Project Lead the Way - accepted but should she?

[sewpeaceful]

Our town is kicking off Project Lead the Way (PLTW), the pre-engineering program that *seems* to becoming the gold star standard for students applying to engineering schools or STEM degree programs.  Our 8th grader, who has wanted to be a "science girl engineer" since she was 4 and homeschooled since Pre-K, applied and was one of the 15 students accepted.  I can't find one bad thing about this program other than it requires her to attend public school to participate in the program.  The school has APs and a robotics team but also requires *2* years of PE to spite her being on the swim team year round, won't recognize her year of high school french because they don't have french (only Spanish and Italian) requiring her to start her foreign language requirements over, and we were creatively meeting the state's fine arts requirements but she would have to meet it in the classroom.  Let's add the health requirement we were meeting in other ways and we are at 4.5 credits just in ridiculous credits.  

 

Does anyone know enough about PLTW to help us decide if the program is worth giving up the endless benefits of homeschooling to attend public high school to participate in this program?  

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Laurie Beth

Edited April 14, 2016 by sewpeaceful

[MarkT]

try posting on the high school thread

"Project Lead the Way" is fairly new and not cheap so not many home-schoolers have not done it.

see

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/545229-principles-of-engineeringproject-lead-the-way-text-homeschool-friendly/

 

On the other topics - you typically only need two years of foreign language for most STEM colleges - that's all my DS is doing.

Spanish is easier then French. All the rest are very typical PS school requirements.

 

 

http://www.iahe.net/blog/we-are-not-trading-physics-for-project-lead-the-way-201506

Edited April 15, 2016 by MarkT

[Hilltopmom]

Well yeah, if you want to go to public school, you have to play by their rules- PE, art, & gym classes;). Just part of the game.

 

We decided to go the route of continued homeschooling for high school with DE for upper level stuff & cobble together our own engineering type curriculum from Great Courses, summer pre-college programs, 4 H STEM club, MOOCs, & our local Robotics team.

 

Another option was our tech school has a half day program just of tech curriculum, no need to do the ps gen Eds of gym & what not.

 

We did not use that book, but did use the middle school version of it, which was a nice Intro, I thought.

Now I'm eyeing the book you posted, but we're running out of space in the schedule now that DE starts in the fall.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Gateway-Engineering-George-E-Rogers/dp/1133935648/ref=pd_sim_14_12?ie=UTF8&dpID=51Old%2BTW6tL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR128%2C160_&refRID=1A6KDMBQVE2WGST5Q59V

[JudoMom]

Our town is kicking off Project Lead the Way (PLTW), the pre-engineering program that *seems* to becoming the gold star standard for students applying to engineering schools or STEM degree programs.  Our 8th grader, who has wanted to be a "science girl engineer" since she was 4 and homeschooled since Pre-K, applied and was one of the 15 students accepted.  I can't find one bad thing about this program other than it requires her to attend public school to participate in the program.  The school has APs and a robotics team but also requires *2* years of PE to spite her being on the swim team year round, won't recognize her year of high school french because they don't have french (only Spanish and Italian) requiring her to start her foreign language requirements over, and we were creatively meeting the state's fine arts requirements but she would have to meet it in the classroom.  Let's add the health requirement we were meeting in other ways and we are at 4.5 credits just in ridiculous credits.  

 

Does anyone know enough about PLTW to help us decide if the program is worth giving up the endless benefits of homeschooling to attend public high school to participate in this program?  

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Laurie Beth

 

We have a PLTW program at one of our public schools here, as well as a spectacular FIRST Robotics team.  The PLTW courses are concurrent enrollment with one of the state universities.  We have the option of just taking the PLTW class and joining robotics without attending full time.

 

My ds16 is strongly leaning towards either computer engineering or mechanical engineering, and has taken 2 engineering courses (these courses would count directly toward a ME degree), as well as participated as the lead programmer on the robotics team for 2 years.  My ds15 has taken 1 engineering course (and he's unsure of what kind of degree he'll go for--might not be STEM at all).

 

The courses have been good, and it's been a good opportunity but they have not been challenging like I'd hoped.  They've learned how to work in groups, learned how to talk to teachers, etc.  However, they've not been challenged by the material.  For example, ds16 finished the programming unit 2 weeks before his classmates and spent the rest of the two weeks helping to teach them (he actually had kids offer him money for his code).  Ds15 has been the only one finished with a presentation, so for the last 5 class periods he's had to go and sit and wait for his classmates to get done.  It's been this way all year, and was the same way last year.  My boys are bright, but not gifted or anything, and the lowest average grade they've had (doing the honors track of the course) has been 98.3.  

 

For our situation, giving up homeschooling to go to the school FT for these classes would've been a bad choice.  Ds16, who is an extrovert who would love to go to school full time, thinks he gets a better education at home than he would there.  Neither son will be taking a PLTW class in the fall, though the following year I'll probably have my middle son take a class.

 

I think the content is very good, but the fact is that in a PS setting you still have to move at the pace of the slower students which has resulted in a lot of wasted time.