Talk:High school in the United States

Duplicative scope
Talk:Secondary education in the United States for centralized discussion on this article's creation and the related redirects czar  18:12, 2 October 2017 (UTC)


 * I was going to dive back into this page, but I'm curious about a few things:


 * * The relationship of this article to Talk:Secondary education in the United States. I realize, of course, that high school is a subset of secondary education, but this article seems more focused on the nuts and bolts of what an American high school is and how it operates, while the secondary education article seems more about the philosophy and purpose of universal education.
 * * North America doesn't include just the United States, but Canada, Mexico, Central America, and often the Caribbean islands. I suspect what constitutes high school is quite different across these countries.
 * * This article seems to be dedicated purely to publicly funded high schools, yet there are a lot of private high schools in the United States. Is this intentional? Ottoump (talk) 02:37, 15 January 2020 (UTC)


 * OK. I just read the archived discussion referenced in the top section. The archive threw me, and it's now here.  Sorry for not reading this before, and hope my bringing up the question yet again didn't push anyone over the edge.
 * Re the heartburn I have with the North America parenthetical in the title: How about moving this article to High School (United States and Canada)? Ottoump (talk) 04:15, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Thomas Jefferson quote
It would make more sense for the brackets to be 'sic' rather than sick, but I don't know whether that assumption is correct. Clovermoss (talk) 20:37, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree, and made the change........ PK T (alk)  22:45, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Appraisal (new section)
. raised a copyright issue on my talkpage, referring to edit oldid=901743726. To a non-US reader these are the mysteries that need to be explained. In my judgement I had sufficiently rewritten the text (and downgraded the quality) to have passed the originality threshold- so can this be debated. As a non-US editor, I don't have the artifacts and other references on hand to do much better. Could someone better equipt replace the paragraph. The text must be terse so it doesn't become WP:UNDUE- but does need to explain the grading system, and how schools and students are held to account! It would be better to work up consensus here. --ClemRutter (talk) 07:42, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * , I see that you did paraphrase the text but close paraphrasing is still a problem. Here's a link to a report that may help:
 * iThenticate S Philbrick  (Talk)  12:14, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The link is behind a hefty paywall! I reckon I have done my bit by alerting everyone of the problem- if you could pen a few alternative words, as I suspect you are far more familiar with the system than I am even if you are normally a copyright specialist. I was satisfied that it wasn't close enough to be a problem but I am letting this go now- everyone is reasonable around here so I sure it will be resolved. ClemRutter (talk) 13:30, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * , I'm sorry, but I want to make sure I understand. Are you saying the iThenticate link isn't accessible? S Philbrick  (Talk)  13:55, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes- try the link from a different computer and you will see a login page, and from there you are invited to register! We have Close paraphrasing as an explanation of policy. Is your article substantially different. Cheers Clem ClemRutter (talk) 14:28, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * , I'm pretty sure I have seen you provide links to editors when there have been questions about the edit. I assumed it was the iThenticate link but perhaps I misremembered. Can you help me provide some information to this fellow Canadian so they can see the close paraphrasing?  S Philbrick  (Talk)  16:50, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes indeed, you have to come at it through the CopyPatrol system, which forces the log-in. Go to the copypatrol report, create a permalink like I did here. Clem, you should now be able to view the iThenticate report, by clicking on the blue box labelled "iThenticate report". (Caveat: occasionally users still cannot view the iThenticate report, even using this method.) — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 16:59, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks- it is clearer now. 81 words and 7 discontinuities. That is not a close paraphrase- this tools are very good but in this case it is a false positive. The words we are using are technical so of course they must be the same. The paragraph in the reference was compact- and the article text had to be too. Not one of the compared sentence pairs has the same structure. The key description has changed. The closest pair are statements of fact, and have miniscule creative content. It is essential to manually examine the text before doing a good faith revert, and to check for collateral damage

Looking at the test will reveal far more than the super fast and clever iThenticate tool. So here sentence by sentence you can see the similarity of the word combination and a far from close paraphrase.
 * Compare

Most schools have report periods every quarter or 6 weeks. Schools evaluate students with letter grades that correspond to numbers (A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, F=0).
 * Schools typically have a "report card" every quarter or 6 weeks.
 * Generally speaking, secondary schools evaluate students with letter grades (A-F or E) that correspond to numbers (A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, F=0)

