I put this in IMHO instead of FQ because I expect answers to be anecdotal and based on individual Dopers’ experiences as parents. And also, for the record, I’m not on a first name basis with any high school students or any parents of same, else I’d ask them.
Anyway, here in 2025, do the kids take notes with a pen and notebook, like we Gen Xers did back in the day? Or do they use laptops (their own or school-issued)? Are their assignments on ink and paper, or all accessed via some username and password on the school website? Do they turn in papers printed on, uh, paper, or do they email their assignments to their teachers? Do they get sent home with notes when they’re naughty, or do the parents get an alert and access some disciplinary record?
Imagine this takes place in a middle of the road school district funding-wise; viz, not some dirt poor school in Mississippi or some filthy rich school in some well-off suburb somewhere.
My daughter is starting high school next fall. We went in and met the assistant principal and took a tour. Biggest surprises for me: no one uses books and no one carries bookbags. The lockers sit there untouched because no one carries books or bookbags. Everything’s on a laptop, school-issued.
I don’t know a ton, but from what I’ve gathered from nieces and nephews, fears of school shootings are there which were never a concern in high school in the 90s.
I recently had to teach my nieces how to use notebookLM to help them study. My niece said she was still using a pencil and paper. I have no idea if using a pencil and paper is still the main way to study.
When I went to college in the mid 2000s, very few of the students had laptops in class. But when I watch youtube videos that are more recent of college lecture halls, virtually everyone has a laptop.
I do not have a factual answer for this, but I will add that when I was in college in the early 2000s we were already submitting some assignments electronically, so it would not surprise me if this has trickled down to high schools by now.
My two youngest had Chromebooks, and a large portion of their homework was done and submitted electronically. 4-8 years ago (oldest of the two is getting her bachelor’s in two weeks!).
My son graduated last spring from a typical metro-suburban public high school. Like others mentioned, he never had a locker all 4 years. They were optional if you wanted one but most kids passed on them. I think he had one for gym class however to keep gym clothes in.
I only remember maybe one text book per semester? Usually science related chemistry or biology. Rarely did it go back and forth to school he usually had it at home for reference. Occasionally he may have had a novel for a reading class that he kept in his backpack. All papers were written and turned in electronically. School issued chromebooks for everyone.
He did have a notebook for each class for notetaking. I don’t think it’s very easy to take notes on a laptop for math/science stuff with all the formulas / diagrams / charts you would want to take notes on.
Most tests were hand written and took a while to get grades back. Others were multiple choice on scan cards which got graded immediately.
Pretty much exactly the same here in suburban middle-class Chicagoland. School issues Chromebooks and assignments and lessons are done on them. There are books but they’re often disposable with tear-out pages. Lockers are often unused except in winter for coat storage. The days of having to go to your locker between each class to get the next set of text book/folder/spiral notebook are gone.
My kid has an IEP and sometimes has an issue a teacher wants to tell me about and they’ve always contacted me via email. I would assume that if he had a disciplinary issue they would contact me the same way.
Oddly, one thing that HAS remained is paper permission slips instead of just emailing me a PDF or something. I only mention this because my kid naturally failed to bring his last one home for a week before it was due to be signed and returned.
Per my nieces, nephews, and grandchildren kids around here are able to take all day physical education every day for a couple of weeks during the summer and then they don’t have to take it during the school year. This seems to fly in the face of one of the purposes of phy ed if you ask me.
They are also able to take other courses in the summer and not have to take them during the year. When I went to HS (graduated 1979) only the dumb kids went to school in the summer.
I let my students take notes however they want. Most often, this is pencil and paper, sometimes a tablet, sometimes a phone. Few if any students take math notes on their school-issued laptops, but this might be different in other subjects (math often involves diagrams, special symbols, etc. that are hard to do on a laptop).
Textbooks are almost all available online. We still have printed copies, and students can borrow a copy for the semester if they want. Maybe 5-10% choose to do so.
My homework assignments are online, through a system provided by the textbook publisher, which has a number of advantages (they get instant feedback on whether they got it right, and I can set it to allow them unlimited attempts). For quizzes and tests, I mostly still give them papers (except I’m moving more to online tests for my AP class, because that’s how the AP test will be). I also now allow them to use one specific website, an online graphing calculator, on their computers, for tests (we have the capability to lock down their computers so they can only access a limited list of sites).
Essays and the like are essentially all turned in electronically. The preferred way to do this is through a shared Google Doc. This makes it easier to enforce academic honesty rules. A student could email something to their teacher, but there are easier ways.
