Anonymous wrote:Shouldn't be too hard to look back over many years of acceleration and see the results for these students, broken down by the performance on entrance tests to this pathway, SOL, MAP, COGAT, grades, etc.
SOL data is public. The 7th grade accelerated cohort has much stronger SOL performance in Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2 than the 8th or 9th grade Algebra 1 cohorts.
Obviously, there are many kids who should be accelerated 2 years and comparing the average test scores of those three populations would reflect that. The question is teasing out which kids (at the bottom of that cohort) would have been better served with just 1 year acceleration.
What % of those kids struggling is acceptable? How much would they benefit by getting another year of foundation skills?
The objective of raising the bar for placement is to improve outcomes for the kids on the cusp, which should theoretically increase SOL performance for two of the groups (7th & 8th Algebra 1).
There's also the issue of teasing out which 8th grade algebra 1 students (at the top of the distribution) would have been better served with 2 years of acceleration, and which 7th grade algebra 1 students (at the middle to top of the distribution) would have been better served with 3 or more years of acceleration.
3 + years should be the rare exception.
Why? Given how much better 7th grade algebra 1 students do than 9th or 8th grade algebra 1 students, it's clear that many of them likely would have been at least as successful as 9th or 8th grade algebra 1 students had they taken algebra 1 in 6th instead.
Aside from the true math prodigies there is very little benefit. Race to nowhere.
What's a "true math prodigy"? If you acknowledge there's at least a little benefit (which I think is false given the significant differences in achievement between accelerated and non-accelerated students), why do you use the phrase "race to nowhere" which falsely implies there being no benefit?
The Young Sheldons. (Shout out to Arlington native, Iain Armitage!)
It’s a race to nowhere for 99% of the kids.
Ideally, we want to maximize the pass rate for kids. Pushing some kids to a 3rd year of acceleration would bring down the pass rate for the 3x and 2x acceleration cohorts. And there is no real benefit for 3x acceleration for 99% of the kids.
If you really wanted to maximize the pass rate, you would force all students to repeat algebra 1 throughout high school (or even repeat first grade math through all 12 years of school). This would give a much higher pass rate. Obviously, the pass rate is not the most important metric.
I think the goal for these “accelerated kids” should be the number of 5s on the AP BC Calc exam.
Then force everyone to take it senior or junior year, and delay graduation for as long as legally possible (20 years old in VA) forcing them to repeat BC each year and only taking the exam the last year. Once again, this is not done because that is not the goal.
Yikes, hyperbole much?
The question is how do we figure out which kids to accelerate in 6th grade. I believe we are accelerating too many kids. I suspect those accelerated kids—despite being excellent math students—are not performing “excellently” on Junior year BC calculus. I suspect if we gave them another year, they’d do much better. We’d be preparing them better for college. I think we need to examine how well the accelerated kids perform years later when we harm them by accelerating them.
Seniors taking BC calc would also do better if given an extra year. The question is whether that is useful in the long run. This has been studied extensively, and the research is overwhelmingly in favor of acceleration. (Read A nation empowered)
Except there are almost no practical advantages of taking BC calc in jr year vs sr year. It’s a race to nowhere.
Why does there have to be an advantage? Some kids are good at math and appreciate being challenged. The acceleration is supposed ot be for those kids. There are kids who enjoy math competitions and the like. Kids can choose to take Calc A/B if they want. Plenty of kids don't take Calculus at all. There is nothing wrong with providing courses for kids who are really good at the subject or want to move faster.
FCPS ends up with a small percentage of kids in Algebra 1 in 7th grade.
The downside is that the math is being taken out of sync with the corresponding science or engineering course work that applies that math.
As I understand it, many engineering schools require students retake the calculus they took in high school to make sure that all of the students have a strong foundation.