A straight-A student will have average score, the Grade Point Average (GPA), of 4.0 or better. This is possible because schools add "weight" to certain grades, depending on the degree of difficulty of the course.
 * These individual course grades are compiled to make a final average for the year, called a Grade Point Average (GPA).
 * The marks over the year are averaged for each course and averaged across all the courses.''
 * Many schools add "weight" to certain grades, depending on the degree of difficulty, so that an A in Auto Mechanics is only given 4 points, but an A in AP Algebra II might be 4.5 or 5 points.
 * This means a straight A student who has taken 8 or 10 AP courses could end up with a much higher GPA than just a 4.0.

The compilation of all of the student's grades makes up a student's "transcript". The GPA is calculated annually, and finally it's calculated for the student's four-year high school career.
 * The compilation of all of his/her grades makes up a student's "transcript". The GPA is calculated annually, and finally it's calculated for the student's four-year high school career.
 * The annual calculation establishes the student's rank in class. (This can get into a war of numbers, as top students feverishly recalculate their own and each other's ranks to try to figure out who will be #1- Class Valedictorian, always the one to make the speech at graduation.)

There are no national curriculum exams in the US. Teachers for each course set their own mid-term and final exams.
 * There are no national curriculum exams in the US. Teachers for each course organise their own exams, class by class, and hold final exams for each term ("finals") and mid-term exams ("mid-terms") half-way through a term. Those have different weights towards the term grade than ordinary tests or quizes.

Study halls are sometimes offered, which don't contribute to GPA or number of credits earned.
 * Collateral damage-
 * was reverted to

''Study halls are sometimes offered, which don't contribute to GPA or number of credits earned. ''

Nota bene: Verbatim copying for study purposes of copyrighted text from
 * Several months have elapsed, since my revision oldid=901743726 was rejected. I am of course watching the page. To a non-US reader, without this rejected section the article is worthless and has been tagged today as having multiple problems. Has anyone got any suggestes how the content of the section can be replaced using in a WP acceptable way. Actually that is not what I am saying- could someone actual write the section given that I have explained what I want to see. It does need to explain the grading system, and how schools and students are held to account.ClemRutter (talk) 09:26, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
 * , Is there a reason you cannot write it up in your own words? If not, and it is a useful additon to the article, I hope some other editor will try. S Philbrick  (Talk)  11:55, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I went as far as I could with the resources I have- I have never set foot in the US, and rarely dare to touch US related articles- I made an exception here and see what happened! I have no contact that I could ping on that side of the pond. Ask me to write stuff on any of the EU 28 then I am fine and thats what I do within WP:Schools, apart from look after 5000 + UK Comprehensive schools and 202 in Scoland. Are you nurturing a newbie who could have a go instead? We at WP:Schools could then develop the article with them. Honestly, its not won't but in this case can't. ClemRutter (talk) 14:07, 13 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Newbie here, ready to give it a whack. American secondary school grading will be a nice challenge to succinctly state. I'll draft something de novo so there's no copyvio risk, and then try to backfill references. Ottoump (talk) 02:01, 5 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Does this draft on one of my user subpages work for you? (Newb question: Can you even access it?). I may be overly enamoured with tables. Ottoump (talk) 21:04, 5 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Rewritten appraisal section in place. We might want to replace the A/B/C/D/F table with one that I think is more typical: A/A-/B+/B/B-/C+/C/C-/D+/D/D-/F. Thoughts?  Also, please note that the U.S. Grading Standard reference is a little funky.  It pops up on a Google search and downloads as a .doc file.  But the link is dead, and WP has cached Google files in a blacklist so I can't list that as an archive.  A lot of the data are kind of stale, going back 10-13 years. Anyway, that was my best shot for now. Ottoump (talk) 07:06, 6 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Finally, this document deserves some additional study:
 * https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=edp_facpub
 * I went through it once searching for support for some specific points, but couldn't find anything exactly on point. But there might be some other nuggets in there. Ottoump (talk) 07:14, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Merge proposal
A previous merge discussion (at Talk:Comprehensive school noted that the article Comprehensive high school had primarily US content and would best be merged here. Given this new proposal, I think that the idea is best discussed here. Klbrain (talk) 18:05, 4 September 2020 (UTC) UTC)
 * Comment: There is a separate article for comprehensive school. Why couldn’t comprehensive high school remain separate instead of merging to high school (North America)? Zoe1013 (talk) 18:57, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment this is an article about high schools in the united states—blindlynx (talk) 22:31, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Closing, given the objections. Klbrain (talk) 10:23, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 20 December 2020

