Help needed - info on aspects of America high school system

[selenay936]

Help needed

Comments

Part 1

[lysimache]

Hi! I teach at an American public high school and know all the answers

Part 2

[lysimache]

Many AP courses have prerequisites (e.g., to take AP Calculus BC, you must have an A in Honors-level Pre-Calculus and teacher recommendation). Note: in a US public school, any student can take any course even if they do not meet the prerequisites by having a parent sign a waiver; not every school advertises this policy, and certainly most students don't take advantage of it. Basically, courses are tracked (not that we call it that anymore), so that, for example, if you take Honors English in 9th grade and 10th grade and 11th grade, you would be expecting to take AP in 12th grade. It's not really a surprise or a special thing, but the normal course of events. Again, you can move up (or down) levels, go from regular to honors/AP, but most students don't

Re: Part 2

[selenay936]

OMG, this is absolutely *awesome*. Thank you so much. Hugely helpful. I've had to rejig a couple of the elements I'd been unsure of about the fic, but that's a good thing because I think this version will be a stronger story.

I will definitely message you if I need more info :-D

[lysimache]

Oh, and NYC has some peculiarities to its high schools, esp. the magnet system. It's different from a typical suburban high school in some ways.

[selenay936]

Magnet system? Is that some kind of feeder-into-specific-colleges thing?

[shiraz_wine]

I actually went to a American college preparatory private high school, which has a different curriculum than public schools, if you want a slightly different perspective. In general, the structure of our curriculum was much more akin to a college than a traditional high school