Algebra 1 - 7th grade

[Anonymous]

The superintendent expressed dismay in one of the employee town halls that FCPS doesn’t offer precalculus in middle school (apparently her former district did at all schools). She is very much a fan of acceleration (much to the chagrin of high school math teachers!!)

I absolutely see algebra being the minimum for 8th graders in the next couple years, but I will be shocked if she is on board with holding kids back who are ready to accelerate.

As a high school math teacher I am nervous for what this will look like. Kids are already really struggling to keep up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent expressed dismay in one of the employee town halls that FCPS doesn’t offer precalculus in middle school (apparently her former district did at all schools). She is very much a fan of acceleration (much to the chagrin of high school math teachers!!)

I absolutely see algebra being the minimum for 8th graders in the next couple years, but I will be shocked if she is on board with holding kids back who are ready to accelerate.

As a high school math teacher I am nervous for what this will look like. Kids are already really struggling to keep up.

Why do I find this hard to believe? She sounds clueless TBH.

Adding - I took a quick look at her former school district and the middle school listed Geometry as the highest level of math class for 8th grade. SMH

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent expressed dismay in one of the employee town halls that FCPS doesn’t offer precalculus in middle school (apparently her former district did at all schools). She is very much a fan of acceleration (much to the chagrin of high school math teachers!!)

I absolutely see algebra being the minimum for 8th graders in the next couple years, but I will be shocked if she is on board with holding kids back who are ready to accelerate.

As a high school math teacher I am nervous for what this will look like. Kids are already really struggling to keep up.

Algebra being the minimum is different from algebra being the maximum. I don't think they will ever implement algebra as the minimum, except for maybe a pretend class labeled algebra which is actually prealgebra to keep too many kids from failing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent expressed dismay in one of the employee town halls that FCPS doesn’t offer precalculus in middle school (apparently her former district did at all schools). She is very much a fan of acceleration (much to the chagrin of high school math teachers!!)

I absolutely see algebra being the minimum for 8th graders in the next couple years, but I will be shocked if she is on board with holding kids back who are ready to accelerate.

As a high school math teacher I am nervous for what this will look like. Kids are already really struggling to keep up.

Why do I find this hard to believe? She sounds clueless TBH.

Adding - I took a quick look at her former school district and the middle school listed Geometry as the highest level of math class for 8th grade. SMH

They probably offered to middle school students who could take it at their high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent expressed dismay in one of the employee town halls that FCPS doesn’t offer precalculus in middle school (apparently her former district did at all schools). She is very much a fan of acceleration (much to the chagrin of high school math teachers!!)

I absolutely see algebra being the minimum for 8th graders in the next couple years, but I will be shocked if she is on board with holding kids back who are ready to accelerate.

As a high school math teacher I am nervous for what this will look like. Kids are already really struggling to keep up.

Why do I find this hard to believe? She sounds clueless TBH.

Adding - I took a quick look at her former school district and the middle school listed Geometry as the highest level of math class for 8th grade. SMH

They probably offered to middle school students who could take it at their high school.

That still happens at FCPS. DD knows a kid who’s taking AP Calc BC as a freshman in HS. He must’ve taken pre-Calc in MS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent expressed dismay in one of the employee town halls that FCPS doesn’t offer precalculus in middle school (apparently her former district did at all schools). She is very much a fan of acceleration (much to the chagrin of high school math teachers!!)

I absolutely see algebra being the minimum for 8th graders in the next couple years, but I will be shocked if she is on board with holding kids back who are ready to accelerate.

As a high school math teacher I am nervous for what this will look like. Kids are already really struggling to keep up.

Why do I find this hard to believe? She sounds clueless TBH.

Adding - I took a quick look at her former school district and the middle school listed Geometry as the highest level of math class for 8th grade. SMH

They probably offered to middle school students who could take it at their high school.

Possibly. But then it's not offered at the middle school. She's just uninformed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent expressed dismay in one of the employee town halls that FCPS doesn’t offer precalculus in middle school (apparently her former district did at all schools). She is very much a fan of acceleration (much to the chagrin of high school math teachers!!)

I absolutely see algebra being the minimum for 8th graders in the next couple years, but I will be shocked if she is on board with holding kids back who are ready to accelerate.

As a high school math teacher I am nervous for what this will look like. Kids are already really struggling to keep up.

Why do I find this hard to believe? She sounds clueless TBH.

Adding - I took a quick look at her former school district and the middle school listed Geometry as the highest level of math class for 8th grade. SMH

They probably offered to middle school students who could take it at their high school.

Or it may have been a special county wide program, available to qualifying students at any middle school within the district. This seems more plausible since any one school isn’t going to have enough kids that qualify to take precalc in middle school to justify making it a class

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent expressed dismay in one of the employee town halls that FCPS doesn’t offer precalculus in middle school (apparently her former district did at all schools). She is very much a fan of acceleration (much to the chagrin of high school math teachers!!)