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moved to High school in the United States. BD2412 T 00:50, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

High school (North America) → High school (United States) – This article contains absolutely no information about high schools in any part of North America other than the US. —blindlynx (talk) 22:36, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: Is it Wikipedia intention to bracket disambiguate geographically or nationally? If you regard Education in Canada the entire vocabulary used such as the term K-12 is the same as that used in this article. I suggest that the alternative approach is to add a section ==Regional difference between Canada and the US==. It is easier than writing a new article "High school (Canada)", currently a redirect. --ClemRutter (talk) 10:42, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Some but not all of the vocabulary is the same, for example Canada doesn't name grades in highschool. That really doesn't address the core issue that there is way more not North America than just the US and Canada. Also it's the same amount of work given that there is nothing about high schools outside of teh US here—blindlynx (talk) 17:15, 21 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Move to High school in the United States or similar. The term high school is the default for secondary education in some places outside North America, e.g. Australia and New Zealand. Both titles discussed so far suggest that the term is exclusively used outside America in a different manner, when that is not the case.
 * As for the narrowing to American-only; I agree, it doesn't really cover Canada right now. If an editor wants to change that, then the article can be moved again, but keeping a name based on hypothetical and nonexistent content isn't a good idea. - Axisixa T  C  03:53, 22 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment:Greetings to you and other editors wrestling with education and schools. I don't see this about our preferences but complying with Wikipedia policies. These can be contradictory and confusing. A bigger issue is the difference between School and Education, hence we have one article on Secondary education in the United States which takes High school in the United States as a redirect. Rename is not what you are suggesting as it would be a merge, I intellectually started that task, and concluded two articles, closely linked, was the best approach. If you look at user experience, there are thousands of pages (at least 3000) that link in here- I would suggest they are looking to a further explanation of a US/North American High School rather than Secondary Education. ClemRutter (talk) 11:00, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Looking though the first few pages most of them are referencing or piped to specifically US high schools With regard to wiki policies i think this is a pretty clear cut case of WP:BIAS as the US is not synonymous with north America—blindlynx (talk) 18:37, 22 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose unless the concept of "high school" in Canada is so different as to be two entirely different and incompatible concepts requiring separate articles, Otherwise, if the article title is already appropriate for what the page topic should be, it ought to stay where it is. If the only rationale behind the move is that the current page is US-centric, either WP:SOFIXIT or tag it with globalize so someone else can. When and if new material is added, the tag can be removed; until then, readers will be informed that the current article content may not cover the full breadth of the intended topic.  C Thomas3   (talk) 00:10, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
 * North America is more than just Canada and the united states. Moreover, none of the information provided hear applies to Canadian schools.—blindlynx (talk) 19:20, 30 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Redirect to Secondary education in the United States; everything sourced in this article is discussed in more depth at that page. I suppose the disambiguation should change to US for that, but it doesn't really matter. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 06:33, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Move to High school in the United States. Converting to a redirect and/or merging is a separate discussion. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 20:16, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

High school (upper secondary)
As this page seems to have generated some interest via the RM, I should mention that it has a redirect:. In 2017, a group of us including sorted through about 1000 links to, diverting many of them to this article. I created the redirect as a target for links to upper K-12 education outside America. It may still have the least bad target but I'd welcome suggestions for improvements. Previous discussion, including adoption of the "North America" qualifier for this page, can be found in Talk:High school and following sections. Certes (talk) 12:29, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Governance
It is a question of who makes the decision- what is the structure- what are the delegations and who puts their signatures to the policies. On my side of the pond this is a big issue on and off wiki. Last night a local issue arose, regarding the managing of a special needs entitlement for a primary aged child so I went on This site to investigate how it was handled at a local school I knew well. I looked for the schools web site - which is beautifully done. Cliffe Woods You will see it has a top section - Governance. UK Law requires these sections to be published. What is the US equivalent? This download makes an interesting read- and solved our problem, the principles remain the same in secondary schools. --ClemRutter (talk) 10:25, 18 March 2021 (UTC)