Parents can get direct access to the online gradebook system, and can sign up for alerts for things like sudden grade drops. I don’t know if disciplinary actions are recorded on those, but for something serious, we’d call the parents on the phone, or at least email them, personally (in addition to whatever the system does automatically).
Parents can also do various tracking things with their children’s phones. Just yesterday, I finished a lesson early, and since it was a beautiful day out, the students asked if we could go outside (we have very large and scenic grounds at my school). One of my students got a text from her mom, because the mom saw that she was out of the building at a time that she was supposed to be in class.
We try to encourage students to take electives instead, but yes, study hall is still a thing. Especially with AP classes, since those are on a different schedule from other classes, which often leads awkward little gaps in time.
At my school, we do one blanket permission slip for all field trips for the whole year.
I’ve seen high-achieving students do this because they want to take more classes than they’re physically capable of fitting into their schedule. They generally have to arrange it on their own, though, such as through a community college. Most of my school’s summer offerings are camps and the like, aimed at middle schoolers considering coming here for high school.
I went to summer school between junior and senior years (1968), because I was going to be taking class(es) at UCLA during my senior year, and I needed a relatively open schedule. Plus, since I ended up studying Russian and going to 8:00 am classes at UCLA, I had a very free schedule for the rest of the day. I partied like crazy that year.
Oh, and I graduated 20th out of a 600+ student body.
I had appointments with my Orthodontist. His office was only a block away.
I signed out at the school office, walked to the appointment, and signed back in afterwards.
It took about 30 to 40 minutes. Lots of students had their braces tightened and had appointments.
Most often, the parents pick the kid up, take them to wherever, and (time depending) bring them back to school. Which is basically the same as it was when I was a kid.
One large school I’ve subbed at, though, had an actual full doctor’s office in the building, so students could get routine appointments taken care of in a half-hour or so.
My ex-niece (ex-wife’s daughter) taught kindergarten back around 2021-2023 in a “filthy rich school in some well-off suburb somewhere”. This was public school, not private, but the district was very well funded and this elementary school was on the high end of the spending per student within the district.
Anyhow, the kindergartners were issued laptops. The were only used for a couple of subjects and were Chromebooks with some age-appropriate learning tools installed. They were kept in the classroom, not sent home with the kids. But each kid had their own particular machine; no sharing.
So yeah, laptop usage has trickled down a wee bit from college since you were there.
One big change from when I went to hs and now is that there’s not a soda and candy machine every 800 feet or so and they don’t sell canned soda and candy in the cafeteria anymore … i wouldn’t be able to function (aka not go on a killing spree) without mt dew and chocolate
“Still”? There’s more Study Hall now than there used to be.
At least, when I was in high school 40 years ago, it was not standard to have a study hall. We had a six-period school day, and there wasn’t time for a “study hall” unless you weren’t carrying a full academic load or (as was the case with me one year) you had a class that met before the standard school day and therefore had an extra “empty” period sometime in the middle of the day.
At the school I teach at now, kids have seven classes a day, one of which is typically study hall (and similarly for two other schools I subbed at). It seems there’s less expectation that students will do a significant amount of schoolwork at home, and more time allowed during school hours for them to work on their assignments.
As for the things the OP asked about, I think the answers vary from school to school, teacher to teacher, and subject to subject. Physical textbooks still exist, but they’re not used as much. (I have a big stack of them in my classroom, but I’m not sure how many of them have ever been opened.) Instead, classes might use online textbooks, other online resources, and/or printed notes/handouts. All students are issued Chromebooks and are expected to bring them with them to class, but it’s up to the teacher how they’re used.
One thing I have observed: high school students do still read dead-tree books (i.e. novels and such), whether for school or for personal pleasure. Not all of them, of course, but there have always been readers and nonreaders.
Talk to me about student rights. Freedom to express your views in classroom discussions. Freedom to organize. Is there space to post public notices that don’t get censored? Dress codes, including how they apply to gender-atypical people. Sexual freedom also, including sexual expression. Things you can or cannot have on your t shirt. Open campus? Can you leave and go elsewhere and come back for 5th period?
Is it something that today’s high school students are interested in or concerned about? Are there attempts to organize, rally?
How many PTAs are now PTSAs? Do students have any input into determining the curriculum?
I think there was a big push in 2020, when schools were shut down. I have a friend who worked in the IT department for the county school system and he said they had to purchase and distribute computers to all of the households that still didn’t have one so that students could attend classes remotely.