This is false. Even MIT gives credit for calculus BC, as do other engineering schools
I never said my understanding is perfect. As I understand it, students take math placement tests when they arrive at college. They need to hit a certain score on those tests in order to skip specific classes in college. It is not an automatic out placement because you scored a certain level on the AP Test. My kid is on the advanced math track in FCPS. We are waiting on his IAAT scores to see if he will have a shot at Algebra 1 in 7th, so he is on the track for Calc BC as a Junior. He enjoys math and wishes the math at school would be more challenging, at the same time, he knows plenty of his classmates do not find the math at school easy. If he can skip some math in college, fine. If not, fine. I prefer he be in classes that are challenging him at school. I suspect that college versions of the same class will reinforce what he learned in HS and probably touch on somethings he was not exposed to.
Please read
Virginia Tech AP Credits.
A 3 in Calculus BC automatically gives you credit for Math 1225, and a 4 or 5 for Math 1226. Now look at, for instance, the CS Majors Checksheet which lists Math 1225 and Math 1226 as courses otherwise requires in your first semester.
If you come in with credit for these, you have 2 open slots in your schedule, allowing you take higher-level math courses, double-major, or graduate early.
There's real advantages to that. I see first hand the difference between students who have to catch up on calculus I in college and those who are ready to take (real) college-level classes.
Tech is just one local example. Every university publishes these rules. Check UVA, for instance.
Or MIT.
And yet I know people who passed the Calc AP exam and ended up retaking Calc at some of those University because of their scores on the placement tests that they took. I also know people who earned credits in LA who ended up taking the intro level classes based on placement exam results. Maybe kids could choose not to retake those classes but the ones I know did not take that path. And yes, I know people who have attended Cal Tech and MIT and Northwestern so this is not thoughts out of a vacuum.
I have no problem with kids taking Calc BC or Multivariate and similar classes in HS if they are capable of doing those classes and they want to take them. I appreciate that the option is there. I don't think that it is a guarantee that they will skip those classes in college, regardless of what is written on the websites. I am sure some do and do just fine. I am sure some do and struggle in the college level math classes because their foundation isn't as strong as they think. Kind of like any other subject that students take in collee. Most of us went figuring that we were prepared and found that there were areas that we needed to strengthen.
of course MIT and Caltech have high standards for transferring in course credit.
It's ridiculous to imply that taking advanced math before college hurt these students; on the contrary they likely had a much easier time in these classes than students who were exposed to the material for the first time.
DP Agree. Studies have shown that students retaking calculus in college receive higher grades than those taking it for the first time and that comparison does not include students taking it for the first time that struggled and dropped the course.
No one has suggested not offering Calc BC. No one. Your point is irrelevant.
There are benefits to having had prior exposure to coursework before taking it in college. Calculus is one example. It applies to other courses as well.
Yep. Betcha all those kids getting 2s and 3s on the BC Calc exam junior year who were accelerated in 6th grade are SUPER GRATEFUL.
It will help them if they take calculus in college as noted above.
Hey I have an idea. You know what might actually help them? Understanding Precalc, Algebra II, and Geometry.
What would help them is to bring back intensified precalculus so they are better prepared for BC calculus instead of putting them into AP Precalculus.
What is the difference? Did intensified pre calculus cover more material?
Yes. AP Precalculus was designed for students taking precalc as a senior. It assumes students have had no prior exposure to logs and thus spends a lot of time on Algebra 2 concepts; the AP Precalc exam is roughly two-thirds Algebra 2 material. Since many students taking AP Precalc will never take another math course, it was designed as a capstone course and not solely to prepare students for calculus. As such, it takes a more applied approach, focused on modeling with technology, and includes concepts like regressions which are not needed for AP Calc while dropping series which are needed for AP Calc BC.
An additional problem is that AP Precalc may not permit the prior honors practice of taking the spring of precalc to cover beginning calculus content. Honors precalc moved quickly through Algebra 2 concepts and thus was able to cover intro calc concepts at the end; this is standard practice for honors precalc courses in districts across the US. It is particularly critical for students intending to take BC calculus, because BC covers 50% more content than AB. If all of BC gets crammed into one year, the pace will be very rushed and students will struggle more than they did with honors precalc pacing.
