Trying to wrap my mind around high school with honors classes and AP

[Meriwether]

I graduated from high school 20 years ago. I know a lot has changed since then, but I feel even more out of the loop because I attended a small, basic school. My graduating class had 28 students. We had foreign language via satellite. We didn't have Calculus much less Honors or AP Calculus. The local school here does not have Honors or AP either.

 

My oldest is a good student. I'm sure at a large school she would be able to take some honors or AP classes. How important is having Honors or AP on a transcript? And how would I know if something qualified for Honors? For AP, I'd have to submit a syllabus and get it approved? Or are there published syllabi that we could follow for AP?

[Meriwether]

Has this been asked and answered a million times? I tried searching, but every thread that mentions Honors or AP comes up. I'd love a link if you know of a thread that covers the basics.

[Penguin]

The Honors designation is more nebulous than AP.

 

If you want to designate a class as AP on the student's transcript, you have to have a syllabus approved by the College Board. But you can use the sample syllabi on the Colleg Board website. You do not have to build one from scratch. I was going to do this for my son's first AP, but I wimped out and signed him up with a provider :)

 

Or you could just teach the class with the AP exam in mind, and take the AP exam. Then call your class Advanced Chemistry rather than AP Chemistry.

 

I have read varied opinions regarding both the vaildity and the value of the Honors designation. Honors is certainly not standard across B&M schools, either.

[Meriwether]

I just saw the pinned thread up at the top. I bet it answers everything. Sorry, folks. I should be looking this up on the computer instead of a small screen.

[katilac]

For honors courses, I generally google "honors syllabus Subject X" and then spend some time comparing texts, assignments, and topics. It varies from school to school, and looking at a variety fo courses gives me a good idea of what could/would be generally accepted as honors. 

 

We did not do AP - we did investigate it, but the local schools were less than obliging about offering space (even though we offered to pay). In the end. we preferred to use dual enrollment at the local university and honors classes. 

[Penelope]

There has been a lot of discussion here about using the honors designation. To me, it seems sort of silly calling it honors at home, partly because honors seems more a basis of comparison within the school than anything else. At my high school, all of the college prep kids took all honors classes, the end. The non-honors classes used different texts and were less challenging, and from what I understand, that district still works pretty much the same way. But where we live now, that doesn't seem to be the case across the board.

 

But some have said that using honors designation may affect GPA in scholarship consideration, so there is that to think about.

 

The other tricky thing is in using online providers. Some have both honors and regular course, and some do not. I think most people would say Lukeion is honors level for Latin, for example, but Lukeion doesn't label it as honors. I think there are at least some classes at WHA and VP that would be considered honors, but none of them are labeled as such. So what do you do?