What are high schools like in the US?

[MagnusTheBrewer]

My favorite quote from my Assistant Principal was "It's not my job to educate you, it's my job to keep you off the streets!"

That pretty much summed up high school.

 

[invidia]

In S. Florida:

AP/IB/Gifted - I was AP, not gifted classes
Honors - Rest of my classes were honors
Regular - Never was in a regular class
Potential Drop-outs - N/A

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: Nitemare
we have 3
Gifted, Regular and below average(LD)

In terms of pretty well defined "levels" this is accurate on average. Gifted/Honors/AP are pretty much all at the same level when push comes to shove except AP offers college credit if you pass the AP test. Some schools also offer an IB program which I guess could be considered another level which is above honors, but the majority do not offer this as an option.

There are also a handful of classes in every school which really do not belong to any of these levels. Typically they are either for the ridiculously stupid or the incredibly smart who wish to focus on one particular subject, but there is rarely an entire load of classes which fall into either of these exceptions to fill a whole schedule.

 

[Sumguy]

From where I stand, my schools levels are

AP
Honors
Regular

There are other "levels", but they seriously might as well fall into those categories. The IB kids pretty much have their own schedule, but from talking to them it seems like they are forced into IB/AP in everything.

I discovered a while ago that "gifted honors" exists at my highschool, but if its anything like my gifted class in middle school I dont see the distinction. AP is harder anyway.

Other than that my school doesn't go below regular. You need to maintain at least a 2.0 (might be 2.5 now) unweighted GPA or your ass is gone come summer (its a public school). No being held back a grade.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: Sumguy
From where I stand, my schools levels are

AP
Honors
Regular

There are other "levels", but they seriously might as well fall into those categories. The IB kids pretty much have their own schedule, but from talking to them it seems like they are forced into IB/AP in everything.

I discovered a while ago that "gifted honors" exists at my highschool, but if its anything like my gifted class in middle school I dont see the distinction. AP is harder anyway.

Other than that my school doesn't go below regular. You need to maintain at least a 2.0 (might be 2.5 now) unweighted GPA or your ass is gone come summer (its a public school). No being held back a grade.

The distinction is usually that the honors classes are given to the best teachers who work at the school. Those teachers often have regular kids too in other periods but they care more about their honors class. That makes it well worth it.

On top of that, many universities/scholarships out there will calculate your GPA by giving you extra points for honors classes as opposed to regular classes. This is a nice perk.

 

[Sumguy]

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: Sumguy
From where I stand, my schools levels are

AP
Honors
Regular

There are other "levels", but they seriously might as well fall into those categories. The IB kids pretty much have their own schedule, but from talking to them it seems like they are forced into IB/AP in everything.

I discovered a while ago that "gifted honors" exists at my highschool, but if its anything like my gifted class in middle school I dont see the distinction. AP is harder anyway.

Other than that my school doesn't go below regular. You need to maintain at least a 2.0 (might be 2.5 now) unweighted GPA or your ass is gone come summer (its a public school). No being held back a grade.

The distinction is usually that the honors classes are given to the best teachers who work at the school. Those teachers often have regular kids too in other periods but they care more about their honors class. That makes it well worth it.

On top of that, many universities/scholarships out there will calculate your GPA by giving you extra points for honors classes as opposed to regular classes. This is a nice perk.

You misunderstood me

Freshmen and sophomores can take "gifted honors" if they pass that test. The title of the class has "gifted honors" in front of it. Otherwise you can opt to just take "honors". Juniors and Seniors, for some odd reason, only have honors courses.

The extra points is the main reason I take nothing but honors if I can. Same for AP, so far I passed 3 of those tests, which is something like 9 credits. Most kids in my school take honors and a few APs. Seriously, if you walk down the hallway at my school and read the teacher's schedules on the door, you will probably count more AP classes in total than regular. But my school is the nerd magnet of the area so its expected

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: Sumguy

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: Sumguy
From where I stand, my schools levels are

AP
Honors
Regular

There are other "levels", but they seriously might as well fall into those categories. The IB kids pretty much have their own schedule, but from talking to them it seems like they are forced into IB/AP in everything.

I discovered a while ago that "gifted honors" exists at my highschool, but if its anything like my gifted class in middle school I dont see the distinction. AP is harder anyway.

Other than that my school doesn't go below regular. You need to maintain at least a 2.0 (might be 2.5 now) unweighted GPA or your ass is gone come summer (its a public school). No being held back a grade.

The distinction is usually that the honors classes are given to the best teachers who work at the school. Those teachers often have regular kids too in other periods but they care more about their honors class. That makes it well worth it.

On top of that, many universities/scholarships out there will calculate your GPA by giving you extra points for honors classes as opposed to regular classes. This is a nice perk.

You misunderstood me

Freshmen and sophomores can take "gifted honors" if they pass that test. The title of the class has "gifted honors" in front of it. Otherwise you can opt to just take "honors". Juniors and Seniors, for some odd reason, only have honors courses.

The extra points is the main reason I take nothing but honors if I can. Same for AP, so far I passed 3 of those tests, which is something like 9 credits. Most kids in my school take honors and a few APs. Seriously, if you walk down the hallway at my school and read the teacher's schedules on the door, you will probably count more AP classes in total than regular. But my school is the nerd magnet of the area so its expected

Ah ok. I remember something like that back when I was in high school. It was just named differently.

On a side note, I also remember opting to not take AP English and I am so happy I didn't. Not only is that class annoying but the basic English course it gives you credit for was one of the most fun courses I took in college. They always give those courses to graduate English major students who are usually a lot of fun.

 

[Uppsala9496]

My HS was very small (400 total students 9-12 grade).
Since there were only about 100 students in my graduating class, we didn't have AP or honors classes.
I did take 6 years of math and 6 years of science in the 4 years of HS though. It allowed me to skip taking all math requirements in college and all but 1 science class (took oceanography).

 

[Aikouka]

We didn't really have much of lines to be honest. I mean, they segregated the smart kids from the normal kids in 8th grade by pushing them into Algebra rather than "advanced math." Since in 8th grade, you always had the same classes as the rest of the people in your first class, we were kind of together all the time.

We all kind of had some of the higher classes together as well, but there were never really honor lines but there were a few honor courses, but not many people took them as they took the AP courses instead. For example, one year I believe they were offering Honors Chemistry and AP Chemistry, Honors Chemistry was cancelled because the smart kids took AP.

I was in the accelerated/honors/AP "route."

Oh and American high schools suck too .