Thanks for the info. But how do we know all these details of what is & isn’t covered if this is the first year it is being offered?
Anonymous wrote:Shouldn't be too hard to look back over many years of acceleration and see the results for these students, broken down by the performance on entrance tests to this pathway, SOL, MAP, COGAT, grades, etc.
SOL data is public. The 7th grade accelerated cohort has much stronger SOL performance in Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2 than the 8th or 9th grade Algebra 1 cohorts.
Obviously, there are many kids who should be accelerated 2 years and comparing the average test scores of those three populations would reflect that. The question is teasing out which kids (at the bottom of that cohort) would have been better served with just 1 year acceleration.
What % of those kids struggling is acceptable? How much would they benefit by getting another year of foundation skills?
The objective of raising the bar for placement is to improve outcomes for the kids on the cusp, which should theoretically increase SOL performance for two of the groups (7th & 8th Algebra 1).
There's also the issue of teasing out which 8th grade algebra 1 students (at the top of the distribution) would have been better served with 2 years of acceleration, and which 7th grade algebra 1 students (at the middle to top of the distribution) would have been better served with 3 or more years of acceleration.
3 + years should be the rare exception.
Why? Given how much better 7th grade algebra 1 students do than 9th or 8th grade algebra 1 students, it's clear that many of them likely would have been at least as successful as 9th or 8th grade algebra 1 students had they taken algebra 1 in 6th instead.
Aside from the true math prodigies there is very little benefit. Race to nowhere.
What's a "true math prodigy"? If you acknowledge there's at least a little benefit (which I think is false given the significant differences in achievement between accelerated and non-accelerated students), why do you use the phrase "race to nowhere" which falsely implies there being no benefit?
The Young Sheldons. (Shout out to Arlington native, Iain Armitage!)
It’s a race to nowhere for 99% of the kids.
Ideally, we want to maximize the pass rate for kids. Pushing some kids to a 3rd year of acceleration would bring down the pass rate for the 3x and 2x acceleration cohorts. And there is no real benefit for 3x acceleration for 99% of the kids.
If you really wanted to maximize the pass rate, you would force all students to repeat algebra 1 throughout high school (or even repeat first grade math through all 12 years of school). This would give a much higher pass rate. Obviously, the pass rate is not the most important metric.
I think the goal for these “accelerated kids” should be the number of 5s on the AP BC Calc exam.
Then force everyone to take it senior or junior year, and delay graduation for as long as legally possible (20 years old in VA) forcing them to repeat BC each year and only taking the exam the last year. Once again, this is not done because that is not the goal.
Yikes, hyperbole much?
The question is how do we figure out which kids to accelerate in 6th grade. I believe we are accelerating too many kids. I suspect those accelerated kids—despite being excellent math students—are not performing “excellently” on Junior year BC calculus. I suspect if we gave them another year, they’d do much better. We’d be preparing them better for college. I think we need to examine how well the accelerated kids perform years later when we harm them by accelerating them.
Seniors taking BC calc would also do better if given an extra year. The question is whether that is useful in the long run. This has been studied extensively, and the research is overwhelmingly in favor of acceleration. (Read A nation empowered)
Except there are almost no practical advantages of taking BC calc in jr year vs sr year. It’s a race to nowhere.
Why does there have to be an advantage? Some kids are good at math and appreciate being challenged. The acceleration is supposed ot be for those kids. There are kids who enjoy math competitions and the like. Kids can choose to take Calc A/B if they want. Plenty of kids don't take Calculus at all. There is nothing wrong with providing courses for kids who are really good at the subject or want to move faster.
FCPS ends up with a small percentage of kids in Algebra 1 in 7th grade.
The downside is that the math is being taken out of sync with the corresponding science or engineering course work that applies that math.
As I understand it, many engineering schools require students retake the calculus they took in high school to make sure that all of the students have a strong foundation.
