Reply to How to push for math enrichment at school

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We enrolled DS in AoPS and then RSM. He has loved the math competition class and continues in it as an 8th grader. Great program for him.

The school is not going to be able to do much. The  kids who are ahead might get extra worksheets on computer assignments but it is not going to be anything meaningful. It gets better in MS but isn't challenging. I will say that Geometry in 8th grade is the first time DS has said math at school is engaging. He has studies a lot of geometry through the math competition class but they don't focus on formal proofs and the like, so that has been new to him. It hasn't been hard but the more formal learning has at least been newish. He covered pretty much all of Algebra in his math competition class, the school class formalized the learning and provided some structure but not much new material. It wasn't hard for him.

We did not do geometry in the summer, DS had camps he wanted to do and friends to hang out with. We didn't see the point of massively accelerating. He does math competitions for additional challenge and fun, the AMCs, IMC, Math Kangaroo, Purple Comet and the like. He participates in Mathcounts. [/quote]
The school is able to do plenty. If it can choose to pay for an athletics coach to coach a select group of students, it can pay for a math teacher to coach a select group of students.[/quote]

The Math Coaches for clubs are parent volunteers, that is why some ES, MS, and HS have clubs and others don’t. It is based on parent willingness to Coach. [/quote]
Why aren't sports coaches parent volunteers?[/quote]

I would guess that there are physical liability issues that schools have to be aware of with a sport that are less likely to exist with a math club. Mathcounts can be intense but you are not likely to have a kid get heat stroke while working sprint round problems. In a sport you have to make sure that the coaches understand how to recognize injuries and how to deal with extreme temperatures and physical overexertion that can led to significant damage and death, not quite the same coaching MS/HS math competition teams.

Most of the Coaches for HS teams are not making a lot of extra money to coach, the stipends are small. Many football programs hire additional coaches with money raised by the sports booster club. Heck, my marching band in HS hired a color guard specialist, a routine coreographer, and a drum line coach using booster money in the 1980’s. Those positions were not paid for by the school but the parents with kids in the program and selling, for us fruit, some product to fundraise. [/quote]
Yet even if parents offer to volunteer or crowdfund, the optics of a selective academic development program are so much worse than those of a selective athletic development program that the former isn't allowed by schools while the latter is.[/quote]

Do you have examples of parents offering to volunteer to run an academic club and being told no? Curious. I have seen academic clubs stop because of no parent volunteers but I have not heard of schools saying no. [/quote]
Here's an example: https://www.reddit.com/r/school/comments/1mvoyij/math_club_in_elementary_school/[/quote]

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