Hi,

I wanted to hear from other readers about their personal experience with Online AP Courses. My son took one online AP Course one year back and seem to have a lot of trouble with the course. In fact, most of his friends have trouble with the same course. In addition, Fairfax County seems to use some fuzzy MATH to calculate the final grades. However, they refuse to let the students and parents know what methods they are applying for calculating the final grade. For my son and his friends, the Online AP Course was a total waste of time. For information, these students had very good SAT scores and finally gone to some good schools including WM, UVA & VTech. So they were not just some bad students venturing into the world of Online AP Courses.

I would like to hear your personal experiences on this subject. I have another kid but not sure we would like him to take these courses without hearing from other students who have recently taken Online AP Courses. Not sure if things have changed during the last one year.

-JohnC

You came to the right place. Whenever I have problems or questions about my online AP courses I ask FU first instead of my local school officials.

lol


nakedshoplifter Wrote:
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> You came to the right place. Whenever I have
> problems or questions about my online AP courses I
> ask FU first instead of my local school officials.

This is the only place I could find to get some real answers as I was unable to find the truth from our local school officials. The local school officials will certainly say that their services are the BEST but we need to hear from the real students who have recently taken the Online AP Courses.

If they refuse to explain their grade calculation methods and it is not shown how it is done on the syllibus, call the assistant cluster superintendent and complain. If they are not helpful, threaten a lawsuit. Suddenly they will be helpful

Thank you KeepOnTruckin for your comments. We contacted the FCPS Online group last year but they will only talk about their fuzzy method but will not send us a copy of the policy. We had very little time to argue with them as we had to deal with college admissions. So, we took whatever we could get from them.

We are therefore interested to hear from the current Online AP students about their experiences so that we could decide if we would send our second child for the Online AP courses.

We have also done some research on other available Online AP Cpurses and found that John Hopkins offers similar online AP Courses and we are hoping that they will be better than Apex Learning (this is the company FCPS contracted with to provide Online AP Courses) as Hopkins has a great reputation because of their successful CTY Programs for kids.

-JohnC

If your kids are good at teaching themselves, then online courses are great. especially in AP classes where much of the learning is by yourself, reading the book.

I cant really think who else to call besides the cluster superintendant since online classes arent based at a school. Send a letter to the school board perhaps?

Of course a good option is always to call up the local newspapers and tv news stations and report the injustice of how you are being railroaded by the FCPS.