This is false. Even MIT gives credit for calculus BC, as do other engineering schools
I never said my understanding is perfect. As I understand it, students take math placement tests when they arrive at college. They need to hit a certain score on those tests in order to skip specific classes in college. It is not an automatic out placement because you scored a certain level on the AP Test. My kid is on the advanced math track in FCPS. We are waiting on his IAAT scores to see if he will have a shot at Algebra 1 in 7th, so he is on the track for Calc BC as a Junior. He enjoys math and wishes the math at school would be more challenging, at the same time, he knows plenty of his classmates do not find the math at school easy. If he can skip some math in college, fine. If not, fine. I prefer he be in classes that are challenging him at school. I suspect that college versions of the same class will reinforce what he learned in HS and probably touch on somethings he was not exposed to.
Please read
Virginia Tech AP Credits.
A 3 in Calculus BC automatically gives you credit for Math 1225, and a 4 or 5 for Math 1226. Now look at, for instance, the CS Majors Checksheet which lists Math 1225 and Math 1226 as courses otherwise requires in your first semester.
If you come in with credit for these, you have 2 open slots in your schedule, allowing you take higher-level math courses, double-major, or graduate early.
There's real advantages to that. I see first hand the difference between students who have to catch up on calculus I in college and those who are ready to take (real) college-level classes.
Tech is just one local example. Every university publishes these rules. Check UVA, for instance.
Or MIT.
And yet I know people who passed the Calc AP exam and ended up retaking Calc at some of those University because of their scores on the placement tests that they took. I also know people who earned credits in LA who ended up taking the intro level classes based on placement exam results. Maybe kids could choose not to retake those classes but the ones I know did not take that path. And yes, I know people who have attended Cal Tech and MIT and Northwestern so this is not thoughts out of a vacuum.
I have no problem with kids taking Calc BC or Multivariate and similar classes in HS if they are capable of doing those classes and they want to take them. I appreciate that the option is there. I don't think that it is a guarantee that they will skip those classes in college, regardless of what is written on the websites. I am sure some do and do just fine. I am sure some do and struggle in the college level math classes because their foundation isn't as strong as they think. Kind of like any other subject that students take in collee. Most of us went figuring that we were prepared and found that there were areas that we needed to strengthen.
of course MIT and Caltech have high standards for transferring in course credit.
It's ridiculous to imply that taking advanced math before college hurt these students; on the contrary they likely had a much easier time in these classes than students who were exposed to the material for the first time.
DP Agree. Studies have shown that students retaking calculus in college receive higher grades than those taking it for the first time and that comparison does not include students taking it for the first time that struggled and dropped the course.
No one has suggested not offering Calc BC. No one. Your point is irrelevant.
There are benefits to having had prior exposure to coursework before taking it in college. Calculus is one example. It applies to other courses as well.
Yep. Betcha all those kids getting 2s and 3s on the BC Calc exam junior year who were accelerated in 6th grade are SUPER GRATEFUL.
How many of these kids actually exist in the real world, as opposed to strawmen in your mind?
APS AP pass rate sucks
Then why doesn't APS "raise the bar" and prevent students from taking calculus AB until they can demonstrate mastery of BC, like they do with prealgebra?
this makes no sense. Calc BC is harder than AB. No one would take AB after BC.
Anonymous wrote:Shouldn't be too hard to look back over many years of acceleration and see the results for these students, broken down by the performance on entrance tests to this pathway, SOL, MAP, COGAT, grades, etc.
SOL data is public. The 7th grade accelerated cohort has much stronger SOL performance in Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2 than the 8th or 9th grade Algebra 1 cohorts.
Obviously, there are many kids who should be accelerated 2 years and comparing the average test scores of those three populations would reflect that. The question is teasing out which kids (at the bottom of that cohort) would have been better served with just 1 year acceleration.
What % of those kids struggling is acceptable? How much would they benefit by getting another year of foundation skills?
The objective of raising the bar for placement is to improve outcomes for the kids on the cusp, which should theoretically increase SOL performance for two of the groups (7th & 8th Algebra 1).
