Algebra 1 Honors

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s a 7th grader at Luther Jackson taking Pre Calc this year. It’s not common, but FCPS accelerates kids more than you might imagine.

It’s hard to imagine. So are parents making the school give their 8yo the Iowa and SOL? And then the 9yo is getting high school credit? Is the 7th grader going to high school for pre calc? Hopefully it’s not online. It just seems really logistically complicated and not something a school would want to deal with. And these are kids who are definitely receiving outside enrichment. Which do that by all means if you want. But I wouldn’t expect a school to try too hard to then accommodate that.

In your opinion, what should FCPS do with kids who are exceptionally gifted? Should they just shrug their shoulders and decide not to educate them? Should they expect kids like that to just be private or homeschooled? Don't all kids deserve to be taught at a level appropriate for their intellect and level of achievement? In a school system as large as FCPS, it should be expected that there will be a handful of kids each grade level who are far beyond their same age AAP peers.

Also, you have the sequencing wrong for whether kids like that are receiving outside enrichment. They aren't far ahead because they're receiving outside enrichment. They're receiving outside enrichment because they were already so far ahead that neither the parents nor the school knew what to do with them.

Kids who are that exceptionally gifted should skip multiple grades including going to college early.

Now in many of these cases there are parents who are pushing the child as well. That is what needs to stop. Doing Math as young as 3, Kuman and Khan academy from an early age. That type of stuff has no place in the US.

The vast majority of AAP kids are just smart. I actually favor reducing AAP to the truly gifted around 1% (that's your TJ cohort) or so and then for the exceptionally gifted again you need to be skipping grades at that point.

I don’t like this sort of attitude which is ‘since I don’t like it, no one else should do it’. If you don’t want introduce the advanced concepts to your kid and test the waters to see if they are capable of absorbing etc, please don’t do. But it’s wrong to think that everyone else needs to stop as well. You don’t know what you don’t know. Which is, I have no idea if my kid will be good at math or gymnastics until she starts practicing and I believe it’s my job to keep them encouraged. if I recognize a talent in something, I could be a little pushy so that they won’t give up too early and have some discipline. However, it’s wrong to force your kids to do something they are not interested in and have no talent for. Just to give an example, my kid was very hesitant about science fair and didn’t want do do it, but once she paired up with a friend, started researching and building models, she really got hooked, won a prize and wants to every year. At the end, she thanked us for not letting her give up.

Btw, AAP is just advanced academics, not meant to be a Mensa type thing. A public school cannot cater broad range of programs to few exceptional geniuses and they need to be supplemented in other ways. AAP is meant for the kids who are top 10% of the class and can absorb information at a slightly accelerated pace. Since this is large enough pool, schools can develop curriculum and allocate resources for it.

[Anonymous]

Contrary to the popular belief in these forums, algebra 1 is pretty easy and kids already in advanced math, should have no difficulty. It’s not as advanced as you might think and many countries start tracing it from 6th grade itself. My kid and many of my neighbor/friends kids said it’s difficult to not to get an A or A-. Lol. However few of these same kids said geometry is a little difficult and needed some effort.