Reply to AP Precalculus vs Honors Precalculus

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]AP Precalculus would not get credit for any math/science major in a 4-year college. 
Precalculus is high school level, a remedial math in college.
It might be useful for an associates degree or to fulfill a gen ed math requirement for a community college or a low or mid tier college's non-science major.

It might be useful if you believe that your dream  college doesn't trust MCPS to give an honest grade in the high school class.

AP Physics I (non-calculus version) is similar.

I'd look for what colleges say about it before dumping more. $$ into College Board. 
[/quote]
Agreed but students may not have a choice depending on what districts do. Say a district currently offers regular and honors Precalculus. AP Precalculus comes along. Do districts now offer three categories of Precalculus courses? Maybe not, given teacher shortages. Instead, districts might consider replacing either regular or honors Precalculus with AP Precalculus. While it would make more sense to swap regular Precalculus and AP Precalculus from a content standpoint, districts may choose to swap honors Precalculus with AP Precalculus instead as a way of moving (inconspicuously) toward more heterogenous math classes. The latter outcome would leave students who want to take high school calculus in a bind -- they would only have the choice of regular or AP Precalculus, neither of which provides great preparation for BC calculus. Districts might try to pack in additional coverage at the end of the AP course to make up the difference, but hard to know if that would work, particularly if non-calculus bound students (the cohort for whom AP Precalculus was originally created) are in the AP class.

A prior PP said their school is advising strong students to take AP Precalculus. That suggests that their school may ultimately gravitate toward the latter outcome.
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