There's also the issue of teasing out which 8th grade algebra 1 students (at the top of the distribution) would have been better served with 2 years of acceleration, and which 7th grade algebra 1 students (at the middle to top of the distribution) would have been better served with 3 or more years of acceleration.
3 + years should be the rare exception.
Why? Given how much better 7th grade algebra 1 students do than 9th or 8th grade algebra 1 students, it's clear that many of them likely would have been at least as successful as 9th or 8th grade algebra 1 students had they taken algebra 1 in 6th instead.
Aside from the true math prodigies there is very little benefit. Race to nowhere.
What's a "true math prodigy"? If you acknowledge there's at least a little benefit (which I think is false given the significant differences in achievement between accelerated and non-accelerated students), why do you use the phrase "race to nowhere" which falsely implies there being no benefit?
The Young Sheldons. (Shout out to Arlington native, Iain Armitage!)
It’s a race to nowhere for 99% of the kids.
Ideally, we want to maximize the pass rate for kids. Pushing some kids to a 3rd year of acceleration would bring down the pass rate for the 3x and 2x acceleration cohorts. And there is no real benefit for 3x acceleration for 99% of the kids.
If you really wanted to maximize the pass rate, you would force all students to repeat algebra 1 throughout high school (or even repeat first grade math through all 12 years of school). This would give a much higher pass rate. Obviously, the pass rate is not the most important metric.
I think the goal for these “accelerated kids” should be the number of 5s on the AP BC Calc exam.
Then force everyone to take it senior or junior year, and delay graduation for as long as legally possible (20 years old in VA) forcing them to repeat BC each year and only taking the exam the last year. Once again, this is not done because that is not the goal.
Yikes, hyperbole much?
The question is how do we figure out which kids to accelerate in 6th grade. I believe we are accelerating too many kids. I suspect those accelerated kids—despite being excellent math students—are not performing “excellently” on Junior year BC calculus. I suspect if we gave them another year, they’d do much better. We’d be preparing them better for college. I think we need to examine how well the accelerated kids perform years later when we harm them by accelerating them.
Seniors taking BC calc would also do better if given an extra year. The question is whether that is useful in the long run. This has been studied extensively, and the research is overwhelmingly in favor of acceleration. (Read A nation empowered)
Except there are almost no practical advantages of taking BC calc in jr year vs sr year. It’s a race to nowhere.
Why does there have to be an advantage? Some kids are good at math and appreciate being challenged. The acceleration is supposed ot be for those kids. There are kids who enjoy math competitions and the like. Kids can choose to take Calc A/B if they want. Plenty of kids don't take Calculus at all. There is nothing wrong with providing courses for kids who are really good at the subject or want to move faster.
FCPS ends up with a small percentage of kids in Algebra 1 in 7th grade.
The downside is that the math is being taken out of sync with the corresponding science or engineering course work that applies that math.
As I understand it, many engineering schools require students retake the calculus they took in high school to make sure that all of the students have a strong foundation.
This is false. Even MIT gives credit for calculus BC, as do other engineering schools
I never said my understanding is perfect. As I understand it, students take math placement tests when they arrive at college. They need to hit a certain score on those tests in order to skip specific classes in college. It is not an automatic out placement because you scored a certain level on the AP Test. My kid is on the advanced math track in FCPS. We are waiting on his IAAT scores to see if he will have a shot at Algebra 1 in 7th, so he is on the track for Calc BC as a Junior. He enjoys math and wishes the math at school would be more challenging, at the same time, he knows plenty of his classmates do not find the math at school easy. If he can skip some math in college, fine. If not, fine. I prefer he be in classes that are challenging him at school. I suspect that college versions of the same class will reinforce what he learned in HS and probably touch on somethings he was not exposed to.
Please read
Virginia Tech AP Credits.
A 3 in Calculus BC automatically gives you credit for Math 1225, and a 4 or 5 for Math 1226. Now look at, for instance, the CS Majors Checksheet which lists Math 1225 and Math 1226 as courses otherwise requires in your first semester.
