my children. She can do any level from French 1 through literature. My sons worked with her weekly on an advanced grammar review and literature, in conjunction with an online French class they were doing with another provider. They both scored 800 on the French SAT Subject exam.

I agree that we all have our gifts. What is the bad trend? I don't think I understand the point you're making?

I'm not confident answering this question bec it will be our first course w/ CLRC, but, it you contact the instructor, she'll explain how the class works & send you examples of what's required. She is very helpful.

Should home schoolers or ANY student take an AP isn't really the question raised by the original post & linked article. That's completely up to every individual and nobody is in a position to generalize one way or another for all home schoolers or for any other student group. The article linked also did not make any statements, I don't think, about if/how college credit for the AP exams had any bearing at all on the decision of the 8 schools to drop the AP label on courses. That's a different discussion, which seems mostly anecdotal so it may not be of much use. (Do more colleges give credit for certain AP exam scores than colleges that no longer do?) The question in my mind is whether it matters that these elite schools are no longer going to jump the hoops to get the CB to approve their courses as "AP" courses, especially when it comes to basing the syllabus for their courses on whatever the CB deems worthy of an AP label. Personally, I'm glad to see schools dump the chasing of random outside approval of what they teach. Let them teach what they want, how they want. They seem to think they can teach to the same level or better without jumping the CB hoops. If parents think their kids will still get a great education, they'll keep paying for it. If the kids still want to take an AP exam and are still happy with their results, great. If not, that's fine, too. They'll still get a great education or the parents will push to revisit the decision. Get the CB out of the curriculum setting business. AP courses are "opened up to the masses." AP exams are also available to anyone who wants to take them. However, the AP exam scores still differentiate between students' levels of ability or mastery of the exam material. Whether or not colleges give credit for AP scores doesn't change the fact that the exams do allow for this differentiation. It's true that AP exam scores are self-reported and that some students do not report them, just as students don't have to take or report SAT/ACT scores at some colleges now. If a student takes an AP course and gets a 1 or a 2, is he likely to report it? If a student takes an AP course and gets a 4 or 5, is that student likely to report it? If I were an adcom, I'd assume that a student who didn't report scores did not earn a score worth reporting, unless, obviously, it was the student's senior year before exams had even been taken. Students can get a GPA bump for taking an AP approved course, regardless of whether they get a 1 or a 5 or even take the exam at all. Taking an AP approved course does not "level the playing field" because not all AP courses/instructors are equally good and not all students taking AP approved courses are equally successful. The "AP" label on a course means nothing other than that the course's syllabus was approved by the CB. It doesn't mean the teacher taught effectively to that syllabus, or that the teacher even taught to the syllabus at all, or that the student taking the course had the slightest chance of actually mastering the material well enough to get a passing score on the exam. Just taking an AP approved course doesn't say anything about any given student. Only if the adcom is familiar with a given school can he make some assumptions about the quality of that particular school's AP courses. Maybe he can make some assumptions about a student taking the AP course. But assumptions are not a metric. Because the AP exam is the same across the country, adcoms can still generalize about a student's academic ability based on the student's AP exam score. Students scoring 4/5 on the AP Calc exam or 4/5 on the English Lit exam are going to have a different level of preparedness and mastery of the material than students scoring 1/2 on those exams. They just are. One might not like it. One might argue that the exam isn't "fair" in some way or other. But, bottom line, the AP exam scores do show something about the student's level compared to other students taking the exam, regardless of whether the student took an official AP course approved by the CB. Thus, the AP exam score can serve as a metric to "level the playing field" while simply taking an AP approved course cannot.

Are those elite schools really "abandoning a metric that can contribute to leveling the playing field," though? Aren't they just saying that they're dumping AP courses, ie, that their courses won't have the "AP" designation anymore? I haven't see anything saying that they're advising their students not to take the AP exams. It's really the AP exam scores that provide the metric that levels the playing field. A good teacher doesn't have to follow some AP syllabus, approved by some outside agency like the CB, to prepare his students well for the AP exam. "One of the co-signers was Bryan Garman, head of Sidwell Friends and one of the best U.S. history teachers I have ever seen. Our daughter Katie loved his course. He encouraged depth and analysis. The course was not labeled AP, but he prepared everyone to take the AP test." I think these articles and the discussions they initiate fail to recognize the fact that it is not the "AP" course designation that provides a metric to level the playing field but the AP exam score that allows students to show they've mastered material at a certain level. It doesn't matter whether the student took an officially-approved "AP course." This is helpful for us, as homeschoolers. Our students can self-study for an AP exam and earn a 4 or 5, putting the student in the same tier as a student from any brick-and-mortar school who did take an officially-approved AP course and scored a 4 or 5.