I absolutely see algebra being the minimum for 8th graders in the next couple years, but I will be shocked if she is on board with holding kids back who are ready to accelerate.

As a high school math teacher I am nervous for what this will look like. Kids are already really struggling to keep up.

Why do I find this hard to believe? She sounds clueless TBH.

Adding - I took a quick look at her former school district and the middle school listed Geometry as the highest level of math class for 8th grade. SMH

They probably offered to middle school students who could take it at their high school.

Or it may have been a special county wide program, available to qualifying students at any middle school within the district. This seems more plausible since any one school isn’t going to have enough kids that qualify to take precalc in middle school to justify making it a class

If they are including alg 2 with trigonometry, then there are several schools that have enough students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent expressed dismay in one of the employee town halls that FCPS doesn’t offer precalculus in middle school (apparently her former district did at all schools). She is very much a fan of acceleration (much to the chagrin of high school math teachers!!)

I absolutely see algebra being the minimum for 8th graders in the next couple years, but I will be shocked if she is on board with holding kids back who are ready to accelerate.

As a high school math teacher I am nervous for what this will look like. Kids are already really struggling to keep up.

Algebra being the minimum is different from algebra being the maximum. I don't think they will ever implement algebra as the minimum, except for maybe a pretend class labeled algebra which is actually prealgebra to keep too many kids from failing.

You're not listening. We are telling you. It is happening. Several schools have already piloted it. They dragged those kids kicking and screaming through the Algebra curriculum in 8th grade. Kids who couldn't do it had to give up electives and after school time to get remediation. Teachers had to bend over backwards killing themselves trying to get these kids to understand it. It went exactly how everyone knew it would. A decent number of kids still weren't successful and had to expunge and retake in 9th grade. The county thinks this is fine because it exposes the kids to Algebra for two years instead of one and eventually all the exposure means they'll "get" it. They don't care that it causes the students and teachers tremendous amounts of undo stress. They don't understand that a kid struggling and failing no matter how hard they work is going to give up, not just sit there and absorb the material and then somehow magically know it when they take the class again in 9th.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent expressed dismay in one of the employee town halls that FCPS doesn’t offer precalculus in middle school (apparently her former district did at all schools). She is very much a fan of acceleration (much to the chagrin of high school math teachers!!)

I absolutely see algebra being the minimum for 8th graders in the next couple years, but I will be shocked if she is on board with holding kids back who are ready to accelerate.

As a high school math teacher I am nervous for what this will look like. Kids are already really struggling to keep up.

Algebra being the minimum is different from algebra being the maximum. I don't think they will ever implement algebra as the minimum, except for maybe a pretend class labeled algebra which is actually prealgebra to keep too many kids from failing.

You're not listening. We are telling you. It is happening. Several schools have already piloted it. They dragged those kids kicking and screaming through the Algebra curriculum in 8th grade. Kids who couldn't do it had to give up electives and after school time to get remediation. Teachers had to bend over backwards killing themselves trying to get these kids to understand it. It went exactly how everyone knew it would. A decent number of kids still weren't successful and had to expunge and retake in 9th grade. The county thinks this is fine because it exposes the kids to Algebra for two years instead of one and eventually all the exposure means they'll "get" it. They don't care that it causes the students and teachers tremendous amounts of undo stress. They don't understand that a kid struggling and failing no matter how hard they work is going to give up, not just sit there and absorb the material and then somehow magically know it when they take the class again in 9th.

When did the acceleration begin for the kids in the pilot to get them to 8th grade Algebra 1? Were they coming up through Advanced Math from 3rd grade onward or did they start accelerating later, like in 5th or later?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent expressed dismay in one of the employee town halls that FCPS doesn’t offer precalculus in middle school (apparently her former district did at all schools). She is very much a fan of acceleration (much to the chagrin of high school math teachers!!)

I absolutely see algebra being the minimum for 8th graders in the next couple years, but I will be shocked if she is on board with holding kids back who are ready to accelerate.

As a high school math teacher I am nervous for what this will look like. Kids are already really struggling to keep up.

Did her former district have 9th grade in junior high?

Precalculus in middle school is ridiculous.

You couldn't fill 1 class from the whole county, probably not even from the whole state.

Stop dumbing down Algebra and Geometry, and let the mediocre students get Bs, and you won't need to push 8th graders into precalc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent expressed dismay in one of the employee town halls that FCPS doesn’t offer precalculus in middle school (apparently her former district did at all schools). She is very much a fan of acceleration (much to the chagrin of high school math teachers!!)