If you come in with credit for these, you have 2 open slots in your schedule, allowing you take higher-level math courses, double-major, or graduate early.
There's real advantages to that. I see first hand the difference between students who have to catch up on calculus I in college and those who are ready to take (real) college-level classes.
Tech is just one local example. Every university publishes these rules. Check UVA, for instance.
Or MIT.
And yet I know people who passed the Calc AP exam and ended up retaking Calc at some of those University because of their scores on the placement tests that they took. I also know people who earned credits in LA who ended up taking the intro level classes based on placement exam results. Maybe kids could choose not to retake those classes but the ones I know did not take that path. And yes, I know people who have attended Cal Tech and MIT and Northwestern so this is not thoughts out of a vacuum.
I have no problem with kids taking Calc BC or Multivariate and similar classes in HS if they are capable of doing those classes and they want to take them. I appreciate that the option is there. I don't think that it is a guarantee that they will skip those classes in college, regardless of what is written on the websites. I am sure some do and do just fine. I am sure some do and struggle in the college level math classes because their foundation isn't as strong as they think. Kind of like any other subject that students take in collee. Most of us went figuring that we were prepared and found that there were areas that we needed to strengthen.
of course MIT and Caltech have high standards for transferring in course credit.
It's ridiculous to imply that taking advanced math before college hurt these students; on the contrary they likely had a much easier time in these classes than students who were exposed to the material for the first time.
DP Agree. Studies have shown that students retaking calculus in college receive higher grades than those taking it for the first time and that comparison does not include students taking it for the first time that struggled and dropped the course.
No one has suggested not offering Calc BC. No one. Your point is irrelevant.
There are benefits to having had prior exposure to coursework before taking it in college. Calculus is one example. It applies to other courses as well.
Yep. Betcha all those kids getting 2s and 3s on the BC Calc exam junior year who were accelerated in 6th grade are SUPER GRATEFUL.
How many of these kids actually exist in the real world, as opposed to strawmen in your mind?
APS AP pass rate sucks
Then why doesn't APS "raise the bar" and prevent students from taking calculus AB until they can demonstrate mastery of BC, like they do with prealgebra?
this makes no sense. Calc BC is harder than AB. No one would take AB after BC.
This was a snide comment referring to an earlier claim in this thread that the APS administration raised the prerequisite bar (the MI score) to take Prealgebra to a level that is commonly used to determine eligibility for Algebra, a course that follows Prealgebra. The poster was trying to be facetious.
Anonymous wrote:Shouldn't be too hard to look back over many years of acceleration and see the results for these students, broken down by the performance on entrance tests to this pathway, SOL, MAP, COGAT, grades, etc.
SOL data is public. The 7th grade accelerated cohort has much stronger SOL performance in Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2 than the 8th or 9th grade Algebra 1 cohorts.
Obviously, there are many kids who should be accelerated 2 years and comparing the average test scores of those three populations would reflect that. The question is teasing out which kids (at the bottom of that cohort) would have been better served with just 1 year acceleration.
What % of those kids struggling is acceptable? How much would they benefit by getting another year of foundation skills?
The objective of raising the bar for placement is to improve outcomes for the kids on the cusp, which should theoretically increase SOL performance for two of the groups (7th & 8th Algebra 1).
There's also the issue of teasing out which 8th grade algebra 1 students (at the top of the distribution) would have been better served with 2 years of acceleration, and which 7th grade algebra 1 students (at the middle to top of the distribution) would have been better served with 3 or more years of acceleration.
3 + years should be the rare exception.
Why? Given how much better 7th grade algebra 1 students do than 9th or 8th grade algebra 1 students, it's clear that many of them likely would have been at least as successful as 9th or 8th grade algebra 1 students had they taken algebra 1 in 6th instead.
Aside from the true math prodigies there is very little benefit. Race to nowhere.
What's a "true math prodigy"? If you acknowledge there's at least a little benefit (which I think is false given the significant differences in achievement between accelerated and non-accelerated students), why do you use the phrase "race to nowhere" which falsely implies there being no benefit?