Yay! My dd will be taking it, too! Went into a panic when I saw the instructor's email this morning where she said it was on Mondays! My dd's courses/schedule this year are built around that GB 3 course which was listed on Tuesdays! Emailed her back immediately & confirmed that it was a typo. Class meets on Tues.

Anyone else have a student taking CLRC's Great Books 3 class this year?

It's hard to find an app that will calculate and generate a transcript exactly the way you want. I used a transcript template by Dori Briggs in the files section of the Homeschool Toward College yahoo group. It's beautifully organized and presented. When we gave a preliminary transcript to the admissions officers at colleges we visited, they were impressed with it. To calculate unweighted & weighted gpa, I prefered this site. Another option is this site. I just plugged the grades onto the transcript & I think it initially calculated the gpa at the bottom. I made a few changes to the format, though, so I had to manually enter the gpa.

I think the fact that _he_ came up with a path for himself for the next year is so wonderful! There seem to be so many young men, especially, nowadays who are drifting aimlessly, content to eat, sleep, sit in front of a screen, live off whatever their parents are willing to give them financially. A friend has a son in this situation. I don't know what could possibly move him out of it. So, it may not be the path you imagined for him, but it sounds like he is genuinely interested in pursuing something and that he has the motivation and energy to do so! Good for him! He'll learn something about himself over the next year and that may help him focus/refocus his longer term goals.

I know what you mean. I don't like FB, either. Wish I didn't "have" to use it, but one of the yahoo groups that I really like went pretty much all FB. Held out for a year & then gave in. So, I totally get not wanting to use it. I just threw that out there for those who do. I've found a fair amount of books I need for next year on the WTM and the MP used curriculum FB groups, but, yeah... FB ... ugh.

For those having trouble posting to Classifieds here.... there's a Facebook Well Trained Mind Used Curr buy/sell group that seems pretty active. I prefer looking for stuff here and avoid FB, but I still can't get classifieds to work. Also heard that ads can only be up three days and are not renewable. I can see where that might make it too much trouble to post. It kind of makes it too much trouble to search the ads to buy, too, since the chances of finding something specific in any given three-day window would be small.

I didn't know that. A three day limit & no reposting might make it more trouble than it's worth to bother posting. Thanks for the heads-up.

I noticed that, too, but figured it was bec it doesn't seem to be working. I can't see the ads. Everything says 'expired.' etc. Just came across a FB Well Trained Mind Curriculum Buy/Sell page that seems to be pretty active. I've already found a few things I need for next year there. I hate FB, but... so it goes.

After you "retire", would you ever go on to help friends homeschool their kids? You would be so fantastic at it! You'd touch the kids' lives!! I know it's not the same as homeschooling your own kids, but it is so rewarding!

I agree that low paid adjuncts are in a tough spot, but that is a completely separate issue from the instructor's responsibility to his/her students.

nm

That is almost unethical.... lazy instructor. If the assignment/project/essay wasn't important enough for the instructor to bother with, it shouldn't have been assigned in the first place.

If the student went to the trouble of completing the assignment, the professor should have gone to the trouble of giving feedback on it. Good for your son for doing it!

No, she's not. I asked her. ?

I agree. It would be interesting to know the true motivation in moving the reg deadline up. Moving it to Nov vs March seems like one way to try to scoop up more student dollars. Could there be a significant number of students who start out taking AP classes and then decide not to take the exam? If so, a Nov 15 reg deadline would capture those students who would normally decide later on that they weren't ready to take the exam or didn't want to bother with it. Oh! Maybe CB plans to put those extra dollars towards getting the exams graded sooner!!

Did anyone else see this?! Looks like some schools will have a much earlier registration deadline--Nov. 15, instead of March. Better check with your school to see if they're one of the schools implementing the new process. ETA: Source There's also a poll at that site to "share your thoughts" about the new process. ? Fall Registration Deadlines and Process 800 schools will be participating in the College Board's 2018 AP Implementation for the 2018-2019 School year. Students at these schools will be required to register and pay for their May AP exams according to a new Fall schedule: Oct 4, 2018 - Initial Registration and Order Deadline Nov 15, 2018 - Registration and Order Deadline Nov 15, 2018 - Registrations/Orders after this date will incur a $40.00/exam late fee Nov 15, 2018 - Cancellations after this date will be charged $40.00/exam cancellation fee March 1, 2018 - Deadline for late registrations and cancellations

Both sons got 5's on AP Stats. PAHS AP Stats... 5 57.5% (14.1% nationally) 4 30.0% (21.3% nationally)