Middle school honors v middle school advanced academics
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Anonymous
I have no doubt that many students are capable of this and do it privately with AoPS etc. But as described, you have kids in regular 6th grade I school either in prealgebra or already found their way on to the very exceptional track (hello WPES!) And taking Algebra 1 in 6th. Then they do (maybe catch-up Algebra 1), Geom, Algebra 2, and Precalc all in 7th + 8th? Do they do 2 hrs/day of math class? The only school I've heard of that goes near this is (private) Proof School in San Francisco, who does over 2hrs/day of math class and has less 20 kids per grade. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_School I wouldn't trust a public school to do this, because the only way to do it is to skip all the enrichment (combinatorics, number theoriy, logic, problem solving) that brilliant kids should do. |
Anonymous
Blair Magnet in MCPS does this. Its called Functions. It’s invitation-only even within the Magnet program. |
Anonymous
One place I know does this is Broward County. They buy the Elements of Mathematics / IMACS curriculum and let the kids self study on the computer instead of having a math class with a teacher. (IMACS has online classes if you want to pay for them’ https://www.browardschools.com/Page/43787 https://www.elementsofmathematics.com/ It’s a special curriculum that focuses on 1970s-style “New Math”, a college/professional pure math approach to the K-12 curriculum, and skips a lot of the easy/obvious/applied material and the material that K-12 teaches that isn’t needed for college and grad school, and skips the hard problems that AMC/AIME;AOPS do. Then they tack on a quick supplement to cover the Common Core standards in a few days at the end of the year. It starts with “prealgebra” in summer after 5th grade and finishes “precalculus” end of 8th grade, feeding into 9th grade calculus. But the real value prop is that the students are already speaking the language of upper level undergrad pure math, and covers topics like number theory. It achieves that extreme acceleration by starting early, and focusing on the formal theory and intuition, in a kid-friendly presentation format ,and doing sophisticated topics at an easier level of problem complexity than something like AOPS does. AOPS does less formal math but much harder problems, for competition-prep (but a lot of AOPS students don’t actuall do the hard problems in AOPS class.). Doing both of these styles of enrichment would be quite intense but immensely rewarded for an interested student, and probably would be worth spreading out over more years. If you want to replicate this at home or in a special independent study at school, you can buy the $900 4.25 year subscription to the online curriculum. (You can’t buy just the upper half if your kid is already skilled in Prealgebra, algebra, geometry basics. And there are no paper books). |
Anonymous
Interesting, thanks. In case anyone else is interested too, this link describes it: https://mbhs.edu/departments/magnet/courses_math.php |
Anonymous
https://mbhs.edu/departments/magnet/courses_math.phphttps://mbhs.edu/departments/magnet/courses_math.php That's a high school class, not a middle school class, and its almost entirely for students who already took Algebra 2 in MS. |
Anonymous
Yes, but that's far more selective than TJ so they don't have to go slow. |
Anonymous
Although some students who had attended a wealthy ES and had early enrichment can take Algebra 2 in MS, it is not a requirement for Blair Functions. |
Anonymous
When you take the small Functions class, remove the students who took Alg 2 in MS school, and remove people who took it at AoPS, RSM, or at home on Khan or with a parent, there's almost no one left, maybe even no one. It's nowhere near a whole class worth of students, and not in middle school, which is really the topic of the thread. |
Anonymous
I'd assume so. My son was never in AAP but did the advanced math track through elementary school and qualified for Algebra 1 in 7th grade through his IATT and SOL scores. He was in the same class as AAP kids. |