The Young Sheldons. (Shout out to Arlington native, Iain Armitage!)
It’s a race to nowhere for 99% of the kids.
Ideally, we want to maximize the pass rate for kids. Pushing some kids to a 3rd year of acceleration would bring down the pass rate for the 3x and 2x acceleration cohorts. And there is no real benefit for 3x acceleration for 99% of the kids.
If you really wanted to maximize the pass rate, you would force all students to repeat algebra 1 throughout high school (or even repeat first grade math through all 12 years of school). This would give a much higher pass rate. Obviously, the pass rate is not the most important metric.
I think the goal for these “accelerated kids” should be the number of 5s on the AP BC Calc exam.
Then force everyone to take it senior or junior year, and delay graduation for as long as legally possible (20 years old in VA) forcing them to repeat BC each year and only taking the exam the last year. Once again, this is not done because that is not the goal.
Yikes, hyperbole much?
The question is how do we figure out which kids to accelerate in 6th grade. I believe we are accelerating too many kids. I suspect those accelerated kids—despite being excellent math students—are not performing “excellently” on Junior year BC calculus. I suspect if we gave them another year, they’d do much better. We’d be preparing them better for college. I think we need to examine how well the accelerated kids perform years later when we harm them by accelerating them.
Seniors taking BC calc would also do better if given an extra year. The question is whether that is useful in the long run. This has been studied extensively, and the research is overwhelmingly in favor of acceleration. (Read A nation empowered)
Except there are almost no practical advantages of taking BC calc in jr year vs sr year. It’s a race to nowhere.
Why does there have to be an advantage? Some kids are good at math and appreciate being challenged. The acceleration is supposed ot be for those kids. There are kids who enjoy math competitions and the like. Kids can choose to take Calc A/B if they want. Plenty of kids don't take Calculus at all. There is nothing wrong with providing courses for kids who are really good at the subject or want to move faster.
FCPS ends up with a small percentage of kids in Algebra 1 in 7th grade.
The downside is that the math is being taken out of sync with the corresponding science or engineering course work that applies that math.
As I understand it, many engineering schools require students retake the calculus they took in high school to make sure that all of the students have a strong foundation.
This is false. Even MIT gives credit for calculus BC, as do other engineering schools
I never said my understanding is perfect. As I understand it, students take math placement tests when they arrive at college. They need to hit a certain score on those tests in order to skip specific classes in college. It is not an automatic out placement because you scored a certain level on the AP Test. My kid is on the advanced math track in FCPS. We are waiting on his IAAT scores to see if he will have a shot at Algebra 1 in 7th, so he is on the track for Calc BC as a Junior. He enjoys math and wishes the math at school would be more challenging, at the same time, he knows plenty of his classmates do not find the math at school easy. If he can skip some math in college, fine. If not, fine. I prefer he be in classes that are challenging him at school. I suspect that college versions of the same class will reinforce what he learned in HS and probably touch on somethings he was not exposed to.
Please read
Virginia Tech AP Credits.
A 3 in Calculus BC automatically gives you credit for Math 1225, and a 4 or 5 for Math 1226. Now look at, for instance, the CS Majors Checksheet which lists Math 1225 and Math 1226 as courses otherwise requires in your first semester.
If you come in with credit for these, you have 2 open slots in your schedule, allowing you take higher-level math courses, double-major, or graduate early.
There's real advantages to that. I see first hand the difference between students who have to catch up on calculus I in college and those who are ready to take (real) college-level classes.
Tech is just one local example. Every university publishes these rules. Check UVA, for instance.
Or MIT.
And yet I know people who passed the Calc AP exam and ended up retaking Calc at some of those University because of their scores on the placement tests that they took. I also know people who earned credits in LA who ended up taking the intro level classes based on placement exam results. Maybe kids could choose not to retake those classes but the ones I know did not take that path. And yes, I know people who have attended Cal Tech and MIT and Northwestern so this is not thoughts out of a vacuum.