I absolutely see algebra being the minimum for 8th graders in the next couple years, but I will be shocked if she is on board with holding kids back who are ready to accelerate.

As a high school math teacher I am nervous for what this will look like. Kids are already really struggling to keep up.

Why do I find this hard to believe? She sounds clueless TBH.

Adding - I took a quick look at her former school district and the middle school listed Geometry as the highest level of math class for 8th grade. SMH

They probably offered to middle school students who could take it at their high school.

That still happens at FCPS. DD knows a kid who’s taking AP Calc BC as a freshman in HS. He must’ve taken pre-Calc in MS.

It's mostly outside enrichment, my friends. Don't think this is due to schools doing a magical job; it's all parents pushing the kids very hard from early elementary. Similar to how a much larger and different group of parents push their kids into sports at a similar age. Two parallel arms races

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent expressed dismay in one of the employee town halls that FCPS doesn’t offer precalculus in middle school (apparently her former district did at all schools). She is very much a fan of acceleration (much to the chagrin of high school math teachers!!)

I absolutely see algebra being the minimum for 8th graders in the next couple years, but I will be shocked if she is on board with holding kids back who are ready to accelerate.

As a high school math teacher I am nervous for what this will look like. Kids are already really struggling to keep up.

Did her former district have 9th grade in junior high?

Precalculus in middle school is ridiculous.

You couldn't fill 1 class from the whole county, probably not even from the whole state.

Stop dumbing down Algebra and Geometry, and let the mediocre students get Bs, and you won't need to push 8th graders into precalc.

I think this precalc is a class like algebra 2 with trig, which in theory could be used to go right to calculus. LCPS adds an in between Math Analysis before kids take calculus in 10th.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent expressed dismay in one of the employee town halls that FCPS doesn’t offer precalculus in middle school (apparently her former district did at all schools). She is very much a fan of acceleration (much to the chagrin of high school math teachers!!)

I absolutely see algebra being the minimum for 8th graders in the next couple years, but I will be shocked if she is on board with holding kids back who are ready to accelerate.

As a high school math teacher I am nervous for what this will look like. Kids are already really struggling to keep up.

Algebra being the minimum is different from algebra being the maximum. I don't think they will ever implement algebra as the minimum, except for maybe a pretend class labeled algebra which is actually prealgebra to keep too many kids from failing.

You're not listening. We are telling you. It is happening. Several schools have already piloted it. They dragged those kids kicking and screaming through the Algebra curriculum in 8th grade. Kids who couldn't do it had to give up electives and after school time to get remediation. Teachers had to bend over backwards killing themselves trying to get these kids to understand it. It went exactly how everyone knew it would. A decent number of kids still weren't successful and had to expunge and retake in 9th grade. The county thinks this is fine because it exposes the kids to Algebra for two years instead of one and eventually all the exposure means they'll "get" it. They don't care that it causes the students and teachers tremendous amounts of undo stress. They don't understand that a kid struggling and failing no matter how hard they work is going to give up, not just sit there and absorb the material and then somehow magically know it when they take the class again in 9th.

Are you talking about this program?

https://www.fcps.edu/node/44416

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent expressed dismay in one of the employee town halls that FCPS doesn’t offer precalculus in middle school (apparently her former district did at all schools). She is very much a fan of acceleration (much to the chagrin of high school math teachers!!)

I absolutely see algebra being the minimum for 8th graders in the next couple years, but I will be shocked if she is on board with holding kids back who are ready to accelerate.

As a high school math teacher I am nervous for what this will look like. Kids are already really struggling to keep up.

Algebra being the minimum is different from algebra being the maximum. I don't think they will ever implement algebra as the minimum, except for maybe a pretend class labeled algebra which is actually prealgebra to keep too many kids from failing.

You're not listening. We are telling you. It is happening. Several schools have already piloted it. They dragged those kids kicking and screaming through the Algebra curriculum in 8th grade. Kids who couldn't do it had to give up electives and after school time to get remediation. Teachers had to bend over backwards killing themselves trying to get these kids to understand it. It went exactly how everyone knew it would. A decent number of kids still weren't successful and had to expunge and retake in 9th grade. The county thinks this is fine because it exposes the kids to Algebra for two years instead of one and eventually all the exposure means they'll "get" it. They don't care that it causes the students and teachers tremendous amounts of undo stress. They don't understand that a kid struggling and failing no matter how hard they work is going to give up, not just sit there and absorb the material and then somehow magically know it when they take the class again in 9th.

Are you talking about this program?

https://www.fcps.edu/node/44416

DP From your link, this sounds like what the other PP described:
"Partner with College Success Programs to launch the Algebra Access Network Improvement Community, a network of five schools that will increase the diverse representation of students who participate and are proficient in Algebra 1 by the end of eighth grade."