Mom Behind the Curtain

every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard

To give, or not to give homework? That is the question

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A friend forwarded an article to me recently with the comment “I don’t agree with this, but you might find it interesting.”

I love having friends who disagree with me. I think it’s important, to constantly challenge my own decisions. It helps to surround myself with thoughtful people who are willing to discuss the pros and cons of a different issue, and the discussion is most informative when you think you fall on different sides of an argument. Sometimes a friend convinces me to change my mind. Sometimes I convince them. Most of the time we agree to disagree, but I think everything lives on in our subconscious and influences us later. What’s important, is that it allows each of us to thoughtfully consider and reevaluate our position.

In this case, the question happens to be homework. To give, or not to give homework. That is the question….

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Do PSAT scores and National Merit numbers mean anything?

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Many students and parents right now are nervously awaiting the announcement of PSAT scores, the scores that will be used to determine qualification for National Merit Semi-finalists which will give them a chance at getting a National Merit Scholarship. How nervous? Really nervous. Just take a look over at the College Confidential forums. Even sophomores, who can’t qualify until next year, are nervous.

Of course, once the scores come out, everyone will still have to await the announcement of the cut-off scores for National Merit qualification. As we wait on those announcements, I’ve been thinking lately about what the number of National Merit Scholars mean s about the effectiveness of any one particular high school. Can you use the number of National Merit Scholars as a criteria for choosing a good high school?…

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Success factors 7: High school advice, does high school stress lead to success?

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For lots of reasons that I went over in some of my previous posts, we started questioning if our kid should be taking a full load of AP classes starting with this first post. We were wondering if a success factor in high school was taking a full AP load. So I continued asking more questions about AP classes and class rank at our school. Here are some of the things I learned.

Like a lot of schools, our students have essentially two GPAs.

The first is a straight GPA. Just an average of all your grades in all your classes.

Then they have another adjusted GPA that is used for their class rank, and they get extra points for preAP and AP classes. This means that even if you make a lower grade in a preAP or AP class, the grade used to compute you average is likely to be higher than you could possibly get in a ‘regular’ class. This makes sense, since it seems to avoid penalizing kids for taking harder classes. We’ll call their adjusted GPA, using this extra bump for harder classes, their class rank average.…

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Success factors 6: Is there a connection between AP courses, reading, and SAT scores?

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AP classes and SAT scores can both be thought of as measurements of success factors for high school. But does one have an affect on the other?

As I mentioned my last post, we noticed a couple of things about our school district that indicated that our school was not preparing students as well as it could to take the SAT and the PSAT. So I started trying to figure out why. Not that I think the SAT is a perfect measure for learning, but it seemed like the level of achievement should at least stay the same….

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Success Factors 2: Is a heavy load of Advanced Placement Courses the Best Path to Success?

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In my last post about success factors, I talked about the glimpse I got into the homework load of a student taking advanced classes at a moderately competitive high school. It started me wondering, is there a reason for high school students to have tremendously heavy workloads?

At the time, my kids were still in elementary school. Their homework load usually wasn’t unreasonable. There were a few times that it did get heavy, but there were always parents who complained louder than we did, and for the most part things worked out fine. But I continued to think about how we were going to tackle high school. (And I noticed that I just said “we,” just like the mom talking about how “we” had homework to do. Still, this isn’t doing our kids work.)…

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Success factors 1: What’s the Best Way to Guide Your Child Through High School to be a Success in College and in Life?

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What is the best way to guide your child through high school to be a success in college and in life? What are the success factors you need to instill in your kid?

I don’t know.

If that’s not the best way to get you to quit reading right now, I don’t know what is. But I’ll follow that by saying that these posts are about my looking for the best way to guide my kids through high school. And as with anything I do, I always research it. Thoroughly….

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