High school math sequence: Are there other schools that skip pre-calc?

[Anonymous]

My kid will start at DeMatha in the fall. The honors math sequence is H. Geometry, H. Algebra II, AP Calculus (all at the honors level). They will cover a lot of trig in HGeometry and the functions part of precalc in HAlgebra II.

I'm not against it as a former precalc/AP Calc high school teacher, but it does put a lot of pressure on getting concepts the first time around.

I'm curious what other private schools do.

[Anonymous]

Have never heard of this. Both my kids’ private schools have pre-calc.

[Anonymous]

No, ours has AP Precalc, and you can take in two semester or accelerated one semester versions.

[Anonymous]

What you call the specific classes is not that material. Prep for example skips “Algebra 2” and goes Honors Geometry to Honors “Pre-Calc”. But the concepts that most schools do in Algebra 2 are in the Prep version of Precalc. The schools that do Honors Algebra 2 and Honors Precalc are usually front loading some of the material from AP Calc BC. They all get to the same place in the end and do similar things so you shouldn’t put too much stock in the difference in naming conventions at the schools

[Anonymous]

I’d have student take precalc in the summer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’d have student take precalc in the summer.

I’m sorry but that’s nuts that you’d have to take an extra substantive summer math class in addition to the planned school sequence. My kid would be so pissed if he had to do this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’d have student take precalc in the summer.

If your school’s normal progression goes from Algebra 2 to Calculus, and precalc topics are divided between those, there shouldn’t be a need to take a separate class in the summer. I’d only suggest doing so if your kid struggled with the material in Algebra 2.

[Anonymous]

never heard of this but like pp said it's possible they cover the content in a different way. DD's school has classes with names like math 1 and the classes only roughly follow the traditional sequence of geometry, algebra 2, precal, etc.

they cover all the same topics just not necessarily in the same order or with the same emphasis.

[Anonymous]

Precalc concepts are conceptually harder than alg 2 and geo, it’s interesting they are incorporating them in those courses. I would just have your kids do the free Kahn academy precalc program the summer between sophomore and junior year to head into calculus strong. For AP calc you don’t even need to know most of the trig identities/proofs or graphing that you spend so long on in precalc. Many students find learning trig at 16 harder than AP calc at 17.