I have no problem with kids taking Calc BC or Multivariate and similar classes in HS if they are capable of doing those classes and they want to take them. I appreciate that the option is there. I don't think that it is a guarantee that they will skip those classes in college, regardless of what is written on the websites. I am sure some do and do just fine. I am sure some do and struggle in the college level math classes because their foundation isn't as strong as they think. Kind of like any other subject that students take in collee. Most of us went figuring that we were prepared and found that there were areas that we needed to strengthen.
of course MIT and Caltech have high standards for transferring in course credit.
It's ridiculous to imply that taking advanced math before college hurt these students; on the contrary they likely had a much easier time in these classes than students who were exposed to the material for the first time.
DP Agree. Studies have shown that students retaking calculus in college receive higher grades than those taking it for the first time and that comparison does not include students taking it for the first time that struggled and dropped the course.
No one has suggested not offering Calc BC. No one. Your point is irrelevant.
There are benefits to having had prior exposure to coursework before taking it in college. Calculus is one example. It applies to other courses as well.
Yep. Betcha all those kids getting 2s and 3s on the BC Calc exam junior year who were accelerated in 6th grade are SUPER GRATEFUL.
It will help them if they take calculus in college as noted above.
Hey I have an idea. You know what might actually help them? Understanding Precalc, Algebra II, and Geometry.
What would help them is to bring back intensified precalculus so they are better prepared for BC calculus instead of putting them into AP Precalculus.
What is the difference? Did intensified pre calculus cover more material?
Yes. AP Precalculus was designed for students taking precalc as a senior. It assumes students have had no prior exposure to logs and thus spends a lot of time on Algebra 2 concepts; the AP Precalc exam is roughly two-thirds Algebra 2 material. Since many students taking AP Precalc will never take another math course, it was designed as a capstone course and not solely to prepare students for calculus. As such, it takes a more applied approach, focused on modeling with technology, and includes concepts like regressions which are not needed for AP Calc while dropping series which are needed for AP Calc BC.
An additional problem is that AP Precalc may not permit the prior honors practice of taking the spring of precalc to cover beginning calculus content. Honors precalc moved quickly through Algebra 2 concepts and thus was able to cover intro calc concepts at the end; this is standard practice for honors precalc courses in districts across the US. It is particularly critical for students intending to take BC calculus, because BC covers 50% more content than AB. If all of BC gets crammed into one year, the pace will be very rushed and students will struggle more than they did with honors precalc pacing.
Thanks for the info. But how do we know all these details of what is & isn’t covered if this is the first year it is being offered?
We know details about the AP Precalc curriculum from the College Board website: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-precalculus/course The AP Precalc exam covers three units and the exam content is roughly two thirds Algebra 2. There is a fourth optional unit that APS will presumably cover but it is not clear when; if covered post AP exam, there will be very little time for unit four and no time for early calculus. The AP curriculum details the course's applied focus and notes its coverage of regressions. Presumably, the APS course will prepare students for the AP Precalc exam so they would need to cover this approach/content even if not optimal for calculus preparation.
There is also APS's 2023-24 Program of Studies course description for AP Precalc. In the past, intensified precalc was listed as covering a range of advanced topics, including introductory calculus. However, the new AP Precalc course description does not:
"This course delineates content and skills common to a college precalculus course. Students will study several topics of functions through their graphical, numerical, verbal, and analytical representations, as well as their applications in a variety of contexts. Students will also apply their understanding of functions by constructing and validating appropriate function models for scenarios, sets of conditions, and data sets, thereby gaining a deeper understanding of the nature and behavior of each function type."
This description focuses largely on Algebra 2 concepts, similar to the AP Precalc exam. Also, the reference to "college precalculus course" is worrying. Most four-year colleges don't offer precalculus; those that do offer it as a remedial course for students struggling to meet the college's quantitative reasoning requirements. College students taking precalc are generally not calculus bound, so there is no need to prepare them for calculus. Why would you put advanced kids who want to take AP calculus into a course modeled on one for remedial college students? It makes no sense.
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